Find Your Harmony
“If
we do have problems in life, as all of us do, they show us where we are not in
harmony. Helping someone discover that is the real job of a healer. It goes
beyond fixing, beyond therapy.”
Louise
L. Hay (“Healer, Heal Thyself,” in Healers on Healing, p.22; compiled by
Richard Carlson and Benjamin Shield, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc; 1989)
Louise
Hay was one of the early inspirational teachers and writers, who taught that
the first step in having a happy life is to love yourself. “I find that many
problems come from self-rejection and self-hatred of one degree or another.” Most
of us have aspects of our personality that we don’t like—selfishness, jealousy,
a knack for biting sarcasm—aspects we hope other people don’t notice. I just
read an article about which Zodiac signs are most passive-aggressive—turns out
Libra is #1. Both my parents were Libras. No wonder I bristle at passive
aggression! Which is not to say that I don’t engage in it from time to time—we all
do. Passive aggression occurs when someone makes you mad, but you don’t want to
rock the boat, or say what you really feel because the repercussions would be
too great. Instead, you behave in an icy way, or drop nasty little inuendo
bombs, or simply walk away.
Clearly,
we do have a choice about how we respond to aggression of any kind, but the
major perpetrator of abusive thoughts is we ourselves. We take a small slight,
blow it out of proportion, and then flagellate ourselves with it. That causes us suffering: “What a bad person I am! I have this problem because I am
a hot mess!” and so on and so forth. We seem to have a secret set of rules for
ourselves that no one on earth could live up to, so when we step on one of them,
we assign ourselves to the pit of despair. Who could be happy there?
Giving
up self-criticism is a giant step toward wholeness. Give yourself a break—you are
only human—you make mistakes, but your mistakes are no worse than anyone else’s.
Louise Hay was a great proponent of affirmations said aloud while looking at
yourself in the mirror. “You did a great job today!” “I’m proud of you.” Or one
my friend, Dejuana offered, “You deserve to have good things in your life.” Or, “You are making an effort to be a good person, and I like that.” That
may sound silly to you, but if you give it a try for a while, you’ll find yourself
being inexplicably happier—and far less passive aggressive.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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