Full Mental Jacket

~ The Active Listener, Inc. ~ 6 Comments

By Suzanne Wiggins

I’ve been consciously working on enhancing my happiness for a little over four years now. It’s definitely been a life changing journey and I’ve discovered that becoming happier doesn’t always “feel” happy. There are some daunting and downright scary challenges that must be faced in the dark and hidden recesses of the heart and mind.

I’ll be honest, the greatest moments of enlightenment often come at the most unexpected times. Case in point, I had my most powerful revelation to date while standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes this morning. I was mentally flow charting the “why” of an ongoing emotional struggle and suddenly the answer revealed itself to me. I was astounded by the obvious simplicity of the answer. And as hokey as it may sound, I found myself without conscious intention going through the motions of unbuttoning the clasps of an imaginary garment. When the buttons were undone I shrugged from my shoulders what seemed like a heavily weighted jacket. As it fell to the ground I breathed a deep sigh of relief while relaxing and rotating my shoulders. It was a very real physical response to the lightness I felt in my body. Quite involuntarily I said aloud, ‘I no longer need to carry it. It’s not my load to carry.’

I finally understood that  someone, or more likely a series of people, had saddled me with ideas and beliefs that were harmful to my self-esteem. As the load got bigger and heavier over the years, I carried it without much thought, complaint or awareness because it was given to me by people who were credible and influential in my life. But this morning…THIS morning I was able to let go and truly accept that the past is done and behind me and I have all the power and ability I need to create whatever future it is I desire. I’ve read it. I’ve written it. But it feels really amazing when you finally believe it.

So my challenge to you is this…I challenge you to be brave. To bravely acknowledge what it is you carry that is not of your own making. The voices that say, “you’ll never amount to anything, you have no value, you’ll fail, you’re not pretty enough, smart enough, thin enough, young enough, you’ll never find love, you’ll never have success, you’ll never do it, you’re too old, you’re not wanted, if you haven’t done it yet you never will, it’s impossible, you don’t deserve it, you don’t have what it takes, happiness is just an illusion, dreams don’t come true, no one truly gets what they want…”

I promise that the braver you are, and the sooner you acknowledge the invisible load you bear, the sooner your wants and desires will begin to manifest into reality. Nothing is impossible if you’re brave enough to say those magic words, “It’s not my load to carry.”

When Moving Mountains Means Moving Nothing At All

~ The Active Listener, Inc. ~ 8 Comments

By Suzanne Wiggins

As far back as I can remember I’ve been a master of self-sufficiency. For most of my life, I took great pride in this and believed it to be one of my best personal attributes. I have come to realize, however, there is a difference between knowing how to be self-reliant and being driven to live it as a lifestyle. It began innocently enough with a single childhood experience. A small seed that once planted, quickly grew into a life-long presumption that I must do everything for myself.

It all started when I was about 10 years old. We were shopping at Kmart and I fell hard for a $2.00 pair of royal blue sneakers. Imagine if you will, a pair of Converse low tops dyed blue, rubber and all. I had to have them. My mother, who worked hard and was extremely careful with money, was having none of it. She very seriously told me that if I wanted the shoes so bad, I should buy them myself. Being 10, I probably cried a little, but as we walked away I could not resign myself to not having those sneakers. The terms had been set. I knew what had to be done. So with focused determination, I set out to find two dollars.

I’m sure I started where we always did back then, searching the deep, crumb-filled crevasses of the living room furniture. No one really wanted to stick their hand in there so it was usually a good spot for finding spare change when things got desperate. Next, my mother kept a plastic container of pennies in her dresser drawer and that was another good source when my siblings and I were in dire need of financial resources. I’m sure a bit of my sneaker fund was “found” there. Some of it came from my resourcefulness and cheerful disposition. As a kid, I discovered that my parents’ friends, particularly those who stopped by to have a few beers with my dad, seemed to enjoy giving money away. I would sit by smiling cheerfully while the adults told stories and laughed until inevitably someone would reach in their pocket, pull out a quarter and hand it to me. Sometimes the quarters were offered as incentive to go away, but that was fine too since it was all for the cause of my sneakers. Finally, I was not above begging. My siblings were old enough to work so I hit them up and agreed to perform demeaning tasks in exchange for a bit of spare change. It took a while, but I bought those amazing royal blue sneakers and wore them until they were full of holes and eventually fell apart.

Fast forward several decades. I was enjoying a beer with a friend one day after work and he asked why I had never been married. It was definitely not the first time I’d been asked. I smiled sweetly and gave him my pat answer, “because no one has asked me.”  He then made the observation, “well usually when a person wants something they find a way to make it happen.” Whoa, wait a minute. This person barely knew me and certainly had never heard the tale of the blue sneakers. His comment bothered me. It bothered me because I couldn’t stop thinking about it and found myself compelled to explore the idea further.

It took over a year and a lot of introspection, but I finally arrived at the ultimate revelation. I had never married because I didn’t know how to need someone. I slowly realized that my self-sufficiency had kept me from experiencing the joy of depending on someone; not because I needed to be taken care of, but because people want to take care of the ones they love. All those years I had mistakenly viewed depending on someone as a sign of weakness rather than an expression of love and caring. That was a painful discovery to make for someone who had viewed self-sufficiency as a virtue.

Recently,  a co-worker who has had major neck surgery asked for help rearranging her office furniture. Being me, I gladly accepted the task. The desk and credenza needed to be moved to the opposite side of the room so I pushed and pulled over and over until the furniture was all in place. We quickly agreed that the new location wasn’t going to work so back to the other side of the office it went. When I gave the final push and the task was complete I proudly exclaimed, ‘Who needs a man?!” to which my co-worker sincerely replied, “I do.” Those two words hit me like a cold splash of water. There it was again, that subconscious belief that doing it myself was in some way superior to accepting help. And at that moment I realized, the biggest mountain I could ever move would be allowing someone to move it for me.