Coping with Chaos: Part 2 of 3

Summary

How we define who we are is the basis for determining the status of our strengths and talents. Those who see themselves as weak, victimized, or sick are automatically limiting their ability to thrive and manage their daily tasks. This is extremely important when we must cope with ongoing difficulties that have no quick or easy solutions. When our confidence and optimism are failing, we need to avoid the temptation to be defined by our problems and disappointments. Cultivating a healthy sense of identity does not mean we ignore any difficulty or handicap we have. A healthy sense of our strengths and abilities, however, gives us a starting point of power and knowledge for coping with whatever problems or opportunities we have. Our proper identity should be based on our personal merit and accomplishments rather than our burdens, struggles or membership in any group.

This is my second discussion about the need to be aware of how the agitation, distrust, and anger in mass consciousness can infect our emotions and damage our wellbeing. We need to understand that not all germs are physical. Some are the emotional germs of fear, anger, or despair.

These emotional germs can contaminate the atmosphere in which we live and work. Their impact on us can be subtle because they work by indirectly magnifying any tendency we have to feel discouraged, anxious, angry, or helpless.

Fortunately, we can learn to control and reduce the effect of this extra irritation from mass consciousness. Accomplishing this will support our ability to work with confidence, tranquility, and positive expectations.

The importance of our sense of identity

One of the key things we need to do to protect us from the harmful energies in mass consciousness is to streamline and reform our sense of identity. A weak or wounded sense of identity makes us far more vulnerable to distractions, anxiety, or disappointment.

There are two common errors that many people make about how they define who they are. The first is to be excessively dependent on the approval of others for their attractive appearance and general popularity among their peers. This focus often leaves us vulnerable to being insecure because it means we are relying on the support and opinion of others for our wellbeing. Our only dependable source of strength comes from our innate abilities, knowledge, and other strong qualities.

The second and greater error many make in defining ourself is in becoming too closely identified with:

• illnesses and emotional wounds

• old losses and mistakes

• old conflicts and traumas

• and all the frustration we retain about these issues.

No, we are not supposed to ignore any of these issues. We do, however, need to limit the degree and intensity of our concern about them. This means we need to control any tendency to:

• over-think about our suffering

• brood in deep resentment, despair, or helplessness

• excessively identify with our limitations and disabilities

• relive the experience of outrage about being victimized by some awful insult.

While it may seem logical and justified to work in this fashion, we need to be mindful that:

• any set of muscles, beliefs, or attitudes we exercise will become stronger, including our ability to be frustrated and helpless

• concentrating on what we dislike and the distress we feel will clog the channels we need for gathering our strengths and creative problem-solving skills

• reinforcing our sense of being a wounded, weak, and damaged person will limit our abilities to survive and thrive.

We need to give top priority to staying centered in our actual health, strengths, abilities, courage, and confidence. This provides us with a platform of power and skills for managing our challenges and burdens. To the degree we allow fear, discouragement, and bitterness control us, we will be disconnecting ourselves from our power to control and manage our life.

How to stay centered in our strength while coping with problems

While we must acknowledge our legitimate illnesses and other burdens, we need to exercise restraint about how we view them. It is important that:

• our problems and illnesses must not be the lens through which we view and judge our whole life and future

• nor should they be given authority to rule what we do and how we act.

Many good people fail to realize that a problem-centered or sickness-centered life is already crippled before there is any attempt to manage these issues. We generate powerful handicaps for ourselves when much of what we think about is colored by our habitual gloom, fear, or resentment.

This does not mean we should ignore or deny the presence of real issues in our life. But we can multiply our confidence and assertiveness if we deny the authority of an illness, grievance, or loss to dominate how we think, feel, and act.

Some are puzzled about how this can be accomplished when our difficulty is obvious, painful, and disturbing most of the time. The key is to change our perspective about two major observations about ourself. First, we need to be aware of all the parts of our humanness and life situation, including our healthy parts – not just the sick or dysfunctional parts. Second, we need to know which parts are very important and vital to our wellbeing and honor them above the wounded parts.

If we use this perspective, we may well have real illnesses, injuries, and other burdens, but we will know this is never all that we are. There other parts of our character and life situation that are:

• still operating well

• capable of creating some success and satisfaction

• able to nourish our well-being and sustain us while other parts are disabled

• are helping us to be useful to ourself and others

• and have the power to contribute our own healing.

The proactive way to evaluate ourself and our situation in life

We may have significant problems and struggles, but we will achieve more if, from the beginning, we work with our strengths to cope with them. This means we give a higher priority to our capacity for courage, intelligence, hope, and persistence rather than our fear, despair, or helplessness. This is how we define a healthy perspective about ourself and our condition.

In practice, this means we declare that our basic identity is as a strong and healthy person. We are not a sick or wounded person. We are a healthy person who just happens to have a few problems that we are managing. We are a confidant and cheerful person who is dealing with a part of us that is feeling discouraged and defeated.

Some will claim that is no more than a cheap intellectual deception, but it is not. This change is designed to shift our perspective about our challenges and burdens – not deny them by magical thinking. This redirection of how we view and analyze ourself and our situation makes a huge difference in how well we will mobilize our strengths to survive and thrive.