Read on if you want to increase your personal power.
INTRODUCTION
There are about 10 discovered ways for how we can create negative feelings within ourselves and pull ourselves down. These negative feelings have a direct effect on our personal power. We will cover all of them and their effect in our blog posts one by one.
These feelings when felt often become our emotional home.What does an Emotional Home mean? It means an Emotional State where we feel most comfortable in.It becomes the go-to emotion whenever something adverse happens. A Resilient person might immediately get into stoic Mode whenever in an adverse situation whereas a not-so-resilient person might start wondering why negativity always seems to happen to him.He has a low Frustration tolerance for Adversity.We have covered Low Frustration Tolerance in our earlier blog.It might seem a little impossible to call a Negative Emotional State – the Emotional Home of a person, but it’s true.Think about a person who is grumpy all the while.Or the one who always complains.Everyone has an emotional home and if you look closely you will find it.In fact make an exercise of it just to improve your personal sizing -up-someone skills.
When in the grip of negative feelings, your thoughts get distorted and twisted.
Khyati Birla
This has been researched and documented by Dr David Burns. These thoughts may feel quite valid, but in due course you come to understand you were overreacting or just plain wrong and therefore suffering unnecessarily.My cause is to help you get rid of various ways you cause suffering to yourself.
Suffering due to lack of Personal Power affects everyone personally and the effects of it are faced everywhere.It makes us cause unnecessary issues.It also causes us to give up.It causes us to Self Doubt.Be it a child to a teenager to a homemaker to an executive to an older person and the effects of it are similarly faced by everyone.Be it from impaired performance to impaired relationships, to a low quality of life to simply failing often even after umpteen efforts.
Let’s take an example of 1 way in how we reduce our Personal Power.
SELF VICTIMISING
Someone was rude to you at work without reason or someone snapped unnecessarily at you. Sure, it wasn’t your fault. But were you able to let go if it? or do you mull over what happened ceaselessly? On a bad day are you able to able to differentiate between a Bad Day and a Bad Life? If not, you are probably Self-Victimising.
That doesn’t mean denying that Victims don’t exist.They do and that is Reality. There are victims of abuse, of disease, of disaster etc.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRUE VICTIMHOOD AND A HABITUAL SELF VICTIMISING STATE OF MIND
There is a difference though in being a victim and having a self-victimising Mindset.We can be a victim but not victimise ourselves. That’s a real Survivor/Hero-Resilience quality. On the other hand, we might not be true Victims in reality and only just perceiving ourselves to be one. Read on to understand more.
Self Victimising mindset is a state of mind that can exist whether or not we’ve been victimised. It perceives difficult situations as Persecution of the self. Self Pity is the biggest sign of this state of mind and people here often ask questions like, ”Why does this always happen to me?” Even if what happened was years back and is not happening any more.Any new adverse situation is immediately linked to a past traumatic situation where they truly felt helpless in changing their situation. Because the brain can’t differentiate between what’s real and what’s a memory of the past, they feel the same emotions in the present situation too, leading to a feeling of “the past is repeating itself.”
- This state of mind has everything to do with how we frame the things that happen to us.
- This is the state of mind we lapse into anytime we blame our circumstances on someone or something outside ourselves; what or whom we can’t control.
- Victims of Self Victimising State have learnt to see themselves as being at the mercy of their life circumstances.Therefore they see themselves as being powerless, hopeless, and at the mercy of outside forces.Because they have conditioned themselves to believe that things happen to them, their emotional home is state of helplessness and they end up feeling like victims of something that is beyond their scope of control. They believe it’s the outside world that must change for them to be happy or at peace. They believe the world and others must be different before they can be okay, which is the primary reason people attempt to control others and their surroundings.Do people tell you, you are a control freak? You may be self victimising.Often simply the fact that someone disagrees with us or says something we don’t like can spiral us into Self Victimising State.
HOW CAN WE EMPOWER OURSELVES?
Rumi — ‘Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.’
In a Self Victimising state,
1) One is constantly ruminating about what happened in the past and therefore staying angry in the present.Let’s face it,We have all gone through times in life when other people say things or behave in a way that is hurtful towards us. We can chose to ruminate over past actions or events, but ultimately it’s for us to realise whether to carry the load and sap our energy or shrug the load off.
2) One perceives self to be a victim all the time.All evidence to the contrary is misconstrued and ignored, in a fit of rage therefore feeling cornered and helpless in the present.
“You can learn to deal with your moods more effectively if you master methods that will help you pinpoint and eliminate the mental distortions which cause you to feel upset. As you begin to think more objectively, you will begin to feel better.” Dr David Burns.
Self Victimisation is one of the above mentioned mental distortions.The effect of these thoughts on us is clear.We stay Sad and/or Mad. By conditioning ourselves to choose the quality of our thoughts, we can pull ourselves out of a negative state and increase our personal power.It all lies in the mind state.Often times an awareness that we are thinking negative and redirecting our thoughts elsewhere is all it takes.
This reminds me of a story I had read sometime ago and often share with my clients in our sessions.
The STORY OF THE GIFT
This is about the time when Buddha, accompanied by his disciples was travelling through villages, spreading his message. He and his message weren’t well known yet.
This happened one day. Buddha and his disciples were walking through the main square with their begging bowls smilingly asking for food. Once in a while, a villager would stop the monks and curiously ask them about their philosophy.The Buddha answered peacefully.People would leave from there with folded hands and bowed heads. Soon, everyone in the village got to know these monks were different.Their faith and life philosophy was different and somehow comforting. A man saw what was happening and quickly flared up at what he saw as a challenge to his faith. He let loose a torrent of angry, abusive words. Buddha smilingly walked away from the angry man and this incensed the man further.He started following Buddha, insulting him furthermore. The Buddha was not upset by this abusive behaviour and continued peacefully asking people for food. By this time, almost the entire village and Buddha’s disciples had gathered and were watching the man heap abuse upon abuse on Buddha while the Buddha remained apparently unaffected. Finally, the other disciples couldn’t take it any longer and asked Buddha how was he staying impervious towards all the abuses thrown at him. Buddha turned and asked the disciples “Tell me, if someone buys me a gift but if I don’t accept it, to whom does the gift belong?”
The Disciples were surprised and haltingly replied, “It belongs to the buyer then.”
The Buddha smiled and said, “That is correct. And it is exactly the same with this man’s anger. He is angry and therefore has only anger to gift me with.But if I do not accept his gift, the gift goes back to him”. Everyone present there, including the villagers got a new and a beautiful way of seeing things.The Abusive, angry man also realised the futility of his anger.
This simple Buddha story has 2 beautiful messages.
1)One about living in the present moment. How often do we carry around past hurts, holding onto resentments when the only person we are really hurting is ourselves?
2)The other is about digging deep inside to find a narrative that gives us the ability to take charge of a toxic situation.At some point we realise the only sane thing is to work on ourselves instead of expecting the world to change.
The truth is that we only believe ourselves to be at the mercy of our surroundings. We are not, in reality and this realisation of the truth and subsequent actions are what makes one truly intelligent. We have the RIGHT and going one step further the RESPONSIBILITY to choose our emotions in a challenging situation, if we are to be truly powerful. Our Inner Narrative about what’s happening around us determines our degree of inner peace and power. We must be in charge of the way we think and respond else we truly are like windblown leaves being blown about by every breeze that comes along; powerless to steer ourselves in the direction we desire.
Successful and Intelligent people know this and have learnt not to collapse in the Self-Victimising state.
CONCLUSION
I had a client whose spouse was in her own words,”a very nice man, just loses his mind when he gets angry.He ends up saying toxic things which affects me terribly.But because he is a nice man otherwise, I still want to see if I can give this relationship a try.I just want to know I did all that I could”.
After dealing with her self victimising mindset(Remember,A victim can always stop being a Victim to gain back control over her circumstances!),I asked,” What would you like your inner narrative to be when when you think your spouse puts you down just because he can?” She said she chose to sing songs in her head.
When she stopped responding to her partner’s anger, she was able to regain some control over the situation (which she had perceived as uncontrollable when she started with me) and over a period of time was able to set boundaries in her relationship, gained respect from her partner and was able to change his toxic behaviour.Their relationship improved by leaps and bounds.All by choosing to sing songs in her head when faced with her partner’s terrible temper and choosing to keep the past effects of his temper in the past.Often it’s the simple things we do that bring about a massive change in the quality of our lives.
Do not accept a Gift of Bad Behaviour from someone.Choose instead to divert yourself and deliberately put yourself in a state that you would like to be.
Author's Note The purpose of this column is to enable the reader to build a healthy Coping Strategy one good habit at a time.Please allow yourself upto 6 months of constant practice and allow the habit to build up to see the change. If you find yourself struggling to conquer a Self Victimising state of mind, please contact us on khyati@khyatibirla.com to see how you can go on to lead a better life. Khyati Birla