Today on day 3 of the 30 Days of Drama Reduction series, Hot Alpha Female shares an empowering call to action…
Ok I have to admit something to you guys, I was having a little trouble of thinking of something to talk to you about and while I was surfing the site, I thought to myself, “OK! I get it!! There is a lot of baggage that we have out there. About ourselves, about relationships, and about life. Right now we are in baggage wonderland!”
And while I would love to indulge in that for a little longer, I came to the conclusion that we really need to stop enjoying wallowing in our own baggage and in our own pity.
I know I know .. I’m going to p*ss some of you off when I say that but this is as much of an epiphany for YOU as it is for ME.
Yes maybe we picked the wrong partner in the past. Yes maybe we made a couple of stupid mistakes. Yes we probably could have done things differently. Yes to every other negative and statement we say to ourselves each and everyday without realising it.
You know why I think some of us love wallowing in our own pity? Because it makes us feel comfortable. We are used to saying the same things to ourselves over and over again and some of us even love being the victim.
We are comfortable knowing that hey .. we couldn’t do ANYTHING about what happened to us. Its sometimes comforting thinking that our experience of the world is something that we cannot control. But is that really living? Is that really the type of person that you want to be? Is that a life that you want to live? Where you allow others to dictate how you should or should not feel?
And what if I said to you that “Everything that you has happened to you is because you attracted it” …
Some of you may want to chuck a John McEnroe “You cannot be serious!”
Well I am serious. Deadly serious.
Let me give you an example. A very dear friend of mine who is a great girl had a tough upbringing. Her father was an alcoholic and her mother left when we she was younger. Later in her life both parents remarried. During high school she was into drugs and what not. During this stage of her life all the men that she had ever dated were also alcoholics.
Co-incidence? I think not. It was only until she moved away from her parents and settled in a place by herself and took a year out of everything to really find out more about herself that she changed beliefs about herself and grew as a person. The end result? She is getting married to a wonderful, great, guy who is pretty much the opposite of everything that she has dated in the past.
So what point am I trying to make? Basically you can’t attract someone better into your life until you clean up all your baggage. Until you really find out what holds you back. Until you figure out what beliefs about yourself that keep attracting and repelling certain people.
What I’m saying is that it is time to take self responsibility for your life. Its time to stop blaming other people/circumstances/situations and realise that you have inadvertently created all your problems and therefore have the power and capability to create solutions.
It’s time to take control of your thoughts. Instead of thinking about all the horrible or bad experiences that you may have had, it’s time to start thinking of all the wonderful things that are possible for you in the future.
It’s about time that we stop wallowing in the past, stop dreaming about the future and live life today. Because today is all that we are guaranteed. It’s time to start being grateful for all those past experiences because they made you the wiser, stronger, and the more independent person you are today. If you love yourself, then how can you really hate your past?
It’s time to recognise that hey, life is like this. Life is going to chuck so many challenges in front of you. Some of them will make us cry for days. Some will knock us out for months. But it’s not a question of how many challenges we may get and it’s not about how many knocks we get out of life but it IS about getting up every single time something bad happens to us and moving forward. It’s about being scared to do something, but going ahead and doing it anyway. It’s about getting out of that comfort zone and realising our true potential.
It’s about shedding an identity about yourself that has been holding you back from experiencing those things that you so richly deserve. At the end of the day, it is about going back to loving and respecting yourself first and foremost.
It’s time that everyone gets back up on their feet and clears out the BAGGAGE once and for all!!!
Your thoughts?
Hot Alpha Female is a new weekly contributor to Baggage Reclaim. She’s a vibrant twenty-something that loves talking about dating and relationships, as well as skiing and laughing uncontrollably.
Do you have a post or tip to submit for the series? Get in touch! Read other posts from the series.
If you’re a habitual dater of emotionally unavailable men, don’t forget that Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl is now available to buy and download.
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So, what’s next? After we recognize our pattern, how do we STOP doing that? Is it enough to believe that we are worth more and stop putting up with it?
I’m dealing with the “how to stop repeating my self defeating behaviors” also. It’s difficult but not impossible! You just need to be firm with yourself and pat yourself on the back when you get through certain time periods of not engaging in the patterns that hold you back from your true potential or happiness.
What is working for me, is that in this 30 days of no drama – I am just refraining from reaching out for the attention I crave from my ex, emotionally unavailable, flame. I keep reminding myself of how he will make me feel good for a hour, or a day or a few days – and then make me feel like cr*p by falling short of my “expectations” of his behavior.
I am finding that I am attracting better and more positive interaction with people (men and women), and my work, in place of my spending time focused on him.
And that makes it all the more easy to fend off the next time I feel tempted to reach out for attention from that assclown.
Also, don’t be too hard on yourself if you slip up. Just vow to learn from it and remember the pain from the negative feelings created as a result of the slip up. It has helped me be stronger in avoiding any further slip ups.
Yes, we are responsible for where we are. Once I realized that – it became a lot easier to take responsibility for getting better and closing the door on the past.
Ashley’s right. Once you’re aware of your pattern, you have to be vigilant about not falling back into it, and take actions that move you in a different direction. It is certainly not easy. Like meditation, it has to be done daily. The challenge is that we often fall back into “what’s familiar” and don’t want to do the conscious work of change.
Excellent, positive post, Hot Alpha Female.
Ashley’s right – it’s hard, but you need to be vigilant and it does get easier. Think of it as creating a new habit – over time, it will become automatic.
Something that interested me was a question asked in a magazine I was reading – that if you look closely at your relationship, you’ll often find that part of your attraction has to do with unexpressed emotions that your partner expresses for you – in my case, my EUM expressed anger and irresponsibility – two things I ruthlessly repress. In his case, I suspect my overt rebellion/iconoclasm against the Catholic Church was what he couldn’t express.
Once I understood that, along with how I always chased my narcissistic father for attention, it became a lot easier to disengage from the pattern.
Good luck…and great series, NML! xx
I’ve recently had a epiphany about baggage. I think baggage is a good thing. I don’t even call it baggage anymore…I chalk up all of my past relationships to as experience. Without that foundational experience, I know I would keep making the same fundamental mistakes in future relationships. Otherwise, what knowledge would you have to fall back on? What you read, or see in a movie? You MUST have experience (ie baggage) in order to really master yourself.
When it comes to self-improvement, I’m a big proponent of tough love. It there’s a negative behavior or self-destructive pattern, you MUST be hard on yourself, but in a loving way, in order to force change. I think it’s as simple as saying this:
“I really fucked that one up, but I’m going to fix it/not do it again because I’m a totally cool dude.”
At the moment, I think the best way to break out of negative behaviors is to have a strong mentor figure that can lovingly pimp slap when you do something stupid. The problem is trustworthy mentors are very hard to find. Another solution is to empower a friend or peer to fulfill the same roll. I’m preparing a blog post on this very subject, so will detail more later…
I think the first part is awareness. And lance i see what you are saying, which in many ways is what im trying to get across aswell.
Its time to realise that the past is not necessairly a bad thing at all. Like i said its makes us part of who we are today and we are better off for it.
In reagrds as to what to do to start clearing the baggage once you have recognised that you HAVE some.
Then its time to start replacing old habits that did not serve you with habits that do serve you.
I’ll come out with a post next week and going through a lot of things that i found helped me out too!
HAF
I reckon we ought to leave all our baggage in Terminal 5 – after all, we’d never get it back…
Come on, HAF and NML, you HAD to know that joke was coming…
Ixx
“If you love yourself, then how can you really hate your past?” Exactly what I needed right now HAF. That a little of that tough love Lance mentioned.
I’ve been struggling with this very issue. Thanks for the pimp slap!
LisaQ
You know I think your awesome girl!
N I would be more than happy to give you a bitch slap when you need one *winks*
Jokes aside, I am sorry that you are going through a tough time, let me know if I can do anything to help ..
xx
HAF =)
Izzy, I am HOWLING with laughter here! Frickin’ hilarious! I like what you said about unexpressed emotions that play out in the other partner too. That could make quite a good post! Thanks!
Lance, your comments always crack me up. You just have that special blunt, guy way of looking at things and it’s brilliant. You must be quite an optimist too to have that attitude about baggage 😉 but there is a lot to be learned from that!
Glad you enjoyed it, hon – if you want me to write it, help with it or find a link, just let me know. Ixx