Denial - New Eyes

I watch a lot of shows about transformation and today was no exception.  When a prominent chef is ask to come help a failing restaurant and the owner is in total denial about how bad the food is or that the menu is so complicated the servers can't explain it. I thought how can he not see what is so obvious to everyone else. That my friend is the way denial works.

For me I have huge pockets of denial about my own life.  First living with alcoholic and believing every lie that came out of his mouth even when my mind was screaming something is terrible wrong to being part of a business that was doomed to fail. Again my mind screaming this is not going to ever work I couldn't give it up.

Today while watching the show I thought, why is he doing this? Why to we refuse to see the truth until it is so painful that we can't breath or we have panic attacks?

I believe the cause of my own denial has been the future I have predicted for my self is over. I have to face my own fear of the unknown. If don't admit there is a problem then I don't have to start down that road of the many bad outcomes my mind can imagine.

Because of my unpredictable childhood I wanted to find a "normal life" and settled in where every day would be be nothing but happiness. Seriously I thought I could do this I could control the universe every detail all the time. I was immature with those beliefs. It wasn't my fault I grasp those ideas at a time in my life when the best I could do was survive. A child in survival mode sizing up the world from that perspective.

Of course life kept dealing out one crisis after another I made the assumption that I needed to work harder to prevent the next one. This worked and things got better and then I found myself there again surprised at the cards life had dealt me.

What has changed for me is that the last time when I had totally done my best and things still fell apart. The truth is I thought I was bad. Something was wrong with me and despite all the spiritual work I had done I could never be fixed. I would never be a finished product worthy of the good life that other people have. This idea made me want to die. I was not good enough and I had proof.

How crazy is that? My whole life's thought process was a child's survival mode. If I do things right and I am good then everyone is happy and life is good. If you aren't good and you disobey then your mother gets sick and dies and the rest of your family goes there separate ways and you are left alone.

I didn't want to left again so I started working on myself to become someone others could love and would never leave. Everybody left and this was proof enough for my eight year old self.

My life has been tiring living this way thinking this way. Waiting for the next mistake and I have made plenty and interpreting the fact that I have been left as proof that I am bad just like I was at eight.

No one told me in all those books I read that you can't be good enough for people to love you. Either they do or they don't. It isn't conditional on your performance all the time. Sure if you are a monster then you might spend more time with less people but some people really like monsters.

Today I try to not let the little girl in me take the blame for everything that goes wrong in my life. I try to accept that life is just life and everyday can bring good times or bad. Most days I accept that this is the case for everyone and no one has a magic formula for being happy all the time.

I really felt for the guy today that couldn't believe every belief he had about his life and his situation wasn't going to work. With the proof laid before him the success of the changes made against the failures of his own ideas was just too much. Change and maybe succeed or not change and definitely fail. I vote for change.

With the evidence so overwhelming he did have a breakthrough and accepted that to succeed he had to let go of old ideas and beliefs and try to look at his life with new eyes.