Let Go and Be Free
Discover tips on self-healing, overcome a dysfunctional childhood and find happiness.
If there’s one thing that I wish I would have known earlier, it would be the importance of loving yourself. I spent a lot of time and energy looking to love someone else. And as a teenager and in my early twenties, I thought that if I could find someone to love that they would complete me.
The scene in the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire stands out to me: Tom Cruise tells Renée Zellweger “You complete me.” It’s a great romantic moment, but I wouldn’t recommend you take this advice to heart.
I woke up with a start this morning as I had had an intense stress dream. I dreamed that I was stuck inside a clothing store and it had begun to rain heavily outside. I couldn’t get out of the store and I had to find a way to escape.
Dreams can be a way for our subconscious to work through the stresses of our daily lives and they can signal what we are struggling with in life.
Negativity begets more negativity. When you hope, new opportunities are created that allow you to grow beyond the problems you have in your life.
But a former prisoner of war James Stockdale has some important words to share about hope: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose —with the discipline
to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Dysfunctional and alcoholic families love guilt. Guilt is a way to control you or for a way for you to control someone else. Do you use guilt to get your way? Or does someone use guilt to make you do something for them?
The work that we need to do each day is to separate ourselves from someone else’s problems. Their problems are not ours. We are not responsible to prop someone up, to fix someone, or to save someone.
We are responsible for ourselves.
Take time to rest today. If you’re reading this book as a new reflection each day, I expect that you could easily become overwhelmed. I know I am because I have to come up with the topics and write the sections each day.
There are some days when I get up and feel drained. Today is one of those days. I had a lot to do yesterday, and I worked on keeping my boundaries strong. By the end of the day, I felt tired, cranky, and just wanted to go to bed.
You are going to have days when you fail and struggle. When that happens, the question is: What are you going to do next? Will you give up or will you pick yourself up and trying again?
As you continue on your journey of self-healing, you will notice patterns in your life. For me, I know when I can handle different pressures and problems of life. But what’s hardest for me is to back off and give myself time to relax and rest.
When I try to take on too much at once, I fail. No matter how much I might want to move forward and solve a problem, it’s not always possible to make major leaps and bounds. If I want to run a marathon, I don’t get up and run 26.2 miles. I need to train for months. If I want to write a book, it takes me months to do so.
Let’s do an exercise together. Let’s close our eyes and imagine that we are kids again. Let’s think about our childhoods and allow for the memories of the past to wash over us. For me, I can remember the fear, uncertainty, and feeling of abandonment that I felt. I also felt like I had a great burden on my shoulders as a kid.
I write this as my city has just left quarantine due to the coronavirus. My family and I were in lockdown for more than 80 days. Now we are starting to come out of our home amid a changing world. The last two weeks have been a hard one for America. Massive protests about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have spread out across the globe.
When I take a step back and look at the world, I see that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic and now there’s been a big push for social change.
Well, you’ve made it to day 200. We have a lot to celebrate but before I end this book; I have one more resource to share with you. I like to keep my mind open and I never quite know when the next inspiration will strike me or where I can learn something new to help me on my journey.
Earlier this week, my high came to my wife, and me and asked us to watch a YouTube video with him. He mentioned to us that his psychology teacher had asked the class to watch and our son thought we would enjoy it.
We’re coming to the end of this book and this part of our journey together. I hope that the skills, topics, and stories that I have shared with you are helpful to you for your journey of self-discovery.
Today I want to talk about habits. As a child, I grew up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family. The behaviors that I saw around me affected me in how I interacted with other people but created a cycle of dysfunction. I emulated the learned behavior and repeated that in my own relationships.
I am still in quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic, but now America is openly fighting in the streets. I had thought my family and I had adapted to our new way of life in a post-COVID-19 world. But I was wrong. I didn’t think that such violence would be in the streets of American cities.
I am disheartened and fearful.
