Let Me Tell You
Let me tell you why you don’t love life all the time.
First of all, you don’t think it’s possible. You have no blueprint - no reference point in your life for someone who loves life all the time. In fact, some of your closest friends love to complain about life, telling stories of what they have to endure, like it’s a badge of honor. You feel like you have no choice but to listen and affirm these stories - after all, that’s what good friends do, right? Wrong.
And anyone who is close to loving their life all the time, or at least has a ruthlessly positive outlook and rarely shares sob stories, you judge. You judge them. How dare they have a life where they don’t suffer as much as I do! You might not say that out loud, but you’re thinking it. You know how I know? It’s because you’d prefer to spend more time with the first type of friend than the person I just mentioned.
You’re addicted. You’re addicted to the victimhood, to the trauma bonding, to the sob stories. You think someone else witnessing your pain and what you have to endure - “wait till you hear THIS one” - is the spice of life. THIS is what friends are for. THIS is what relationships look like. Gasp. No.
Nothing could be further from the truth. What your friend and you are doing is extremely damaging - spreading toxicity and low vibrational energy like it’s wildfire. Not only are you having to carry these burdens, but now you’re making your friend carry them, too, making them pick sides. And vice versa with your friend to you.
And you wouldn’t dare think about breaking this pattern. As in, the next time your friend begins to share a story, you set a boundary and tell them you’re not here for that anymore. I dare you! That would never ben an option, would it. You’d risk losing that friend, that resource with whom you to lament the troubles of life. You couldn’t afford that, could you. If you didn’t have that, where would you dump it?! And besides, what would a friendship even look like with this person outside of this pattern, anyway?! Politics, the news, your family, your girlfriend. All the sob stories.
Successful happy people don’t complain. Successful happy people don’t listen to and surround themselves with complainers. Not because they don’t have challenging things in their lives - no. It’s because they understand the underlying principles and laws of the universe. Thy understand that by complaining or listening to complainers, they put themselves further away from what they actually want. The victim mentality - the complaining is just a survival mechanism and learned behavior that keeps you trapped in the cycle. To get out requires you to behave differently, perhaps differently than you always have behaved. And how would THAT work out?! What would people think of you?!
You see, you’ve taken on this identity by behaving this way, and even though you’re unhappy, your attachment to this identity - being and acting who you think you HAVE to be - is what keeps you where you are. Sure the problems change. But the complaining doesn’t - and neither does the tolerating and affirming of other people’s complaining. After all, you’re a nice person, right? Wrong!
The moment you recognize and acknowledge you are not only perpetuating this toxicity, but also creating this life and living these patterns, is when your life can begin to improve. You were never meant to be a victim. You never were.
But this requires you to begin behaving differently… differently than how others have always known you to act. And that is terrifying. But you can do it.
Get your life back. Find your joy more consistently. Start viewing these ‘troublesome’ situations through a different lens. Be happier more often. Do the things this requires, be brave… trust that you’ll land in a better spot. And you will.