I could have turned out differently.
Wait, that’s a terrible introduction.
Let me start over…
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Nature or Nurture?
Are we the way we are because of genetics, or have we been primarily impacted by how we were raised?
Those are the WRONG questions.
The real questions are these:
What kind of person have I decided to be?
Will I lift people up and encourage them?
Or will I discourage people with my judgment and criticism?
Will I focus on what is going well and all the good things around me?
Or will I focus on the “lack”?
How will I treat people, situations, life?
We must DECIDE every day, multiple time a day, the kind of person we want to be.
“That’s just the way I am” is a BULLSHIT excuse.
“That’s how I was raised” is weak justification.
“I can’t change” is a fallacy.
I could have turned out differently.
My mom was a “yeller”. A yeller who sometimes said really unkind things.
Sometime they were true: “What do you know? You can’t even pee straight!” (see my attempt to inject levity into a painful topic?)
Sometime they were just plain MEAN and HURTFUL.
There was no safe response to a ranting parent with mental health issues and aggressive tendencies. So I shut up, shut down, and took it.
And became quietly resentful. And I learned, by example, to heap criticism onto others when I wasn’t feeling good about myself- sometimes silently in my own head, sometimes out loud. And I had A LOT of mean and hateful thoughts.
I was poisoning my own soul, all in a futile effort to not feel “less than”, unworthy or unlovable.
And I carried that baggage into relationships with others.
While I had made a concerted effort to not be a “yeller”, I wasn’t really focusing on what I WANTED to be. I put my energy into the NOT’s. Not yelling, not being physically aggressive. Not being mean-spirited or hateful.
But I did not have appropriate tools for handling frustration, disappointment or other negative emotions. And I was still critical, demanding and unforgiving of imperfection. Consequently, my relationships suffered and so did I. I was oblivious to the role I played in the suffering.
After all, “if they would just…”
Until I received A Lesson in Grace. The full lesson will be in a future post, but I want to share part of the lesson, which is this:
Treat people better than they deserve to be treated.
It is as much for your own good as it is for theirs.
In short: Before you embrace criticism as a tool to “improve” someone, take a hard look in the mirror and recognize all the ways you might be falling short in your own life.
If your rationale is that nobody has brought any issues about you to your attention, pause and consider this:
What if the people around you were continuously showing you grace, and treating you better than you deserve to be treated?
Then ask yourself, “Am I projecting my own insecurities about myself onto someone else?”
And when you have given yourself that reality check, don’t make excuses.
Using our prior life experiences as an excuse for the way we live reflects on our character.
Blaming our genetics for our behavior speaks volumes about our maturity.
We have to take ownership for the decisions we make, the way we treat people, and the priorities we have.
Regardless of upbringing, family values, neighborhoods, education, etc, we have free will.
You are not the way you are because of your genetics. You are not this way because of your upbringing. You have chosen to be this way.
We choose who we want to be and how we want to be.
I’m going to PAUSE…
Let me stop and take “ownership” for MY past bad behavior and recommit to being different… being better. I will continue to make a point to be conscientious about how I live, how I treat people, and how I respond to adversity and conflict.
I’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve come a long way, too. I’m (generally) kinder, more tolerant and less explosive than I was 10 years ago. And I am light years from the person I was 20 years ago. And the angry, bitter teen/twenty-something who bottled up her resentment until it detonated? She is a sad, but distant memory. And a reminder of who I do not want to be ever again. Aside from very rare temper explosions (read my post called “The Confessional“), I generally practice truth and kindness.
It has been all about the choices I make- day by day, moment by moment.
