The Great Call To Introspection

There’s a nice little metaphor I just heard which I think explains one part of the human experience perfectly…

Three guys are standing on the corner of the street.

A convertible with the roof down that’s filled with a bunch of cute girls pulls up.

They point and laugh in the direction of the guys and drive away.

One guy thinks the girls laughed at him, and he gets depressed…

Another guy thinks the girls laughed at the guy next to him, and he laughs too…

And the last guy thinks they were laughing at something behind him and he doesn’t think anything of it.

Really what I think this shows is that so much of our reaction to reality is based on our perception of the world.

How we view the world, is how the world views us.

Let me be vulnerable for a moment and share one of my flaws…

One of the issues that I’m working on is this feeling that people are out to get me, or that people are trying to create conflict with me.

A lot of this comes from childhood, my mom and dad were in constant conflict with each other even though they were divorced…

I was in constant conflict with them…

My sister and I were in constant conflict…

My entire childhood was just one big ball of arguing and yelling at each other.

This isn’t something I was really conscious of until about a year ago.

For a while, I just viewed it as you need to be willing to state your beliefs and views to the world and not be afraid to back them up…

In a sense, this is true, but it doesn’t also mean you need to go out of your way to create conflict with people.

So for me, I viewed the world as nothing but conflict…

Which meant my reaction to most things was conflict…

And as a result, my friendships were filled with conflict…

My love life was filled with conflict…

My family life was filled with conflict…

My business was filled with conflict…

My own internal world was filled with conflict…

I have no idea how many beautiful relationships, friendships, and partnerships I’ve fucked up because of my own reaction towards these people.

Thinking poorly, reacting poorly, and then upset at people treating you poorly.

On and on we go through this cycle until something intense enough causes us to break the pattern and go into introspection.

That’s when the call to the work at hand is presented…

Do you ignore it?

Shrug it off and say they don’t matter?

Or do you take time to reflect on your reaction, your paradigm, and how the circumstances you experienced were a byproduct of you?

That’s the decision we are called to constantly.

Whether or not you take it on is up to you.