Is what happens to you in life personal?
Bartender's wisdom... or is it?
My dear beloved customers,
A few days ago, one of my regulars came to me with a story that had been deeply bothering her for days. She was at a fair trying to sell products she creates and there was a woman with a mike there introducing each artisan to the public. My regular thought that the presenting woman hadn’t quite understood what the specificity of her products was and ask the chairman of the fair for that speaker to come and chat with her so that she could explain to her what her products specifically were and ask her to redo her introduction. But that woman misunderstood the request, triggering a personal wound of not doing things well in the process, and arrived at my regular angry with her for thinking she hadn’t done her introduction properly rather than with curiousity about what she was actually selling. In response, my regular took that grudge personaly, triggering her victimhood wound of never being acknowledged for her true worth.
The thing is, nothing was personal in that story. The presenting woman’s reaction was her telling her own story about how she received the message and had nothing to do with my regular’s intention. Her reaction was telling something about herself, not about my regular and yet, my regular rather than listening to what that woman was telling about herself, about her position in life, she took it as something she was expressing about her instead, as a personal attack.
This is exactly the way we live most of the time, self-centered, thinking people’s mood and reactions are about us though they are in fact about them. Then, rather than being curious about the other’s life or current state, we put ourselves in a defensive position, responding with our own wounds rather than love. Because we take it personaly.
The truth is, nothing is really personal in this world, other than what we, as a person, actually do. What you do is personal for you, it tells who you are and what story you are living in. But the response to it from the other person is not personal, directed to you, it only tells who they are and what story they are living in. The wounds they trigger inside of us are ours so, unless they are pretty good psychic and mind readers, how could the others have triggered it on purpose, especially if we are not even conscious of those wounds, which we are not most of the time?!
When you’re in an interaction with someone, I invite you to step aside for a few seconds and listen to them with the awareness that what they are telling you is only about them, about their inner story, and not remotely about you because, though everything in your life is about you, not everything in Life is about you. So many things happen all the time everywhere in the world without your knowledge of it.
And that’s actually where the issue lies : it is because we think that everything in life is about us that we are struggling all the time; we spend most of our time trying to dodge, fix or compensate for things that make us miserable, asking ourselves why they happen to us. But they just don’t. What the Universe does, how things happen in the world, the world around you and the world remote, are not about you, they are just experiences you take and the way you take them is up to you, not to the way or the reason why they unfold. They just happen and they are neutral until you take them personaly.
“OK, let’s say you’re right, then what’s the point in living our life in neutral point, without interacting with anything, without being emotional?”, will you ask me. And I will answer you that neutral is the starting point of all things, not the end of them. Life happens for us, not to us, and what we do with it then is up to us. Will we feel joy and love about it or get stuck in our wounds and remain in grief and grudges for the rest of our lives?
Let me tell you a story that happened to me a few months ago. I was in Barcelona with my husband to go and see a Rammstein concert. We were very excited because we love that band and had never had the chance to see them on stage before. We wanted to get to the arena as early as we could not to queue too much before entering and because we had a few miles to walk to get there. It started raining heavily since we got out of the restaurant in the early afternoon. By the time we entered the venue, we were soaked, our raincoats and shoes heavy with water and no umbrella. After entering the venue, I went to the bathroom, trying to dry my clothes with the hand dryer because I was starting to get cold. When the concert started, the rain was still pouring thickly but a nice couple handed us a spare umbrella and my husband and I cuddled under it to get warmer. Rammstein’s concert are always punctuated with fire display which provides regular heat waves which were very welcomed at that point.
Where I am getting at is that I could have moaned the whole time because the weather was awful and it spoiled the whole event, I really could have, couldn’t I ? But in truth, that rain turned that concert into something magical, the energy of the people there, as well as the band, was galvanized by the weather conditions, we were all there to have a good time no matter what and, you know what? That was one of the best moments of my life, because the unexpected way it unfolded had an incredible outcome for everyone, it made it magic. Things are never good or bad, or even scary, in themselves, they are the way we choose, consciously or not, to experience them.
Life is just a series of moments, second after second, that you experience in a certain way, through reflexes conditioned by prior experiences or through aware choices. The trick is not to block triggered emotions but to watch them pass by without holding onto them, to let them go by after they popped up. Sometimes, it is interesting to scrutinize them with curiosity to understand where they come from and finally let them go if they don’t serve us anymore. Since that’s not the way we were taught to live, it takes time to shift into that mode of living but being aware of that is a good start, to step out of our conditionning and live our life as we choose to rather than only reacting to it.
If you are interested in learning a bit more about all that, here’s a video of a talk by Michael Singer that was brought to my attention by my guides a few days ago since I have been dealing with surrendering issues since a few months now. This video set a new course inside of me, prompted me to write this post and share it with you, hoping it will bring more clarity to the ones who need it.
For those who would like further guidance to start that journey within themselves, remember that I am not only a Bartender but also a Life Coach who can help you with tools to achieve this kind of peaceful state of life. So don’t hesitate to call on me via Substack chat or my website G-Spotlight to schedule a session to assess your needs.
Bartenderly yours,
Geay
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Results, outcome & Samantha Fox
