George hung his head as he told me about his life: he was abandoned as a child, raised by an aunt, taught nothing of social skills, became an accomplished and fairly wealthy professional, married an angry and controlling woman, endured a nightmare stint as a husband and father, experienced a horrifying divorce, was financially devastated, and lost his home and income.
āYou feel ashamed,ā I said. āMore accurately shame is eating you up like a cancer. You can hardly breathe because of it.ā
āOf course Iām ashamed,ā he said. āLook at my life. I had every opportunity be a complete success, but I failed miserably.ā
āItās not your fault.ā
George looked at me as though I had spoken in another language.
āItās not your fault, George.ā
āThen whose fault is it?ā
āImagine this hypothetical scenario,ā I said. āWhen a kid is very youngābefore any exposure to the gameāI take him to a basketball court, and every day I teach him how to play. But instead of dribbling the ball with his hands, I teach him how to dribble with his feet. He becomes quite good at this, so one day I take him to participate in a game.
āThe moment someone passes him the ball, he drops it to the floor, dribbles down the court with his feet, andāwith considerable skillāflips the ball with his foot into the basket. Result? Two points on the scoreboard? Cheers? Congratulations? No, the referee follows him all the way down the court, blowing his whistle. His team loses possession of the ball because itās a rule that the ball may not intentionally be moved with the feet.
āWill the audience laugh? Possibly. Should the kid be ashamed of his behavior? NO, since he is actually playing expertly with skills I taught him. I simply taught him the wrong skills, so if anyone should be embarrassed, it would be me.ā
This is the story of nearly all of us. The people who taught us to live didnāt know what they were talking about. They didnāt know about unconditional loveāthe one ingredient most essential to our happinessāso how could they give it to us, or teach us how to use it? In most cases, they didnāt consciously teach us at all. So the truth is that we havenāt failed to learn. We learned quite well. We were excellent students of very poor teachers.
Why is it important to know this? Because if we donāt understand what really happened early in our lives, weāll unavoidably conclude that the end resultāhow we now liveāis entirely our fault. Weāll feel flawed and ashamed, and those feelings prevent us from being happy and from learning what we need to know.
Recover from your negative habits and beliefs!
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