What’s the distinction between sitting in
front of your TV for an hour and sitting in traffic for an extra
60 minutes because of rubber-neckers? How about allowing
your dog to poop on your lawn and having someone else’s dog do
it instead? What’s the difference between waiting two hours at
your Doctor’s office and being home for that same amount of time
where you can at least get some work done? The answer is
of course, CONTROL.
It would be great if we had a “perfect world” where people would
not leave their shopping carts behind our cars because they are
too lazy to bring them back to the curb. It would be nice
if other drivers were considerate of our feelings and not
rushing to park their cars in the spot we are about to pull
into. If a “perfect world” ever kicked in, we would pay
for our medical insurance on a sliding scale based on how well
we took care of ourselves; a fifty thousand dollar car would be
expected to last longer than 36,000 miles; companies would make
products that last longer than one month; and food wouldn’t have
so much junk in it.
The ultimate use of the manipulation process is when you can
keep your reactions positive during negative episodes that
someone else is creating in your life. How do I know this?
Because I have spent a lifetime trying to keep negative energy
from steaming through my feet and physically lifting me off of
the ground while I assemble new strategies to counteract all the
injustices people and the world have to offer. It’s no
wonder I am not discolored permanently in purple hues due to
holding my breath so very often.
It’s a day-in, day-out process to keep one’s thoughts positive.
From the moment we get up in the morning till the last flutter
of our lashes at night, we are being inundated with negative
episodes that we need to untangle and redirect. And it’s
not all big stuff. I am increasingly amazed at the amount
of paper that is wasted and discarded in a week’s time, not to
mention the flow of emails, voice mails and phone solicitations.
There are now hours in my week devoted to sorting, and I keep
wondering, ‘shouldn’t I be more in control of what is coming
through my computer and mailbox?
Sometimes it’s monetary. I remember finding a discrepancy
in information sent by my stock brokerage firm. After
getting transported electronically to five different phone
extensions, I finally found someone that could answer my
question. “I have 11,000 shares of stock and now it says I
own 12. There must be a mistake. Can you rectify
this?” “Well”, she said, “that’s not a mistake. That
company decided to do a reverse split and now you only have 12
shares.” “You mean” I said, as I swallowed very
hard, “I went from owning thousands of dollars to under 10
bucks?” “Yes!” She retorted. “The company
thought it was a good move.” “Yeah”, I said, “but for
who?”
Through the years, we learn to succumb to some forms of control
because we believe we don’t have the ability to
create change, but is this a good thing? Sometimes,
frustration builds and we completely lose it, transferring anger
from one episode into another and making it impossible to handle
situations properly. A significant story from my past
comes to mind when I think of frustration causing me to have a
lousy attitude. It was late at night and I was trying to
comfort a friend through a devastating migraine, only to be
undermined by a barking dog that a neighbor decided she should
tie- up right outside my window. After an hour of hoping
the noise and/or the migraine would end, I knocked on her door
and asked for relief from the yapping. She declared she
would do it, “when she got the chance”.
I was already tired, frazzled, and feeling awful for my friend.
Being pissed off at this point was a given. It was all I
could do to stop myself from reaching through the screen door
barrier between us and grabbing her by her robe. Instead,
with hand on hip and pointer finger waving I sternly
replied, “Look Lady, I have the law on my side. Either
bring your dog in or I go right home and call the police!”
She finally brought the exhausted dog in the house, but
afterward, I felt an awful tug at my heart realizing there had
to be a better way to handle the problem then to alienate a
neighbor. I looked objectively at myself after that
episode and vowed to discover new ways to extinguish my negative
energy, no matter how provoked I might be.
Sometimes, life feels like a constant battle trying to be
positive and reflective while defending yourself against the
unrighteous and sometimes, cruel. But realistically, we
have way more control than we think when it comes to turning
around negative situations. The solution is within our
grasp and it is called Positive Manipulation™.
If you think about it, we would all have less to manipulate if
everyone were to control what they have control of within their
own realm, not allowing anything to spill over into other
people’s lives. If we take responsibility for ourselves
and understand the impact that our actions and words have on
others, perhaps we wouldn’t be inclined to do what we want to
do, but instead, do what we should be doing. There is a
right and a wrong solution to any situation. Although
sometimes it can seem right for one party and not for another,
there will always be a symbiotic result if the right energy is applied.
I try to live by this rule, but I’m also sometimes stuck in the
“perfect world” mentality believing others are going to act as I
would act. If I had a dog, I could never allow it to disrupt
the neighborhood. Beyond that, I could never put an
innocent creature through any kind of torture. In my mind,
a barking dog is unhappy and it would make me miserable to hear
him/her be so miserable. So the first question I ask
myself is, “How could she do that? I could never allow
that to happen!”
In the past, this righteous attitude has gotten
me in so much trouble. Truthfully, there is a bit of
“defender of good” energy there, but mostly, it is judgmental.
I have to keep remembering that not everyone is sensitive to the
needs of others and prompted to do the “right” thing.
Sometimes people are stuck in their humanness and oblivious to
the discomfort they are causing those around them. They
are vulnerable to their own negativity and need help, not
judgment, to help them get out of their own way.
The encounter
with the neighbor and her barking dog prompted a powerful
lesson, which was to redefine my role as “defender of good”.
Instead I should stop defending and just be “right” with the
energy I release. When I stop protecting myself and/or the
needs of others and just deal with my own negative emotions, it
will immediately change the energy exchange, helping the
situation, not making it worse. If I would have
sympathetically walked up to the neighbor’s door and pleaded for
peace for my suffering friend instead of demanding she “do the
right thing” I probably would have immediately accomplished my
goal and
felt good about it later.
I didn’t need to defend my right
for quiet. The township already did that for me.
What I really needed was the dog to stop and I was more than
capable of redirecting my “how can she let this happen!” energy
than I originally gave myself credit for. Instead of
seeing that woman as the enemy, I should have seen her very
human behavior and compensated for it within myself before I
ever knocked on her door.
When we examine the big picture, we
begin to see that we can’t always stop the flow of negativity
surrounding us, any more than we can stop the flow of mail, but
we can determine that it is within our control to stop our own
feelings of anger and despair when we encounter it. The
manipulation process is a difficult and sometimes overbearing
responsibility, but what is our option: To allow the more
undesirable aspects of the world to get the best of us?
Nah. I’ll fight when I really need to, but I’d rather suck
up to the lady with the barking dog, move the shopping cart
myself and wave politely at the guy taking my parking spot.
It’s time to conserve energy for the really big stuff and let
the little things just take care of themselves. an>