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Old 09-13-2012, 09:35 AM   #16
Mary Eastland
 
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Dojo: Berkshire Hills Aikido
Join Date: Aug 2002
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Re: Even at Boot Camp...no one can reach inside you and make you feel. Your feelings

Quote:
Mary Malmros wrote: View Post
If you're carrying a cake, and someone trips and shoves you, and the cake ends up on the floor, are you responsible for the fact that the cake is on the floor? You are the one who had it, after all...

Yeah, I understand there's a difference. What I want you to do is bring a finer focus to what you're saying. What exactly do you mean by "taking responsibility for our feelings"? What does that mean in a real situation, not in the abstract -- a real situation where a person is having bad feelings?

For what it's worth, I believe that we have more control over how we feel than most people realize, and I recognize that we humans tend to fuel our own negative emotions. At the same time, I think it's disingenuous to pretend that there's never any outside agency, and platitudinous to imply that this control can be perfect and absolute. If a child is being harassed and bullied by other children, or a worker is being berated and threatened by a boss, or a person has just gotten a diagnosis of cancer, feelings of fear or anger or distress are neither inappropriate nor self-generated.
HI Mary:

Thank you for your response.

To me there is a difference between blame and responsibility. Let's take the cake example. If someone trips me and I drop the cake. It could their fault or my fault. It would depend on the situation.

However, if it my daughter's birthday and I am responsible for the cake, I would most likely spend very little time deciding whose fault it is and just go get another cake because the cake is my responsibility.

Please don't think I make light of this. You can see in my last post that I wrote about the process. It is a very hard process. I spent much time blaming others or circumstances for the hard things that happened in my life. It really got me no where. Now I look to what or where I can change and move on. I usually don't love having to change. My motivation is not altruistic...it works for me and that is why I do it.

Mary Eastland

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