Next time you get upset with someone you know, remember this quote from Aretha Franklin:
“You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’tt come off the way you thought it should come off.” Source: Aretha: Star’s Legacy Lives, Detroit Free Press (February 18, 2012)

How often in the heat of the moment do we decide someone is a jerk or a bozo or whatever it is you’ve labeled them? I’m just as guilty as others and maybe even more guilty. But in line with Aretha’s quote, I am trying to remember all the great things about that person especially if they are someone that I liked BEFORE they did that “stupid thing”. Can you think of it in that way? Why did you like them 12 hours ago?

We forget that everyone is human and that humans make mistakes. We also forget that it is WE who are deciding that what they did was a mistake or stupid. We really should then be asking ourselves – who the heck are we to make that decision and have it be the “gospel”? The other person may not even know that it’s something that offended you or would offend you. They can’t read minds any more than you can. You don’t know their motives. We are often so self oriented that we think that the other person SHOULD know what’s in our minds and what we like etc.. We also somehow think they should really care. Why? Why do we think that?

I have found (because of a program I’m in) that if I examine what it is that is p*ssing me off about someone, it’s often something I have been guilty of doing too. So how can I fault someone else. We are seeing ourselves mirrored in the lives of others. This is ok because as long as we keep the Windex handy (and use it, not just keep it in the bottle), then we can see what we don’t like in ourselves and hopefully change before we become the subject of another’s determination that we are a bozo. It’s not very comfortable to see that what I have been criticizing is what is in me but it’s something I have to see and change.

So for the second time this week, I have invoked the mirror concept..lol…that was not intentional but mirrors are for more than just seeing if we have food stuck in our teeth.

How often do we have something happen to us and when it didn't work out the greatest, we think 
"I'm a failure"
"I can't do anything right"
"Why the heck did I even think I could do that?"
"Who was I kidding thinking that I could do that?"
"I feel like such a fool"
"People must be laughing their heads off at me"
"You can be sure I'll never do that again"
and on and  on and on.....

Instead we should be celebrating the fact that we had the courage to do something different; of if it's a situation that just happened upon us without our initiating it, then celebrate the fact that you made it through and you survived. That is a really big accomplishment.

You're not a failure because something didn't go perfectly or turned out wrong. Just as you're not a success when something does go "right" (however you define "right"). We are not failures or successes - all or none. We have experiences but we aren't the experience or the result. 

I know, I have frequently defined myself as a failure when I screwed something up (like I can control everything? I don't think so). I've written this before but I initially felt like a failure at the ATY race in December-January. But when I got my head back on straight, i realized several things:
-I was not a failure because it didn't go as well as I'd hoped (that is also pretty conceited). One thing doesn't make someone anything. It's just a happening
-Even though there were somethings  that didn't go well or as well as i wanted, there were other things that went really well. They just hadn't been on my pre-recorded list of what would make me a success. So, I discounted them initially. Later I realized those things and their results were actually more important than those other "goals" on my list. That was cause to celebrate even more.
- This realization did not make ME a Success. It made me continue to be Terrie with new data to analyze and incorporate somehow into my daily existence.

That's all that experiences are. They do not define you. They simply give you information to plug into that amazing computer in your head. How it's interpreted is a function of the programs you've created and installed in that computer. As they say "garbage in, garbage out". If you interpret objective events as bad and have programmed that into your computer, the result will be more of the same - "I am bad. I am a failure. I did badly. I suck" etc.. Most of these programs were developed and installed when we were kids. They all need updates. Things have changed. If we don't do maintenance and check things out periodically, we continue to run defective programs (our beliefs) and we resist change - especially any challenge to change our beliefs. If you were told you were a failure or bad when you were a kid, you immediately went to the programmer inside of you, they created this automatic system that would say "if I do this" or "if i don't do that" THEN "I am a failure". If it played over repeatedly as it did in my case, then the program runs day and night. It's only when you shut it down and do a reinstall adding a "patch" that blocks those security breaches, that it can now interpret the data that's inputted differently. Now it might say "If I did that" or "if I didn't do that" THEN "i learned something and it's my job to figure out what I learned and add it to the database."

Can you think of times in your life when you though that an experience made you this or that? Can you look back and see how your first or automatic response really wasn't accurate? The key is to recognize that a first thought is just the automatic program. Hit the escape button and then rerun the program and see what you come up with.