The Control Series: Part 8: Choice!

Greetings Magnificent Souls to the Attract Health Build Wealth blog where we have open and honest discussions about ourselves. 

This is a place where we breakdown, breakaway, and breakthrough codependency allowing ourselves to attract health, build wealth and live a peaceful life.

We are tired of being sick and tired. We are tired, but we are not giving up. We KNOW that there is something magnificent inside of us.

Because we are fighting daily, hourly, and by the minute: fighting ourselves, our kids, our spouses, we have to do things differently. 

We have to break the cycle. We don’t have a million chances. We have to be happy, NOW. We have to find a way. So how do we do that? How is that possible?

If you look around at what society is telling you, they’d tell you that what we’re doing is impossible. 

Yet, it’s happening. 

Every. 

Single. 

Day. 

It’s happening through the practice and love that we call Awakening the Magnificent Soul.

We are all Magnificent Souls, and these are our stories of healing!

Today in Episode 44, we are tackling Part 8 of a 10 part series all focused on control. Specifically, I want to talk about something that came up recently in a podcast guest interview and that’s choice. So, I will be covering choice and codependency today and what, if anything, choice has to do with control.

But, before we get into the discussion, don’t forget to let me know your thoughts about this episode, any feedback you have, or anything you’d like me to cover on future posts at epiphanyvault.com

Remember, you can share anonymously; it is a safe place and I would welcome the discussion.

I actually had an entry into the Epiphany Vault that an anonymous listener is giving me permission to share. Here it is: 

“I am 35 years old and in a 7 year relationship with my partner. I have moved across the ocean to be with her and generally have been willing to do everything to make our relationship work. My skills to identify and communicate my needs are underdeveloped while I usually accept my partners needs as taking priority over my own. This has led to me developing a strong depression even though on the surface I am a high-achieving steady individual. I am willing to give up everything I have for this relationship. I have given up control over most of our day-to-day decisions, going so far as to be not in control of when to eat or not or what to spend money on or not. I am starting to resent my partner even though I see a powerful and beautiful woman that I want to be loved by. She openly admits that she wants me to be a different person and even though I agree that I have issues that need to be addressed, I feel that in a way we are both flawed individuals that are trying to find a way in this world to be happy. I am very openly admitting my flaws and I have been actively working on those. The more I understand what got me into my own mess and what kind of cognitive traps I am falling into, the more I understand my partner's behavior as a result of some of the same insecurities. What concerns me though is that I am finding myself in a position where I feel the need to take full responsibility for whatever conflict emerges between the two of us. I have apologized so many times, that saying "I'm sorry" feels like an empty expression at this point. My partner often argues that it is not the intent but the result of my actions that matters, still I feel that my intentions are pure and all I want is for us to be happy and for me to feel loved. Something that I grapple with frequently is her impulse to blame me for her negative feelings. Through my own journey I have learned that taking control and realizing power over your own emotions is a key step towards not being codependent. Yet I see her blaming me for her emotional condition day in and day out. She keeps calling me a child and wants me to be an adult. I feel like I have accepted what I have experienced as a child as being an important influence on my current personality and I am so much more in control of that than what she recognizes to be the case. I have started trying to express my feelings and needs equally to how she is vocal about hers, but it feels to me that my needs are not being treated equally as important as hers. The more I am learning to define my boundaries and value my own opinions equally to hers the more our relationship seems to destabilize and her pressure on me to be an adult and not a "whiny baby" grow. Sometimes we have a few days or even weeks of harmony and it seems like all the conflicts are unreal. But most of the time I am struggling to devalue my own needs and opinions in order to accommodate her needs. I am willing to improve myself and I am working on increasing my self-esteem and getting over my codependent habits. But I feel like I can't accept 100% of the responsibility for our complicated lives and I am not getting any actual feedback that makes me feel optimistic about out future. Do I need to reach the mountain of my own struggle to become a better person before I can ask my partner to do the same or is this a sign of incompatible personalities? I can't shake the feeling that there is a better fitting partner for both of us out there and yet I still wish that the last seven years were not for naught. Thank you. I appreciate your ability to openly talk about the struggles of our lives.”

Thank you, Magnificent Soul, for writing in. I am always blown away by all of the Epiphany Vault entires. Mainly because showing vulnerability is so hard to do. On top of that, being introspective, and I’m talking from my experience here, is equally hard. I didn’t know how to be introspective for the longest time. So, thank you for opening up and sharing with me.

Just a gentle reminder that I am not a trained medical or therapy professional but a teller of my own story so this should in no way substitute for any medical or therapeutic advice.

I feel like I can feel and hear your struggle to be happy with what you write. And I just love how you have already taken some time to be as objective as you can with your role in your relationship with your partner. And, to me, it sounds like you are on the verge of taking back your power and having an epiphany of your own.

And, I love your question too because it shows humility, but I also hear a little bit of future reaching in it as well. I have been to the point where you are, in fact, I said the exact words you wrote, “I just want to be happy” over and over again. I even said it to my partner. I said it to myself right before I wanted to commit suicide, I was desperate. 

What I realized later is that all of the sacrifices and attempts at fixing my relationship were, also, desperate attempts to just be happy. I was looking for happiness externally and thinking that whatever I was trying to do was going to “fix” the problem and I would be happy forever. 

I was a high achiever too and I really and truly believed that I could fix everything.

So, I mention future reaching, and I think I have an episode on that I will link up, but what I mean by that is that if we are reaching so far in the future and want to be at this happy, euphoric place, we forget where we are and we lose sight of where we are now.

My past life was dictated by future reaching and as I’m looking at your core question where you asked, Do I need to reach the mountain of my own struggle to become a better person before I can ask my partner to do the same or is this a sign of incompatible personalities?

I’m not sure I can be the one to answer that for you but I hope I can help to try to figure it out on your own. 

The biggest takeaway that I can offer you is that you are a good person, I don’t know you personally but I do know that nothing is wrong with you. If you’re like me, you are not telling yourself that story. I believe that everyone has something to offer but I’m not sure that you believe that yourself. 

I only know what you wrote and it sounds like that you have been doing a whole whole whole lot already to try to become your version of a “better person.” But, it also doesn’t seem like that you are getting to where you want to be. Does that make sense? I’m sure you’ve heard the quote from Albert Einstein the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. 

If you are ready to look deeply, I don’t know if you are, I would look at that, maybe write it out in a journal. I can only tell you that I have felt the frustration of feeling exasperated with trying everything and nothing working. Maybe that ties into your definition of being a better person.

Is there a way to be a better person to yourself? I would ask that. Or, how can I be a better person to myself?

Like, from your gut, are you treating YOURSELF the best way you possibly can?

I’ve realized that a lot of my frustrations came when I was asking questions about others, which wasn’t very efficient because I had no control over them. It was a waste of brain space and energy. It took a lot for me to realize that though, so be patient with yourself as you go through self-discovery.

And, to close this up, about future reaching….in my mind, future reaching sounds like this:

If he/she just does this one thing, then everything will okay.

He/she should be this way, then everything will be fine.

I wish that he/she would just be a certain way.

Why can’t he/she (insert action here)?

Future reaching is such a natural way of operating for most people, it’s kind of an expectation snowball, n a way. 

So much significance and power is given to something that is supposed to happen, not what IS happening. Can we ever control what is supposed to happen? I would even argue that we can’t control what is happening now, but we can control HOW we react to things, in the moment. 

It sounds like that you have a pretty good awareness as to what you are feeling and why you are doing things. I think that is amazing self-awareness, actually, I wasn’t able to get to that point for a long time. 

What I did, and it may be the next step for you is to learn practices to re-train your brain on the present moment. I had a lot of success in studying The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and learning to journal has helped me a lot too.

I really truly think that power comes in when you are able to connect to the present moment and power comes when you make decisions on your behalf and within your value system. I want you to claim your power as you truly deserve to do.

Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and allowing to share it with my listeners as well.

I actually think that it’s a really good time to seugeway to today’s topic because a lot of what I faced and what the listener is facing is choice.

This has been popping up in other ways for me too, lately as choice was a major talking point on a special guest podcast I recorded recently.

As I struggled with codependency and throughout my whole life, really, I honestly believe that I felt like I didn’t have choice. 

This may be a hard one to swallow but even when I was making decisions, inadvertently, those decisions, some of the time, weren’t really for me or didn’t best serve me. 

I think that I subconsciously listened to a lot of societal suggestions and polarizing thoughts when I made a lot of the “choices” in my life.

Here’s what’s interesting now. Now, I know that I was so distant and disconnected from myself that I didn’t have a value system or a self-awareness system through which to filter out important decisions in my life.

I essentially pursued many things because that’s what I was supposed to do.

I pursued many things because doing so would make me happy.

No questions asked.

So, saying this today, and saying that I didn’t have many choices before my awakening is a little bit extreme, I realize that.

But, I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of what I did, the way I looked, who I gave my time and energy too was a by-product of outside pressures.

So, if choice is control, which I 100% believe it is. 

Choice is freaking power.

So, if choice is control, I had no control over my life.

I was a puppet on a string, therefore easy to control myself.

I know, Lilli, not so simple, but it is simple, in a way.

I didn’t have the self-love, self-knowledge, self-worth to make choices on my own.

So I gave up power and gave up control to people, to things, to food, to drugs.

And, after a while, in realizing my deep unhappiness and wanting to make changes, I realized that I had NO POWER to make any kind of choice, about anything.

That’s what lead me to the scariest day of my life.

I was lost.

I felt like I had no other options.

No choice.

No power.

I was hopeless and completely helpless.

I felt like a complete failure.

When you get down that low, it becomes glaringly obvious that there is a major problem. 

What’s ironic is that in the midst of the worst depression and despair, my epiphany hit me. I honestly feel like that was the first time that I actually “felt” myself.

Of course, I was sad, but I felt like, an indescribable pinching in my gut. This was like a live or die thing. 

It was take back the power now or die forever type of feeling.

It was a feeling of hope rather than despair.

It was a feeling of what I was feeling, right then rather than what I was supposed to feel because my life sucked.

It was a feeling of owning rather than giving up.

That was the light of my fire, my CHOICE, that day.

Can’t you see how choice is power? 

How choice is control?

When you say you have no choice, is that really true? It may be true about the situation, but is it true the way you react to it?

I have always come back to what Eckhart says about situations it helps me think things out in my head. A situation is just a situation as it is, right then, right there, right now.

You only have three choices, accept, enjoy, or change.

I chose change because I couldn’t enjoy and that little fire was telling me I couldn’t accept even though I had tried.

But, I couldn’t accept that I was actually going to make the choice to die. 

So, I chose me.

You know, as I’m thinking this out, it lends a lot to what the listener wrote into the Epiphany Vault and I am so grateful that I am here to share this with you today.

Thank you for listening, until next time.

Livin’ & Lovin’

Lilli