Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we'll be talking about honest life assessment, and we're gonna be looking at this from a spiritual point of view. So, as I was thinking about this, some of you may say, well, I'm always honest and I'm always looking at myself, properly and so forth. And what do you mean by honest life assessment? In spirituality, sometimes it's about a realization or a detached understanding versus a right and wrong, or maybe we've kind of fallen into different memories or different ideas about how things have happened in our life, and those ideas are still affecting us now. So I've broken it down into three areas that I'm gonna look at. One is painful things that have happened. Maybe regrets. The last episode was on failures, things like that. The second one is achievements. So what have I achieved? What have I accomplished in my life? And then the third area is in relationships. So we'll take each one of those. So before I go through each one, I wanna share an exercise that we did when I did. This leadership program that I did years ago, and we had an exercise where you're supposed to write down your whole life story. So we wrote down our whole life story and then we're supposed to double up. And so you have a partner and you're supposed to read your life story to the partner, and the partner's job is just to listen. They're not supposed to say anything. They're not supposed to make a lot of movements or any responses. They're just supposed to provide silence or the listening, and you're gonna read your story of your life, and the instruction is keep reading it until you get it. I was like, okay, what's this? So I started reading the story of my life, and of course there's like the painful memories and this and that, and I'm reading it, and I'm reading it, and I'm reading it, and I'm reading it As I'm reading, I'm like getting emotional because I'm like, reliving the situations, and actually this is a good thing into the painful memories. 'cause the painful parts, 'cause that was kind of what I put on the paper. Don't we find that the painful things are the things that we remember the most vividly, generally? So I started reading and reading and reading and maybe I started the third time reading it for the third time, and then something happened. I realized that it was just a story that I am reading the story. It's not really my life now. It's memories. Maybe the effects of the choices and the things that happen are still with me now. But what was on the page is just a story. It's not me. It was like I was separate from the story. So it was an amazing moment actually, 'cause it was the moment of, let's say, detachment. Like you have a little bit of an objectivity with your life. So in this episode, I'm gonna invite us to have a little bit of objectivity. So with those painful situations or painful memories, you may wanna go back to episode 90, which was. Rewriting my memories, which I go into how to go into meditation and go to a specific memory and rewrite it so that your needs are met. Very powerful actually. So if I'm looking at having an honest life assessment, let me look at those painful situations and let me see if I can get a little bit of objectivity around those painful situations. There's a lot of ways to do this. There's a lot of different exercises and meditative things you can do. Like for instance, you can imagine yourself as an adult back in the scene with yourself guiding or protecting yourself. You can imagine, like I suggest in the rewriting your memories where you take the other person and let them do exactly what you wanted them to do. Like they did do what I wanted them to do. They did take care of me. They did say the right thing. They did do all that. I find that very powerful and in our mind we're able to do that. But the honest life assessment with the painful parts would be that I'm looking at it and I realize that it's not the truth. It's not happening now, and it is possible that I'm remembering it and I may not be able, there's no objective truth about my memory. If I ask another person that was there, they may say a totally different story. So the honest assessment for the painful things would be to realize that I need to take responsibility for my own memory and that it's not objective truth. It may feel true for me and it's my experience and it's my feelings, but those are all things that I can control. What I'm saying is very important because sometimes we not only hold on to painful ideas and memories as true, we also believe that they're true for others and we hold others accountable for my feelings. So the honest assessment would be okay, I still have feelings. I'm not saying it's okay that they did what they did or they didn't do or whatever. I'm not saying that it's okay. I'm just saying that I have to be honest about that these are my memories, my thoughts, and I really can't prove that it happened the way I'm remembering it, but I can deal with it myself. So that would be the honest assessment. The other thing about that is that sometimes we play a part in the painful situation. I know a lot of painful memories might be from childhood and in childhood we don't really have a lot of control over the situation. So it's hard to, to give yourself that responsibility as a child. But let's say other situations where a painful thing happened, like sometimes I give the example of, let's say I'm not happy in my marriage or let's say I remember an old relationship, and it's still bothering me. That's relationships, by the way, but it's painful, so I'm remembering it in a certain way. Well, I got into that relationship. I made the choice to be in it. I didn't make the choice to be abused or be unhappy or whatever, but I did choose to be in it. So that would be a level of honesty and a level of responsibility. I take responsibility for the choices that got me into that thing. I take responsibility for when I was fighting. I take responsibility for not taking care of myself. You know, with the painful things, it's not so easy to take responsibility. We're much more likely to be blaming the situation based on our memory and blaming the other people, or blaming what happened. But I think if we're looking to be honest, it's helpful to take responsibility back, because then I can deal with my own feelings and heal them. And then that impact of that will not keep moving forward. And that's what we want. We don't want the past to keep on influencing my future. The second area is achievements. So the honest life assessment with achievements. Have I been. Honest about what I've done, what I haven't done. Have I taken credit for what I have done? Have I taken too much credit? Am I arrogant about it? Do I hold it over people's heads? In my case, I didn't wanna take credit for things that I've done. I'm not sure why. Actually, maybe I need to keep looking at that, but it was almost like I didn't. If I took credit for it, then that would mean I was being pushy or arrogant or something. But in my life I've had many, many achievements and I've been very successful in a lot of things. There's nothing wrong with taking credit for that internally, like taking, we call that maybe pure pride or something like pride for merit. Like I actually did do it. Yes, I did do it. It's like logical. It's honest. Yes. I did get a doctorate in nursing. Okay, fine. Am I gonna use that to be mean or whatever or think that I'm better than I am? No. But yes, I need to take credit for the things that I've done. Also be honest about the things that I haven't done. Maybe be honest about the opportunities that I didn't take. Are there times in your life when you have maybe regrets about things that you didn't do? This is a time too to take stock of what was achieved. Even if something didn't happen, sometimes something else happened that I can say, okay, well I didn't get that job, or I didn't get that. That situation didn't happen, or that relationship didn't work out, but because that left, I had a chance to do this. So honesty would also be kind of looking at the situation and saying, well, what actually happened? This didn't happen or this did happen, and how did it affect the next situation? Was it overall positive? What we're trying to do with this honest life assessment is remove judgment, guilt, regret, blaming. We're trying to remove some of those negative traits and negative feelings. Because there is a way to look at my life and say it's perfect just the way it is. It's my life and it's perfect just the way it is. But we need a little detachment. If we're still caught up in the emotions, it's much more difficult. The third area is in relationships. And I find that this is probably the hardest because there's so many different kinds of relationships that we have. We have relationships with family, we have relationships with maybe a marriage or children or work. There's so many different relationships that we have, and each of them has their own obligation, potential attainment that you get from each one. They're all unique. We were talking about the relationship of siblings, the relationship of parent child, the relationship, like every relationship has its own universe of attainment, but that means there's also potential for it to be kind of messed up also. So can I look back on all my relationships and say. Again, like I said before, take responsibility for my part and not only the part, like I did something negative, but maybe I didn't know how to do it. Maybe I didn't understand, maybe I was hurting. I'm thinking of one movie in particular, but there was a movie where a man was in confession in the Catholic church and he said, I never was close to my sons because I didn't know how. So sometimes we are not successful in relationships, not because we are being abusive or being angry or being forceful or anything like that, but because we just don't know how we're supposed to be. Can I forgive myself for that? Can I look back and say, wow, I didn't do very well in that marriage. Maybe I should have made different choices. We had another student who came to class and he was talking about his marriage and we started talking about like different aspects of, I don't know, male female relationship and how marriage is the obligation of marriage and how it should be and so forth. And he said, I never thought about it that way. It's funny how we're in all these relationships and we don't kind of look at things fully. Maybe we're just looking at what we wanna get from it, or maybe we're just looking at what the other person is supposed to give us, or maybe we're just stuck in our own pain, but we're not objectively looking at the different obligations and responsibilities of each relationship. And can I look at that and see, am I fulfilling that obligation? Am I fulfilling my part of the responsibility? This is an important thing to look at. Even now in our relationships, now I'm thinking about the past, but we should look at our relationships now. My relationship with my parents, my relationship with my spouse, my relationship with my children, my relationship at work, my relationship with my body, my relationship with my health, all those relationships, they come with an obligation and a responsibility. So the honesty would come when I say, well, let me take a look at this. Do one, just look at one. Whichever one you're having problems with right now, or maybe not the most painful one, but maybe one that's a little painful or one that you'd like to shift and make it a little bit better, take a look and be honest. What is the actual obligation of that relationship? Have I overdone it? Am I overreaching in that relationship? Do I expect too much. Do I talk too much? Am I kind of overbearing or do I hold back? Am I not giving enough? Am I being a little bit spoiled or taking advantage of the relationship? So those are things that we can assess honestly and see. And I'm here to say that when we do start looking at it that way, you start to feel better because at least it's logical and I can, it's something I can do about it. Versus just suffering. Relationships are, we can really suffer in relationships. I think that this approach of looking at the relationship in and of itself and seeing, well, wait a minute, where do I stand here? And taking responsibility is very positive. And then the last thing I wanna share is the idea of looking at the past, present, and future as a way of having an honest assessment of my life. Every action that we do and others do also, but I can only better to just look at myself. Every action that I do, there's a reason for it. And the reason is not I'm just a bad person or I'm just a great person. That's not the reason. The reason that we do things is because there's a belief system and an idea and a feeling, and a perception that's happening in that moment that's informing the decision. If I feel like this person is being mean to me or abusing me, I'm going to have a perception that that's the way it is, and my actions are gonna be consistent with that perception. Why am I saying this? Maybe that sounds like common sense, but when we're looking at an honest assessment of our life, we have to take a look at the past, present, and future of our behavior. Where did that belief come from? What did I, what did I learn growing up? I was talking in class yesterday about how I grew up in a, in an environment and socially where outward success was very much valued. Inner feelings were not so much valued. So if I look back on my relationships and I see that I was more interested in getting something or more interested, or even in, not only in relationships, but in, let's say achievements, I was more interested in getting something. I wasn't very sensitive to others' feelings. I was very outwardly oriented. It makes sense that in relationships, maybe I wasn't so good at listening to people. It makes sense. So the past is informing that behavior and then the future. If I look at, if I keep doing that, I'm obviously not gonna have fulfilling relationships. I'm still gonna feel upset, and I'm still not gonna be fully satisfied in my job environment and so forth. So if I look at the past, the present and the future, that means I'm looking at where, what is the background behind that decision making. Then comes the behavior, and then I can look at how it would show up in the future. So let's do a reflection just for a moment on this and get a little insight for ourselves. So just sit quietly, first reflection. Just do like a quick scan of your life and use the three areas, the painful things, the achievements, and the relationships, and just do a quick scan of your life. You may wanna take a piece of paper, maybe make three columns. Those three areas, like painful things that have happened. Achievements and relationships and just take a few minutes and write down the significant items in those areas. You can even stop the video if you want. Just write down the significant times in your life that you would like to get more honest about, get more room around and get some freedom around and make yourself feel better. So write that down. Okay. The second reflection is with the painful area. Take one thing and see if you can get some objectivity around that situation. Are you blaming the other person? Has the pain of that situation carried forward into your decision making? In the future, has it affected other relationships? Has it affected how you feel about yourself? Just see if you can take a little responsibility for that situation. Let the other person off the hook. Let the other people let the situation completely off the hook. You're only dealing with your own feelings. Third reflection. Let's do the achievements. Let's look honestly, what have I achieved? What have I not achieved? Let's just be like neutral about it. This, this, this was done, this was not done. I wanted this to happen. It didn't happen, but I did achieve this and I can take, um, pride in what I did achieve and I can say, well, you know, come to terms with what I didn't. All right, that didn't happen. It's okay. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. You can come up with some of those thoughts, you know, maybe it wasn't meant to be, but it's okay. This is what did happen and I am taking responsibility for the whole thing. Next reflection is for relationships. So take your relationships and if you like, you can use that template of the different obligations and responsibilities of each relationship, whichever one it is that you're writing down there. And see, am I fulfilling the obligation? Am I fulfilling the responsibility? Don't worry about the other person right now, just focus on you. Am I fulfilling it? If it was a childhood thing remember that was the child parent relationship. Remember that your responsibility is a little bit different as a child. 'Cause you're not an adult. So you can't expect to have the same level of responsibility on a child. So give yourself a pass on that too. You didn't have any control over what was happening, but you did create thoughts and feelings at that time that maybe affect you in the future, right? So take a look at that. And then finally, final reflection is past, present, and future. So as you're looking at this. Whichever area you're looking at in your life, in your assessment, give yourself the room and the grace and the mercy of looking at past, present, and future. Give yourself the chance to understand yourself. Where did it come from? Where did this personality trait come from? I was sharing with somebody yesterday like, you can use the words. Of course. Of course. I'm like that. Of course I would think like that. That's how I was brought up. Of course I would think like that. It doesn't mean I have to continue thinking like that. So past, present, and future, give yourself that chance. Find out where it came from. Loosely, not like a fault, but this is how the conditioning came and that makes sense that I would think that way. That makes sense that the decision would be made that way. The behavior would be that way, and then if I keep going, this is what's gonna happen, but I can change it, but taking responsibility for the whole thing. So that's an honest life assessment. So I'll leave it there. I hope you can use this. It's a wonderful, reflective exercise and it can be very powerful because it can free us up from this emotional suffering. So remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower and Serve. And until next time, take care.
