Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Self pity

You’re feeling sorry for yourself. Why is that? What will it get you? Mainly, what it will do is aggravate the problems you already have, and deepen the despair you’re already feeling.

But go ahead and feel sorry for yourself for a moment. Experience the feeling of being a victim. Take that feeling and hold it in your hand. Close your fingers around it. Grip it tightly. Then open your hand and look at it.

You’ll realize that it is not you. It is something you’re holding on to. Your self pity is something you’ve chosen to experience. You can just as surely choose not to experience it. You can just as easily choose to let it go.So do it. Let it go. Let that experience of feeling sorry for yourself drop away from you. It’s a useless artifact of your past, so abandon it. Put the energy it was previously consuming toward more productive purposes. Use it to move yourself toward where you desire to be.

Either you can choose to keep reminding yourself of what’s bad about your life, or you can choose to push yourself to those things that are, and those things that can be, good and positive and enjoyable and truly fulfilling. No matter how bad things have become, self pity has nothing to offer. No matter how bad things are, your best choice in any moment is to steadily make them better.

— Ralph Marston

Criticism A brighter tomorrow next

Copyright ©2001 Ralph S. Marston, Jr. All Rights Reserved. The Daily Motivator is provided for your personal, non-commercial use only. Other than personal sharing, please do not re-distribute without permission.