Helping others by minding our own business...

By nature , as human beings we have this innate desire to preserve our existence and yet one of the most stressful things in life, is to have to fight for your survival....whether you are literally fighting for your life because of health reasons or whether you are fighting to keep your job, house or family.. it is still stress and it can derail us.

I have a belief that as fellow human beings, we need to stand by people during those times. Its easier to do when someone is physically ill because its more obvious but when someone is undergoing major change because of a loss of a job or partner, we tend to assume that they would be OK. Especially in the corporate world, sometimes the exiting process is not managed properly and thus what people fight for is not their job but their dignity and respect. Its a time of stress and egos tend to fly high so its hard to work out what is real for the affected individual and what is not. Bosses need to be able to recognize this and be able to rise above and see this truth so that they themselves don't get entwined in the dramas that unfold.

You see, nobody is right and nobody is wrong...most people don't mind the loss of a job or partner...what they often go on about is the delivery , truth and how they were treated. I tend to allow people to keep their beliefs about their journey up to that point intact...even if its is sometimes delusional...mainly because I don't really see the point in dismantling someone's past. I prefer to focus on the future and how i can help them...even if they have to vent.

I don't think I was the same when i was younger, I tended to take offence more easily and I would get more caught up in what was said instead of what the person was feeling....looking back I can think of ways that i could have done things differently. That's the beauty of hind sight management... its easy to look at the event after everything has unfolded and talk about what could have been done better and anyone can do this. And I also remember the number of times I used to tell myself that " if that situation arose again, I know what to do".. guess what? it never ever happens again in exactly the same way... the characters change and situations shift. That's the thing about life ...its a "one time journey"

My advise yesterday to my friend who is going through the end of his marriage was exactly this. Does he know that its ended for sure?....no... could he have done better....yes.... can he undo the past...no.... I can feel his pain and what i said was that "nobody knows why things happen the way they do but its important to believe that there is a higher purpose... out of this , something good will emerge" ..if we don't believe in this ...what else have we got to live for?

This weekend, I will be talking with someone who is fighting for his life literally because of health reasons, helping a friend who is fighting for his family - wife and child and I have also had the opportunity of talking to someone who has had to leave her job and adjust to that change. Sometimes , I think , why me? .. when i do that I realise that we are only given things that we can handle... I guess I should instead say :" thank you to the universe for bringing these people to me" as it gives me the opportunity to rise to the occasion and be a better person.

Whatever happens and however we live life... its OK ... its not "good" or "bad" ...it just is... its the labels that we put on situations and its our guilt that tends to colour things and cause us stress. Whenever something happens, those directly involved are facing enough stress of their own in having to deal with the situation and their own "labels" or judgment...this is why I choose not to label anything and choose to be a supporter and not someone who sits on the sidelines passing comments about how they should have done it. This what happens usually, the people involved are in the middle surrounded by a group of "spectators' who don't just watch but start wanting to "direct" the play by adding in view points and judgments that "color" the event..they do this by looking at things through their own filters. Are these people being helpful.... No!! There is nothing worse than "stirring the pot" without having all the facts and we can never have all the facts because we are not the people involved.

Its hard for me to not take sides with especially with my friends and people I love... seeing them face pain. But I have to remind myself that it is their journey and not mine. Often we tend to vicariously live out someone's else's drama because it gives us an excuse not to look at our own. When I write this, it is a reminder for me as it is a reminder for anyone reading this blog that if we really really wanted to help someone, we could do some compassionate listening but most of all we need to mind our own business and look after our own life. If we do this, there will be less problems in the world and less dramas and maybe all us can start living the extraordinary life that we were meant to live, our birthright!