When We Feel We Are No Longer Able to Change a Situation, We Are Challenged Then to Change Ourselves

As Victor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, 

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

This quote is one that hits me straight in my core. I think about all the ways we blame, complain, criticize, and stay stuck in victim consciousness. It’s always someone’s else problem, issue, or responsibility. 

When, the truth is we are all here to live in alignment with our higher consciousness and our most authentic truth. When we choose to take care ourselves and lead ourselves first, all is taken care of. 

I experienced an example of this recently.

After sending out a email message to my list a little over a week ago with my blog post: Forget ‘New Year, New You’; Instead Focus on ‘True You, Aligned You’, I received this message from one of my subscribers:

“Yet you are selling the same thing, rebranded ‘with more focus on me’. Just like everyone else.

What I really want is to go back in time before technology, social media, Internet, cars, hate, and take the world with me for a week. Nothing but people, talking, walking, shaking hands, and reality. You know the place, the real one. I’m tired of hearing get back to me, when the WORLD is not designed for me to exist in the state I’m supposed to be. You can’t fix that, neither can any other self help, meditation, or new age guidance because I still wake up and I’m expecting to open my eyes and step out of the collective into the technology filled selfish world I was born in.

I would rather work & walk in nature, know I am nature, share with my neighbor, know I am my neighbor than care what is going on around me. I’m not sure if you’ll even understand.

You do amazing things, you shake people awake, but are you awake? You exist in the world but are you one with it? If you have found out how to live that life I’m interested but otherwise I’m too awake in this nightmare to open my eyes to anymore of it or I will go mad.

Sincerely wishing for a peaceful world, life, and joy. Please know you are amazing and people do need you for what you do, but if I can’t throw a real question of this magnitude at you, a guide to so many, who can I ask?”

I felt compelled to share this as it really got me thinking. 

Especially during this recalibration and contemplation period we are in, it got me wondering as to how far I’ve come in my own journey. After much reflection and contemplation on this note, here is what I responded:

“Thank you so much for posing your question and sharing your insights. I agree with much of what you shared, and I feel as if there is a double-edged sword. I truly appreciate that you have a deep sense of knowing who you are and what feels aligned and connected for you. 

I do, as well. I also believe that being awake is a journey, not an arrival.

In saying that, I feel a deep obligation to help those who haven’t accessed that for themselves. And, in my path, I found that understanding my own wiring has helped me tapped into my truth, versus listening to all the programming and marketing outside of me. While I completely agree with the desire to work and walk in nature (and, I do spend a great deal of time doing that), I also need to show people a pathway that might work for them. I have watched people find their big aha moments, deep insightful connections back to themselves, and truly awaken once they had a better understanding of who they are. 

They do this when they realize that they are not lacking or broken in any way.

I deeply appreciate this is not your journey and am truly in awe that you are so grounded in who you are and how you need to be. That you feel aligned AF and connected to your truth. Imagine if others could feel that, too.

Whether I like it or not (the is answer is not … as I wish I had some other ways to reach people) social media and email “marketing” are some of the tools I can leverage to get a message out to people and try to cut the noise. Like you, I have a business and need to live in this world, as well. You offer services and products to help people solve problems or address their needs in your industry, I do the same when it comes to their mindset and heartset. 

It’s not that different, and it’s (to your point) the world we live in.

There are many days I really struggle with the current landscape of business, leadership, and the ways we try to connect. I yearn for deeper, more intimate spaces for real, meaningful, connected (and courageous) conversations. Of course, that also requires more people being awake. I would also offer, in my experience, that is not the case. So, until that happens, I need to follow what feels right for me. I also understand it is not for everyone or the way someone else might do it. I am ok with that. 

Again, I am very grounded in who I am, though that didn’t happen overnight.

It has been a journey in remembering who I am, in coming back home to me. I agree … in some ways, I am selling something similar. And, I recognize that we all are selling and marketing something. For me, it’s my truth. It’s what I’ve learned to be true from my own experience and in working with so many others. My intention is that what I offer comes from the energy that keeps me in integrity with myself … and, I assure you it does.

As much as sometimes I would also like to go back to a time before all the technology, AI, social media, and everything else, I realize I have to operate in our existing reality and create sustainable ways to help people in the current conditions and context of how the world operates and consumes both information and opportunities.

So, for now … this is how I can communicate and offer others a chance to find their way back to themselves to truly wake up. Most people are asleep in some capacity and walking around like zombies, as they have been overly programmed and conditioned to be like everyone else. 

We all have a unique, energetic blueprint, that when we understand it (at least this is what I know to be true for me and those I have worked with and profoundly helped), this becomes a complete life-changer. 

It’s gives us permission to really own who we are and live from that place.

Again, I am deeply humbled that you took the time to share your thoughts. I admire your strength, clarity, and profound alignment. My wish is for so many others to experience that, as well.

While I am very awake, I also acknowledge that I am awakening more every day.

I am deeply connected to Source and to life, itself. Yet, I still know I am on a journey and living out my Soul Curriculum. There is no end point until it’s time for me to leave this human body. I am absolutely one with the world, and seek to open up that pathway (whatever it might look like) for others, as well. 

For me, the “way” has been going within and learning to know and love myself at my deepest and truest level. It’s been in creating space to be embodied in my own dynamic energy and innate wiring. It’s also been in letting go of the shoulding and shaming of others. I have reached a point where I am no longer available for anyone else’s version of who they think I am, as I know who I am.

And, I do my best to live, lead, share, create containers, and communicate from this space in every moment, every day. 

I wish you a peaceful and aligned world, life and overflowing joy, as well. Thank you so much for a sharing a piece of you with me. 

I don’t take your email lightly.”

The reason I felt compelled to share all this is threefold: 

1. I appreciate and welcome things that challenge me. Things that invite me to contemplate my own journey. Feedback is how we grow, evolve, and expand. It also gives me a prompt to check-in with my own integrity and alignment, to know my truth, and feel grounded in who I am. 
2. I can see the distance of my growth in my response. Whereas, prior to my own healing, introspection, and journey into awakening, I would have reacted versus responded to a message like this. It would have taken me out and had me second-guessing myself and giving breath to imposter syndrome. There is a calm when we can respond to a question (or challenge) posed when it comes from compassion, empathy, and in knowing of who we are, our own self-worth, and our value. 
3. I am still learning. While I know my path has opened up a great awakening for me over the past several years, I also know that my journey is ever-evolving. I have not arrived anywhere, nor am I a guru, in any capacity. I know my truth from my own path. The change I see and believe to be possible is the change I have been able to create for myself, first, and then with the clients I have been blessed to work with. I do not pretend to have all the answers, but simply invite others to join me on the journey, and explore the magic down various rabbit holes. For I find get value in being on this adventure together. I am a student, with a beginner’s mindset, in all that I study, dig into, and play with. From this, I am able to teach the insights and wisdom I have gleaned. 

Change, and might I offer … responsibility

Another reason I wanted to shine a light on this particular dialogue, was that I wanted to draw out a specific piece of my subscriber’s message that opens up the notion around change (and responsibility): 

“I’m tired of hearing get back to me, when the WORLD is not designed for me to exist in the state I’m supposed to be. You can’t fix that, neither can any other self help, meditation, or new age guidance because I still wake up and I’m expecting to open my eyes and step out of the collective into the technology filled selfish world I was born in.”

See here’s the rub. No, we can’t control or “change” the way the world is whenever we don’t like how it operates. However, we can change and maintain a level of control over ourselves. Because when we think change lives in a vacuum, or is the responsibility of the collective, no one takes personal responsibility, meaning nothing changes. 

Change doesn’t typically occur in massive shifts. It occurs in the compound build-up of incremental little tweaks. It requires one turn at a time. 

Meaning that change only happens when we each take individual responsibility for our footprint and voiceprint in the world. As the Tao te Ching states, when we govern ourselves, there is not need for governance. That being said, when we take care of ourselves, know ourselves, lead ourselves, and change ourselves so that we are in full alignment with who we truly are, then change happens as a domino effect by default. 

Real, sustainable change happens when each individual micro aspects of the whole takes responsibility for their part. 

Stop thinking change is out there. 

Like it’s something you are waiting for. Change starts within. 

As the quote, Gandhi is credited for saying (it’s a shortened derivative of his original statement) goes: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” 

It’s easy to put the responsibility on everyone else

Stop waiting for someone or something else. You are the one you are waiting for. You are the change you are seeking.

To give proper credit to what Gandhi actually said: 

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi

It’s not about changing the world, but rather, our perception of it. Thus, the change comes from within, to change our own world. 

We we choose to change ourselves, the world around us changes, too. 

If you struggle with the noise and imposter syndrome as you are trying to find your way back home to yourself, to your own authentic alignment, I invite you to check out two of my free resources:

• 13 Strategies to Destroy the N.O.I.S.E.
• How to Recognize, Reframe & Rise Above Imposter Syndrome