My mom had once told me that I was the reason she left reiki – I didn’t believe in what she did was doing and that it was going to help me. I genuinely did not. Because I think I did not have the comprehension capability of what energy could do to us. But more than not believing in reiki, I think I was at nadir (lowest point) of self belief in my life at that point. When I shrugged her hand away, what I meant to say was nothing external can give me what I internally lacked. However, as unfortunate as it is, my mom stopped practicing reiki after that.
20years on, I feel a deep remorse in being the cause of this. Few people have such capability of pure love, like my mother and I know she could have done wonders with it. And I don’t stop at remorse, as everything that happens has its share of learnings. And that’s what this article is about.
Lesson as a human: This is an incident that gave me an insight into impacts of Limiting Self Beliefs and Reaction vs Response. and also how they are inter-connected.
Victor E. Frankl, the famous Austrian psychotherapist, a holocaust survivor and founder of Logotherapy, had said – “Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness”
My response to my mom that day was due to the self belief of not-good enough. Telling someone else that they are not good enough, was a reaction from my inner demon voice to make myself feel better. That not-good-enoughness gave rise to a reaction that did not consider the impact of my words or actions on someone I cared about so much.
Learing – Take a quick minute to see if your response is coming from a place of negativity. That minute itself will do wonders.
Lesson as a parent: Not everything that our children do or say is a reflection of us as a parent. We need to cut ourselves some slack and give them some space to grow up and realize things for themselves. Them not believing in our achievements and what we have to offer to the world is not a reflection on us. We need to have that belief and that faith to stay our course no matter who believes in us and who doesn’t.
Children learn by seeing and if we model the right behaviors, they’re bound to benefit from it too.
Another big one is moving from a judgement to blameless discernment Judging is finding who is at fault and taking that lens to explore what went wrong. Blameless discernment is about being curious to what went wrong. Take a look at this article to read more about Curiosity vs Judgement and its implications on learning.
So the next time there is a stimulus, before responding, reflect if you’re coming from a place of judgement (on self or others) or curiosity 🙂