I love studying the science of happiness, ways to help people out of pain and how to maximize success, whatever that looks like for you. 
But there is a down side to all of this self-help. Besides the fact that it can be taken to imply that you need “help” (which you don’t, btw), teaching people about the incredible power and responsibility they have for the state of their lives can be a little dicey.
Teaching them how they always have a choice…
…and that what they believe, focus on, and practice (consciously or by default) creates their experiences in life…
is sometimes used in vain. They turn it on themselves and use it as evidence for why they suck.
They reason, “If I’m responsible for the state of my life and what I experience is based on something about me…and I’m not perfectly happy…then I must be at fault. I must be doing something horribly wrong.”
Understanding how our thoughts and actions contribute to our own experiences is helpful. Beating ourselves up for not always getting it 100% right is not helpful.
Shitty things happen in life. Maybe we create them with our vibration or our energy, or because we were too focused on them. They might be natural consequences of something we do, think, or feel.
Or maybe shitty things happen for our greatest good, even when they appear unwanted on the surface. They could be part of a master plan.
Or maybe they happen completely randomly, with no rhyme or reason at all.
I have no idea, obviously. I have my pet theories, but my hunches are no wiser or more informed than yours.
But one thing I do know is that even if we do attract unwanted things into our lives—we don’t do it knowingly.
We don’t have less than perfect lives because there is something we lack or because we’re getting it all wrong.
If we contribute to what shows up in our path, and what’s showing up is stuff we’re not happy with, it’s because we simply don’t know any better.
And if you don’t know any better, you’re not allowed to blame yourself in that degrading, negative, shame-for-not-being-better kind of way.
Deal?
