I used to imagine myself as a tree. I was doing my best to handle the storms that came at me, to cling to the ground with my roots and bend with flexibility to handle whatever came at me. I was proud of my empathetic nature, trying to work with the wind, understand it, be affected by it, help it. This was exhausting. At any moment, I would be standing tall, feeling the sun, going about my day, and a strong gust would come out of nowhere and knock me down. I would be left struggling to stand back up...causing my day to take an entirely different course, a state of fight or flight, shutting down to cope.
Here is what I have to come to realize. We need to learn how to be the rock instead.
A rock stands strong regardless of what tries to affect it. Not cold and untouchable...but possessing a resolve and power from inner knowing and self-love that stands alone. The weather goes on outside the rock. The rock witnesses but NOTHING changes what the rock is made of. The drama goes on but the rock is just there...being a rock...its day goes on unchanged.
We need to be the queens/kings of our own lives. The day we are born, we are gifted an inner light, an inherent confidence, a strength, a power. As time goes on, we take signals of the world and interpret them as saying something about us, as if the world determines who we are. We see the breeze, the drama, as meaning something about us. We take it in and let it change how we think about ourselves. We own it and accept it. This is not the truth.
When I was a baby, my mom wrote about me. Everything she wrote is still true today. I wrote about my own children, it is still true today. We are born who we are and with value. We cannot let the broken pieces in others and the drama in their attempt to handle their own broken pieces or lack of tools change our own value. We also need to see our own lack of tools as an opportunity to learn and find healthier ways to handle life instead of letting it create drama out in the world that impacts others. We are a rock, not a sapling. We are in control of our own day.
Drama is owned by who created it. Own your inner power instead.