It's not about you.....

This had to be my mantra quite often over the past year. Sometimes it is quite easy to fall into that little hole and have a pity party for yourself. You just want someone to understand what you are going through - divorce, cancer, broken friendships, death of a loved one. These are big things. Even if you don't have a "big" thing at the moment you can always come up with small things - too fat, too poor, too lonely, too old. You get the picture. This is why we have friends - so they can listen to us for a little bit and offer us comfort. The problem comes when the "little bit" becomes all of the time. Then, not only are you miserable but everyone around you is miserable too. Like I said - I had to say it over and over and over again to myself..... "it's not about you". Once you take that pain, anguish, sorrow, frustration etc. and put it aside and make life about the people around you - then you start to heal. Then the pity party hole starts to just look like a dark, empty place you really don't want to go into.

It's easy to spot from the outside. I was having lunch with a good friend the other day (enjoying the happiest town in america) and at the next table over we noticed a stranger - completely self absorbed. Everything was about her. We saw her jabbering on to her friend and it was easy to see she did not "see" her friend. Her friend was just there so she could have someone to talk at.

Sometimes it is silent. That person who hides in their hole and waits. Waits for someone to come an pull them out. Sometimes they wait years. The whole time not realizing that if they could just get to their knees climbing out of the hole would be easy to do.

Most people really don't care what you had for breakfast this morning, they don't care that you overslept because your alarm didn't go off, they don't care that your hair didn't turn out right today. In fact - most people just want other people to be happy. Once we realize that making others happy is truly what makes us happy - that THIS is what life is about - then we can enjoy the fruits of our labor and watch the smiles surround us. You just might find that when you look in the mirror you are smiling too.