We can either choose to play the victim of our story or become the hero of our story.
Every day we have the choice to champion our stories or we have the choice to play victim and allow ourselves to suffer. I believe this whole-heartedly. We’re our problem, but we’re also our solution. Knowing that, it can make you so mad at yourself because you know that it’s your own fault that you’ve wasted time. Or that you have decided to live unhappily for so long because you’ve been feeling sorry for yourself and chosen to play victim.
But the empowering part is that it also gives us the power entirely within ourselves, to change our lives, at any given moment.
Suffering entails holding onto hate, bitterness, resentment, and toxicity, and letting them set up shop in our minds and hearts. Some people hold huge resentment in their heart for things people may have done to them in the past: perhaps an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend who betrayed them.
Or we loathe ourselves for mistakes we’ve made and regrets we hold onto. Or we allow ourselves to remain entrenched in the pain and anger of traumatic experiences because the self-destructive narrative is familiar and allows us to avoid change.
Only when we release anger and hate towards others—and most importantly—forgive ourselves, can we free and empower ourselves to be truly happy.
This is where we must make the choice—do we want to continue to play victim to our life? Or do we want to become the champion of our circumstances and become our own hero?
When you marry yourself to suffering it means you want to pin blame on others for your misfortune, brokenness, and unhappiness, which relinquishes your power. This, in turn, creates a perpetual cycle of misery you can’t escape from because you’ve given the keys to your happiness to forces outside of your control.
When we understand that, we can remove suffering by making a choice to step into love. Every day. We have the choice. It gives us the keys to our own happiness and the power that only we have to live in suffering for as long as we let ourselves.
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This post was originally published on jamienrae.com, and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock