—
This is how my sister helped me to be a better man.
This was a very interesting topic to write about for me, to say the least. Anyone who knows me understands that I love my sister beyond anything imaginable. I remember when I was ten, she was a couple of months old and had a tendency to throw things. I remember placing her on the table and ducking down to grab her favorite blanket, which she had just thrown. And I’ll never forget the sound I heard when I saw her roll off the table, hitting her head on the floor.
I thought I killed my sister, and that my mother was definitely going to kill me next. My mother always told me to take care of my sister, no matter what. My mother is known to be the leader of wolves. My mother is a natural born leader, and a welder. A formidable woman, to say the least. But thankfully, my sister was alright, and despite giving me the fright of my life, things went on pretty much as normal.
But the memory stuck with me. After that day, if I could manage to not be at the mercy of my mother, I would do everything in my capability to do exactly that. Unfortunately, I am not the easiest person to get along with.
See, growing up as a child I was enthralled by my aunt. She is a very interesting character. Hopelessly devoted to God, albeit a clinical mess, with a beautiful heart — and probably also the most scornful person I have ever met in my life. I have told her this since becoming an adult — but as a child, I would do anything to gain her favor.
Now, because of this weird and depressing environment where everything was so confusing, I developed severe depression. It is so weird thinking about it now, but my loneliness and depression just took me to many extremes.
I just wanted to be wanted. And when we want things too much, we never seem to get them. It’s a weird thing I have noticed. We spend so much energy and time thinking about things that will never be: either because we avoid action or we end up creating “success tremors” — in other words, self-sabotage.
When I was young I didn’t know better, that is very obvious to me now. I cruelly told my sister when we were growing up that I wanted a brother instead. We joke about it now, but I felt serious at the moment. See, I think now that life gives you what you need; not what you want.
Want is generally good, when it is aspirational (as opposed to covetous). I believe this because you create motivation from that form of ambition. You understand that if you desire to achieve or obtain a feat, you have to focus. And what we find most interesting is what grabs our attention.
Discipline is the key, focusing on the positive side of want. When we focus on the lack then that is what we will perceive. I believe it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Our brain doesn’t differentiate what is real and what is imaginary: it just solves the problem you give it.
In this past year, I spoke exactly this with my sister, which she helped me write my eventual TEDx Talk, on Paradigm Shifts. (I’m putting this in writing now, to speak this in existence.)
See, my sister has always believed in me. Although my parents love me unconditionally and support me beyond imaginable, they didn’t always support me before.
My sister, however, always reassured me that I would one day come home and show my parents how successful I had become. Everyone loves my sister; she is probably one of the easiest people to talk to. Everyone trusts her. I have called her the yin to my yang.
We balance each other in the most amazing ways. Especially when we reach down and pull each other up. We take turns. Usually, I advise her more often, which is normal as the older brother. However, recently she taught me something that she has always known, but which I struggled with.
I am more than enough.
◊♦◊
I was in Tokyo, Japan recently and I wanted to get my sister something nice. Japan is known for its technology and of course arcade games. There I meet my friend, the claw machine. If anyone knows me, they know I will spend $20 on just the game.
Is it because I am addicted?
Yes, very much. But even deeper, it is a sense of pride. That I can do something that most people cannot. I can win at a game others fail. But here’s the catch: you are not supposed to win this game. The prize was a wireless Bluetooth headset.
The trick is to either get it right perfectly the first or second time, which is almost a mathematical impossibility, unless you are just that meticulous. So I put in my first $10 — not bad; I go for seconds. Now, I am invested. Lose my second $10. I walked off, tell myself I won’t do it. However, it called me back. A feeling. I looked at the game and it appeared to have restarted.
What I mean was that I was $20 down, but was having the weirdest moment of déjà vu where I felt I could still get the prize. I didn’t really question it — perhaps I didn’t want to — so I played again. There goes another $20. I walked off. I pretended to leave, and then I walked back.
Just as I suspected, right where I imagined it would be. I wanted this so bad, that I ended up spending another $40. Now, I could hear my mother telling how much of sin that was wasting all that money. This is basically gambling.
And of course I did not want to believe it, but I was in total disarray. It was because I was having my reality shattered: my pride would not let me accept the fact that I could not win that game. Now, thankfully, at this point, I realized that my tenacity would obviously be the determining factor of my success; however, without discipline, it will be my downfall. I had to walk away for good, and cut my losses.
So why couldn’t I let it go? It all goes back to that childhood memory of when I let my sister down for the very first time in her life. In a way, I was letting this claw machine failure become a metaphor for my failure then, and I would not let myself fail a second time. But this game cost me $80, and I would have continued on, as I have done before. But something inside me — the assurance of my sister that she doesn’t need a gift to know how much she means to me, perhaps— had spoken up and said, no more.
Once you start freeing yourself from emotional trauma and heal yourself, you can then start living. You have to go to the root of the source of emotional disruption and cut it. But sometimes, because the event that taught us to was something unpleasant, or it was so long ago we can’t remember, and it gets stored away in our psyche.
I have learned to peel layers of unnecessary emotional attachment. Sometimes I can calmly let them go and sometimes my body literally needs to purge it and surrender by crying. This time it was deep. And I knew why. Not only was this a metaphor for hurting my sister, it also revealed my attachment to money; not even just money, but my parents’ finances. My parents until recently have always had anxiety over money.
Which I, through osmosis, have learned from them, and also developed my own anxieties. This is fairly common among families. There have been said to be many motivators in life that aid in change, family is one of them. Taking responsibility for the care of others forces you to do the same.
There is something about just being naturally self-fulfilled that allows people to thrive. Because our self-esteem will always fluctuate, it is based on how we feel about ourselves. And we are not always nice to ourselves.
The thing we have to remember is that it doesn’t have to matter how empty or full you see the glass of water right now, you can always just get up and go for another glass — or, in other words, change your perspective on the problem. And that is the problem with anxiety and depression, they make you think you’re stuck in the place you’re at. This is known as the terror barrier.
For you to go through that stretch you have to be fearless. This is what my mentor David Meltzer, calls the empty 10%. This is where your hard work and faith all come in. This is the final ten seconds, the last lap, and the last round. (If you don’t know David please look him up, started from nothing, rose to the top, fell, and got back up again, twice as strong.)
And essentially, because I am always willing to give and provide to my sister when it seems like I should be frugal, I have learned to be fearless without the need of throwing money into a claw machine only to get nothing in return. I let life happen for me and not to me.
And this is what my sister and I keep teaching one another, as George Addair once said: “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
—
This story has been updated and republished to Medium.
Photo: Shutterstock