I Have Life, page 20
Imagine that we all carry a rucksack and that each problem we encounter is translated into something tangible, say a rock or a stone, depending on the size of the problem or trauma.
What we do is pick up that rock or stone and place it in the rucksack. Eventually it will become too heavy for us to carry. It becomes a burden that stops our progress. We may fall along the wayside, too tired to carry on.
But if we stop sometimes and make the time to open that rucksack and examine what is inside it, we will find many things lurking there that we no longer need and that we can happily discard.
The point is, all of us need an emotional and mental spring-clean occasionally. We need to throw out some of those stones and rocks we have been carrying with us. It might be a terrible divorce or childhood trauma that has filled you with bitterness, resentment and hatred towards someone.
It might be a minor or major betrayal or even a financial set-back, but the question to ask yourself is: Why have you decided to keep that burden?
Sometimes it is a very traumatic issue in our lives and we may find it very hard to put it down or discard.
Yet it can be done.
I made a conscious decision to put down the burden of the trauma that had happened to me and all the negative emotions it brought. I vowed that I would make an effort not to carry it with me for the rest of my life.
That doesn’t mean I must forget it and pretend it didn’t happen. But I have lightened the burden by looking for the meaning and the lessons that are held within it and by not carrying the burdens of bitterness, anger and hatred.
So often a problem can become such a part of us that it is all that there is. We brood on it, we talk about it constantly. It gets us the attention we need from others.
People are generally sympathetic to someone with a problem. If you find yourself amongst friends and bring up your problem you will get them to take notice.
Most will feel sorry for you and indulge you. Eventually you convince yourself and others that your problem is the worst and deserving of much scrutiny and dissection.
By getting their undivided attention and focus, the problem is reaffirmed. In turn, we hold on to it for much longer than we need to.
Ultimately it can become a security blanket, something familiar and the very thing by which we define ourselves. And whenever we feel down or out of control, we blame and curse the problem.
By refusing to deal with and let go of it you are actually holding yourself back. You have no one to blame but yourself.
My advice in these circumstances is to learn from your problem, take from it instead of letting it take from you, and then move on.
I have been asked if I have moved on from my trauma, if I have taken that huge rock out of my own personal rucksack.
At this stage I can answer that I have located the rock, placed it outside on the grass and am looking at it, still working with it.
I am a different person today. I can never be the same Alison. I can never make what happened to me go away but I have, by adopting a positive attitude, not allowed it to remain a burden.
It is not holding me back.
I sometimes shudder to think of what I might have missed out on if I still carried the burden of bitterness and hatred towards the perpetrators of the crime or towards the system that allowed it to happen.
There were times when I was momentarily overwhelmed with anger, but I knew that if I allowed myself to be consumed by the anger I would never again be able to see the magic in life or even to love again.
You might think it has been easier for me because of my naturally positive nature, but I believe that this is an attribute that can be cultivated even in the most barren of emotional and mental landscapes.
Just as we cultivate bad habits, so can we cultivate good ones.
We can reshape and repattern life experiences and find something positive in them. It is an exercise in discipline but eventually, if you are committed enough and work at it, positivism will become a part of your nature.
Let’s look at a very simple hypothetical situation where negativity can cascade and permeate everything.
You wake up one morning and your spouse or your children irritate you or make you angry.
Without thinking, you leave the house carrying that anger with you.
It simmers inside as you get into the car and drive to work. By the time you’ve turned the corner you’ve convinced yourself the world is a foul, mean place and that you’ll probably encounter red traffic lights all along your route.
You pass through one green light and there are few red ones along the way. But those are the only ones you remember. Sitting there in the gridlock, you fume even more.
You get to the office and everything now becomes an irritation. Someone may even remark that it appears that you have ‘got up on the wrong side of the bed’.
As the day wears on your mood deteriorates. A colleague tries to cheer you up but you fob him off, enveloped in your own anger and misery.
On the way home you get caught in another heavy traffic jam and of course all the traffic lights are red. You pull up in the driveway and the first thing you say when you see your spouse is, ‘Thanks to you, I’ve had the most awful day.’
The truth of the matter is that your spouse had nothing to do with the events that have plagued your day.
You, and you alone, were responsible for holding that anger, that petty feeling of irritation, inside you the moment you stepped into your car. It was your choice to hold on to it and let it tinge everything in your wake.
Your attitude towards the minor and inevitable irritations of life determined how you would experience everything else that day. You did not have to be angry. Perhaps your spouse did trigger something or was at fault at first, but it was your own attitude towards it that prolonged it all unnecessarily.
If we can learn to step back for just a moment, catch our breath and think about what is going on, we give ourselves the space to change our attitude towards something, we give ourselves a small gap in which we can make a choice.
It’s like driving in the fast lane which can, in a city like Johannesburg, be an extremely stressful experience. You have to watch out for those people behind you who are determined to go faster than you. They pull up behind you, red in the face, gesticulating and cursing and flashing their lights.
Becoming absorbed or consumed by a mood is akin to that.
That driver in the fast lane is so consumed and single-minded that he can think of nothing else and sometimes this can lead to tragedy.
Try driving in the slow lane, put on a cassette with your favourite soothing music, and watch how in a little while the feelings of irritation begin to subside. You stop thinking about the cars in front of or next to you.
I don’t mean that you must become reckless, but that all your senses should not merely be focused on driving and getting to your destination.
You can take in the countryside that flashes by, you can linger on a particularly beautiful note in a song.
You will get to your destination in a much better mood than the person who has rushed there like a bat out of hell.
With a change of attitude comes a new perspective on belief and belief is the B part of my ABC.
How many of us really believe in ourselves?
So many of us stop ourselves at the starting gates, convincing ourselves that we cannot do something, that it is too difficult or impossible to achieve.
It is easier to believe when we value ourselves but it is also amazing to learn that only a tiny ounce of belief can accomplish incredible things.
It was so in my case. Only one per cent of me believed that night that I would make it to the road. The rest of me, every fibre in my being, did not believe it. Yet it was that tiny percentage of hope and belief that enabled me to try and crawl another centimetre, to take just one more step.
That one per cent of me overrode the rest and miracles happened, the seemingly impossible was accomplished. I survived.
That belief in ourselves is a potential we all possess but rarely use. It is at our disposal every day and it is amazing what it enables us to achieve.
Another example of the power of belief was brought to my attention during one of my talks in Knysna.
When I had finished speaking, a woman whose son had been seriously injured after he was caught and dumped by a freak wave told me of his incredible strength and amazing belief in himself.
After the accident, she told the crowd, her son had been washed up on the remote beach. He realised that he could not move. His limbs felt like lead and the messages from his brain did not seem to go anywhere.
For some reason, she said, her son had thought of me.
He said to himself, ‘If she could do it, then so can I.’
He decided that he would not give up and just lie there, hoping someone would find him. So he gathered all his strength and will and got up.
He managed to walk for about two kilometres over hills, rocks and bushes before he found help and was taken to the nearest hospital where, like me, he was rushed into surgery.
Afterwards the doctor asked him where the accident had happened and the young man told him the name of the beach and the fact that he had walked to find help.
The doctor was astounded. He told the young man that he must have been mistaken because the nature and extent of his injuries were such that it would have been impossible for him to walk.
But he did it. His belief in himself gave him the extraordinary strength to accomplish what he did.
No one had told him he could not do it and because he believed he made the miracle happen.
So, if you believe in yourself, if you have faith in whatever talents you have inside you, you will make something of nothing.
You do not always have to be the best. Just do your best.
A perfect example of what I’m referring to happens during another little test I often do on my audiences.
I ask everyone who can sing to raise their hand. Inevitably only a few shoot up. I always thank those who are brave enough to admit their talent, but I usually tell the rest of the crowd that they are lying.
The point is, if you can talk, you can sing. You don’t have to sing beautifully or even in tune.
My question to the audience was not if they could sing well, but if they could simply sing.
When I ask an audience of children the same question, something remarkable happens.
Each and every one of them puts up their hands. Sometimes there’s a veritable stampede to the front of the stage as everyone eagerly offers to come up and sing.
The difference between the children and the adults is that the children haven’t yet been told that they cannot do something.
They still believe in themselves. They have not been told to worry about what the person next to them may think or that they will make fools of themselves.
We should remember that we were all children once and maybe we should work at recapturing that open-mindedness and belief that anything is possible, even flying.
The first battering of our sense of belief often comes at high school where a competitive edge creeps into everything. Only the best make it to the team, only the brightest and the cleverest are rewarded.
If you don’t shine in some way you are expected to languish in the shadow of someone else, wishing you were them.
I used to love to play hockey. I adored the outfits, the shin guards and being part of the team. But I was not good at it as a sport. I was hopeless, actually.
One day the coach called me over and told me that they couldn’t use me any more and that I shouldn’t worry to attend practice.
I was mortified. And since that day I have carried the belief that I am not good at sport.
Each time I am asked to participate in some sort of sporty thing, even throwing the frisbee on the beach, I think I can’t do it. So naturally, I can’t.
We allow ourselves to stop doing the things we love because we think we are not the best at it.
Believe in your personal best and make use of the talent that you have, no matter how great or small.
I always urge parents to do this with their children. To encourage them to do whatever it is they get pleasure from, even if they are not the best.
I take some comfort from this saying: ‘The woods would be silent if the only birds that sang there were the ones who sang best.’
Be a bird, sing to whatever ability you have. The world would most certainly be a dull place if the only people who ever did anything were the ones who knew that they would excel.
Remember whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.
If you have a task in front of you and you think ‘I can’t, I can’t I can’t’, then you will not.
But if you think ‘I can, I can, I can’, you will, and in so doing amaze yourself.
I urge you in life, wherever you find yourself, whether in a business presentation or a confrontation with a friend, to turn it around whenever you begin to feel those nagging doubts.
Believe in yourself, convince yourself beforehand that you are confident, that you can do it. Believe in the results you want and you will find yourself convinced before you convince anyone else. Try it. It really works.
And when you are grappling with a problem, believe in the bigger picture.
In our modern, rushed society today everything seems so stressful. We juggle so many balls trying desperately to keep them all in the air at the same time. We see only those balls then and nothing else.
When I worked in an office I would often lie awake at night worrying about something on my desk. At the time there was nothing I could do about it. It just had to wait until the next day, yet I wasted time and energy thinking about something that had no solution at the time.
I cluttered my mind with things that were so unnecessary and ended up being unproductive when I could have focused my energies on something more worth while.
The point is, we must learn not to worry about things if there is nothing we can do about them at that very moment. That does not mean we must simply forget that a problem exists; it means we must acknowledge that the best thing to do at that moment is to let it go and to pick it up again when it is appropriate.
Do not allow your problems to become larger than they really are.
Imagine your problem is a glass on a table. Now imagine a camera that zooms in and focuses only on the glass. Suddenly it fills the frame, it becomes huge and we can see nothing else.
Now, imagine the camera zooming out again. Suddenly we see the glass on the table, we see a hand clutching at the stem, we see a group of people sitting around that table. Suddenly the glass no longer looks so huge, as if it is the only thing that exists.
Step back even more and you see that the room is full of people. It is in a context and so much more is going on around it. The glass – the problem, in other words – is just a small part of a bigger picture.
Do the same with a problem. Step back from it. Look at your life in perspective. See what other hardships you have already overcome.
And if you can’t find anything in your own life, look at the lives of others and what they have managed to overcome. Look at my life, or the life of someone else who has experienced a traumatic event and was able to overcome it.
Do not allow your problems to make your life a misery. All we have is a short space of time in which to live our lives and we really need to make conscious choices to be happy as much as we can.
This leads into the most important part of my three-step solution – the C which stands for choice.
The instant I realised I had a choice in the manner in which I dealt with what had happened to me I reached a turning point.
It lifted me out of my depression and gave me back a sense of control.
It was one of the most difficult things I needed to learn and it was not easy to accept. I had to realise that although it hadn’t been my choice to be attacked and raped, everything after that was within my control.
I remember sitting alone at home one day in the depths of a terrible depression.
I asked myself: ‘Is this what you want your life to be? Did you fight so hard to live so that you can sit here feeling sorry for yourself? Is this what it is going to be like for the rest of your life?’
Instinctively, I knew that if I was ever going to be happy again, if I was ever going to enjoy my life again, I was going to have to choose to do so.
None of my friends or my family blamed me for being depressed. They all said, ‘A terrible thing has happened to Alison, of course she is going to be depressed.’
No one blamed me for my condition.
You might want to blame the situation that you find yourself in. You might want to blame the economy, you might want to blame the ‘new’ South Africa. You might want to blame your husband or your wife. But you cannot. You, and you alone, are responsible for choosing to be happy, sad or angry.
I realised that I had to choose to be happy again, no matter how difficult it may have seemed.
Be proactive in life. Do not wait for something to happen before you realise how important these things are.
I just love Oprah Winfrey’s idea of the gratitude journal. In the beginning she said she had trouble writing or remembering five good things that had happened to her or that she had seen that day. But with time, and as her attitude adjusted and she became more positive, she found many more than five things to be grateful for.
I suggest you start such a journal. What it does is force you to look for the good in each moment. It is always there. We can see the world only through our own eyes. If we are angry and bitter, it will feel like an angry and bitter place to be.
Our days are numbered from the moment we are born. There are only two things in life we can be sure of – one is that we are born and the other is that we will die. We do not know how much time each of us has here. We don’t get to choose when we will die or how we will die, but we always have the choice about how we will live. No matter what circumstances you may find yourself in, and no matter if a situation is out of your control, you always have control over your attitude, your belief and what you choose to do.
