From my recent HuffPost column…. I relate to the temptation to insulate your children and loved ones from disappointment, but it’s impossible to do so. And it’s a severe handicap to your kids when you project your own insecurities onto them. In fact, it’s shortchanging to anyone that might be treated that way. Spouses, employers, managers, friends, co-workers, all of us need to consciously find the space to see the spark of others’ potential. They may not find the courage to completely rise to it, but acknowledging that spark will help them to develop their potential in a way that only they can. Confidence, afterall, doesn’t come from avoiding problems and challenges, it comes from facing them and learning from them. Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-van-rossum/self-confidence_b_1520791.html
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Overcoming Difficult People
April 29th, 2012
From my column on The Huffington Post …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-van-rossum/overcoming-difficult-peop_b_1345611.html
Three Steps to Moving Beyond the Recession
April 29th, 2012
Check out my newest article on The Huffington Post!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-van-rossum/personal-growth_b_1377969.html
Five Steps for Total Forgiveness, Total Freedom
February 29th, 2012
Hatred is one of those deceptive emotions that ends up hurting you far more than it hurts anyone else. It may feel good and natural to hate someone that has harmed you or your loved ones. But regardless of what someone else has done, you will never be able to hate someone enough to get it out of your system. Holding on to hate destroys your health and ultimately steals your joy. Once it’s a part of you, your motivations and actions will be colored with it, and you’ll unwittingly project your anger onto innocent people, which will ruin your relationships. Hate will literally eat you alive.
I’ve not yet seen where hating punishes another, as much as it punishes the one who’s hating.
The root of hatred lies in our fear and our sense of loss of control over our lives. We all experience feelings of hate sometimes. The goal is to learn how to move through it. It’s not an emotional investment that you want to maintain. When you realize that you have developed a habit of feeling hatred, if you’re wise, you’ll want to treat it as though you’ve found a cancer in your body – and be willing to do everything necessary to get rid of it.
You can’t resolve hatred by accepting someone else’s intolerable behavior as permissible. That will never work.
But you can begin to move through it, by first, having the solid intent to move through it.
Second, accept the other person or offender for who they are. You may not like who they are or who they’ve become, but people are who they are. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll start making better investments.
Third, you want to develop an understanding for the reasons for the other person’s behavior. This understanding is crucial as it leads you to the fourth step, which is compassion for the other person’s suffering.
Now you should know that understanding and compassion is not the same as acceptance or tolerance.
I have deep understanding for the reasons of others’ choices and I have great compassion for their suffering. But I would not hire or rehire these people if they have betrayed me or if they have an uncontrolled tendency toward destructive behavior. That would just be a bad choice.
The fifth step is forgiveness. And forgiveness, like understanding and compassion, is not about tolerating harmful behavior. Just because you forgive someone for hurting you, doesn’t mean you would then start tolerating bad behavior from others.
Forgiveness is not the relaxing of a boundary, if anything, it builds and strengthens healthy boundaries. Rather, forgiveness is letting go. Which is something you need to do for yourself.
When you fully forgive, you are, in a moment, embracing steps 1-5. You’re ready to let go and move on.
Sometimes I’ve forgiven people so completely that I can’t entirely remember what it was they did to me in the first place. But my understanding of who they are protects me from investing in them again.
I often pray for those who have hurt or harmed me in some way. I pray for their goodwill and prosperity, and that they will find true happiness. I do this partly because if they can become authentically happy people, they won’t harm another person again, and they won’t continue to create negative circumstances for themselves. And partly as a litmus test for myself. If I can’t truly pray for blessings for these people, then I know I have more work to do on myself.
Buddha was right when he said that hating doesn’t stop hating. True intent, compassion and forgiveness does. Forgiveness is about freedom for you. Until you forgive and forgive completely, you can’t move on with your life.
Overcoming the Liar in Your Midst
February 25th, 2012
While in the doctors’ waiting room recently, an African American woman walked by, her stunning silver curls cascading down her back. The woman next to me commented to her how beautiful they were.
She replied by saying, “Thanks. But they just told me I’m going to lose all of it.”
“It will grow back,” the women around me chimed in reassuringly, “It’ll come back.”
Another waiting room held a young mother sobbing as she retold her recent diagnosis to a friend.
When they told me I had two masses in my breast, all I thought of was my children. They deserved to have their mother with them, caring for them as no one else would or could.
Later I thought about how much of our energy we dedicate to the wrong people, and how that frustration and disappointment steals from our health and our loved ones. I thought of two problem people, one, an associate who had a profound problem with lying.
I had watched her lie on countless occasions, to me and others. A little embellishment here, a lie of omission there, a flat out farce when she felt it necessary to position herself in a better light. She never knew I noticed. “She wants to change,” I would say. But apparently that was just one of the lies I told myself to keep everything copasetic, pretending that this wasn’t who she was.
Ah, the lies we tell ourselves. Those are the most pernicious of all.
‘It won’t happen to me’ ‘He/She would never do that’ ‘Just this once, it won’t matter‘ and the all too familiar, ‘They’ll change.’ We lie to ourselves all the time and bit by bit we separate ourselves from what is most important.
“People don’t change,” a friend of mine told me years ago. I thought about that now as I realized how much time I had spent feeling upset about this. I decided I needed to find the strength to let her be who she was choosing to be. Almost immediately afterwards, several people came into my life.
They each shared with me unsolicited stories of how this same person had lied to them on countless occasions. I was amazed at how the Universe had brought them to me, to relieve me of my doubts. They too had broken off their relationships with her because of the lying, the unrelenting self-centeredness and the continual competing.
“It was exhausting,” one woman told me, “and so unnecessary. I never confronted her about her lies. They were subtle most of the time. But I realized I couldn’t waste time expecting her to be different. You know, who needs it?”
There are many times when we have to let someone go. But most of us are slow to do it. We want to give people a second, third and fourth chance to do the right thing. And sometimes we should. Other times, and perhaps ultimately, we all need to pay closer attention to our proverbial smoke alarms.
A study was done in Forbes magazine years ago citing the number one failure of CEOs – they didn’t let problem employees go soon enough. Then they had to spend too much time and money cleaning up their messes on the back end.
It may be hard to let problem people go from your business, your life. But think of it this way, by letting them go, you’re being compassionate. First toward yourself and your loved ones through respect, they don’t deserve to play second fiddle to self-centered jerks. Secondly, by letting them be and letting them go, you’re being compassionate toward the offender, being an enabler helps no one. Once we know who someone really is, we’re responsible for that wisdom. And we need to do what’s right by us and by them.
We can mourn the loss of those we’ve cared for, for those whom we’ve had high hopes. We can embrace compassion for the difficulty they’re setting themselves up for. But we can’t change other people.
Our lives are precious, as is the short time we’re given. We have to keep that in mind when we’re choosing how and where we dedicate our precious time and energy.
In doing so we free ourselves up to live happier, more successful lives. Through our compassionate distance, we free others up as well.
By the way, my condition turned out to be easily remedied, but several women I saw that day weren’t as fortunate. If you’re a woman, make the time for your breast exams and mammograms, take your D3, eat healthy, exercise, and be judicious with where you invest your time and energy.