Solidly in the latter part of my thirties, I feel maybe it’s
time to tackle this subject. Growing up
in an LDS home, there is an organization for the girls ages 12-18 referred to
as Young Women. The spiritual study is
rooted in the Young Women Values. They
are: Faith, Divine Nature, Individual
Worth, Knowledge, Choice and Accountability, Good Works, Integrity, and Virtue. They are values taught to help build the
foundation of what will become a good woman, wife, mother, friend, and
sister. Now, I have not been an active
participant in any organized religion for going on 20 years. However, those roots were planted young and
many of them remain today despite routine church attendance. The one value that has always struck strongly
with me is Choice and Accountability.
Honestly, when I was a kid, those words were just recited
every Sunday. They weren’t verbs until I
grew up and acknowledged how truly important those characteristics to me in
those with whom I interact and bond with.
When you look at that short list, it seems pretty simple to see why LDS
young girls are taught about these attributes.
It is a list of values that when truly applied to as much of a person’s
erred life, can really have a lot of joy and success. Choice and accountability, for me, should be
listed last. When you evaluate the
choices you’ve made in your day, are you including your personal responsibility
in those actions?
Have you ever considered how many actions have been taken in
your lives that were truly a choice? We
often tell ourselves, “I had to.” How
true is that when you break down some raw and honest truth? There are absolutely things that happen to
us. Without debate from me, I will agree
that shit truly happens. We can’t
control the choices others take. We
can’t control a weather system. We can’t
control the literal acts of God that take place. But…here’s the big but: We choose how it impacts our lives. So, when you break things down, life is
literally the consequences of choice after choice after choice.
These days, there seems to be a lot of reasons why a person
can’t or can do something. There is a
magical force, apparently, that removes all choice from a lot of people. It’s weird for me to witness. When a person says, “I can’t stop being angry
because of whatever…” I am hearing one thing.
“I am making a decision to stay angry.”
Is it hard to control the way our emotional and complicated minds and
hearts do? Absolutely! It’s sometimes the hardest thing in the world
to control the emotions. There is an
entire industry of pharmaceuticals dedicated to helping that issue. I will admit that there are chemical
imbalances that literally take away an individuals ability to control certain
things. Those are the circumstances that
won’t apply to my philosophy.
We are very quick to justify the outcomes of an individual
based on where they come from. The
neighborhood they grew up, the way their parents treated them, the quality of
their education, the amount of income and lifestyle they had, etc. all
contribute to what a person becomes in their adulthood. It’s almost like a predisposition damning or
exalting a person. I don’t believe that
at all. Because, at some point in a
person’s life, they have the ability to choose the path they want to be
on.
I was sexually molested when I was 10 years old. It changed me. A lot.
At a very young age I was introduced to a context of relationships I was
not mature enough to comprehend. It
required some therapy. There have been
times I wish I had stayed in therapy for a while longer than I did. During the same timeframe of the assault, I
was living in a home with a very abusive father. Feeling safe was something I lost at a very
young age. It forced me to figure out
how to self-preserve young. Why that was
the way I reacted to such trauma I believe is a nature element of who I
am. Resiliency is something I have
always had.
My grades didn’t ever suffer. There was never any outside evidence that I
had gone through some pretty ugly stuff before I was even 14 years old. People on the outside looking in on my life
didn’t see any kind of distress. I had a
lot of friends. I had a good
character. I didn’t act out or misbehave
any significant way to indicate a kid in pain or suffering. My faith in my religion remained strong and
probably a contributing factor to my resilience.
Only those very close to me have ever even known these
truths about me. The art of the façade
is also a trait I have grown to really know.
I have put myself together for the masses and pushed towards whatever I
was pushing towards. Many times I had no
idea where I was going, but it was at least some form of forward.
I have a long list of reasons why I should not be
successful. There are hours of stories to
justify a severe mental break in which I never recover. When I was 28 years old and held a lifeless
baby in my hands, the pivot of my path headed straight for that fate. It wasn’t until I went to a therapist, after
terrifying thoughts of suicide, that I figured it all out. I had made a choice at a point in my life and
that current state of my mental faculties was the accountability I violently
faced.
I walked out of that therapy office with the decision to
take control of my emotions and NEVER let them get control of me again. I did a major overhaul on my
perspective. It took me a few more years
to get ultimately in the place I needed and wanted to be. I would say about five years after that
moment, was when I could say that I had successfully established a realistic
grip on the fact that the way I reacted to situations was solely on my
shoulders.
I have not become immune to crap situations. I still get into circumstances that make me
frustrated and upset. But, the choices I
make in reaction to my interactions with the world are thought out with the
accountability attached. Meaning, I make
every effort to not make a decision without being willing to accept the
consequences fully of my actions. If I use angry words, I accept the outcome of
those words. If I get hurt, I choose how
long I am willing to allow that pain to resonate and what I permit it to affect.
At no point in my adult life, have I thought about letting
the bad things that have happened to me control me. They happened. They have hurt. They have healed. They have shaped who I am but not defined who
I am. The definition of who I am is
directly related to the choices I make and the accountability I take in those
choices. Who I am is not where I came
from. I don’t use those shit situations
as an excuse to behave badly or stop pursuing my self-satisfaction.
It sucks that it took me so many years to figure out just
how much power the choices I make have on so much. The reason I felt compelled to share this
now, is that I see a lot of people thinking they don’t have the ability to make
their life better because they are still choosing to hold onto the pain. If you’re one of those people, step back and
really investigate the importance of the power you are allowing to give up to
past mistakes, poor decisions, people who have hurt you, or bad things that
have happened to you. Make the apologies
you need to. Give the forgiveness to
whomever or whatever has offended you.
Take the necessary accountability to repair damage you have done so you
can forgive yourself.
No real success story is without challenge. Choose to stop being angry, sad, depressed,
lonely, afraid, etc. Choose to not be
your mother or father. Choose to educate
yourself. Choose to be the best version
of yourself you can possibly be. Choose
to change a predetermined idea of who you think you are or should be. You are the only one who can make those
choices. Make the choices that defy
stereotypes.
