© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I have had several friends say they are not happy and that they do not know how to find happiness. I do not in any way shape or form profess to be the happiness coach, nor do I have all the cures for finding your own happiness; however, I would like to share to a few things I have learned over my own years of searching for happiness.
RULE# 1
For years I went back to a relationship thinking I could not be “happy” without him or the relationship. I could not be alone. I went back trying to love and be loved, however I was only putting myself through a personal hell.
I let the relationship define me and my reason for being.
After my divorce I found that I didn’t even know who “I” was. I had been too busy trying to find happiness in someone else, that I had lost myself. I had to rediscover and find who I was.
RULE# 2
A year later I realized that my unhappiness wasn’t because of the lack of having someone in my life. I had to find happiness within, because if I was not happy now how was I ever going to he be happy in a relationship?
RULE# 3
Letting someone else be your source of happiness is self-destructive. You have to learn to like, love and respect yourself before anyone else.
Question:
How long do you find yourself happy when you allow your happiness to be driven by another person? A couple of weeks or months, and then what?
Then you believe this person must not be the “one” because they no longer make “you” happy….. when in reality you set this relationship up to fail because you were searching for someone/anyone to fulfill your void.
We have all been taught that to love someone is to sacrifice yourself for their happiness and in return we expect them to do the same for us. However, by sacrificing our happiness we are only becoming miserable. We alone are responsible for our happiness.
RULE# 4
Start by making yourself the priority and no-one else. Find yourself, and enjoy being you.
Now this doesn’t mean you have to cut everyone out of your life, but that you should allow yourself to be the priority.
RULE# 5
The only person you cannot live without and have unconditional love for is YOU! Everyone else is a bonus. Once you start to love yourself and instead of leaving your happiness dependent upon others, the right people will fall into place.
Written By: Aliceson Troute Carver
I once read somewhere years ago that friendships are born in those moments that we look at someone else wholeheartedly and say “Ohhhh, you do that too!?” It is in those moments of clarity such as uttering that statement that will mark the beginning of wonderful memories.
Through the years I have found that it really is about how much we can relate to others that not only determines the amount of friends we have, but the depths of those friendships as well.
As we grow and change we will grow together as friends, or grow apart. And if our circle has never changed or has not changed for quite some time, then we may want to question some things. Because if it our circle does not grow or change, then we probably aren’t either.
© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
When we watch the news or read the paper we may find ourselves asking: “What in the heck were they thinking?” Or we read or hear countless stories of people inflicting pain upon themselves and others and wonder “Why on earth would they do that?” And of course after even the slightest exposure to world news we hear or state: “What in the hell is wrong with people?!!!!”
We spend a lot of time worrying, wondering, questioning, and trying to understand people. We wonder how, why, and what pulled the trigger that took them to the dark side. Perhaps it is time to stop trying to understand everyone that we meet. Sometimes we are not suppose to figure them out. There are some things we are not suppose to understand.
Just because we encounter something does not mean that it is our battle to fight.
© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I have never met anyone in my life who gives preference to or who truly enjoys the company of a thief. They simply are not trustworthy. But here is the twist; thieves are not always people. Sometimes they are just “things” but these things are here to take something precious. They want our time.
These four “things” I have listed below may attempt to steal our time but we can determine their success and failure rate in pulling off the heist.
In effort to make these four things stealing our time a little bit easier to remember long after you are done reading I have listed them so that they spell out the word PATH.
(Pretty simple, eh? I thought so too.)
Addiction can, will, and does strike any class of people in any society or culture across the globe. Addiction will never discriminate. It attacks fragile humans tirelessly like the revolting beast that it is.
Addiction does not have to be drugs or alcohol which is what most of us picture when we hear the word. It could be anything. An addiction could be food, soda, cigarettes, gossiping, compulsive shopping, lying, sex, pornography or anything else one could fill the blank in with. (With shows like “My Strange Addiction” and some of the other programs on television these days, this area of addiction no longer has a border. Anything goes it seems.)
In order to protect our time and preserve our own life we have to maintain a sure and clear distance from people who are toxic. If there is no distance then they will continuously monopolize our time. (Please note that this does not mean we have to fully cut people off. In fact, we need their numbers in our phones so we know when not to answer.)
Toxic people will feast on us for as long as we grant them permission to. We just need to say “No thanks, not today!” when they bring it to us. About the same response one would have with a salesman stopping us in the kiosk area of a mall, or a telemarketer calling us on the phone. “Ohhhh, well I am not interested…. but thank you!” speaks volumes. And sometimes it will need said several times before you are heard.
The trick is to not feed into it. By not feeding into it, eventually they will get bored with us and find another victim. In fact they have to do that! For they are the energy vampires. (muahahahaha – insert evil vampire laugh here___)
Harbored wrongs are often the root of addiction. They are the root to becoming a toxic person. And it is almost impossible to harbor a wrong and not be found at some point or another playing victim.
These four things mentioned were stealing valuable time from millions of people as I typed this. These four things (alone or combined) are stealing from others as you read this. And they will still be stealing from people next week at this time or even next year.
Are any of these things stealing from you?
Time is too precious! Life is too precious! And we only get one shot at both!
© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I’ve spent twenty years of my life trying to understand alcoholism. I have gone to Alanon for families who deal with alcoholics. I’ve tried a more spiritual route such as prayer and church. I have read articles, books, and case studies.
I retired in my role as the provoker years ago. And I have exhausted myself as the martyr in recent years. Oh yes the martyrs. They are the ones who hope there is a day of awakening for the alcoholics in their life. Those that they either love or have loved.
The martyr has moments of hoping there will be a day the alcoholic feels bad for the deeds they have done. They just want to see apologies and recovery. Most of all, they want healing.
I have gone head to head with the ones who maintain the roles of being “the rescuer”. Years ago I was considered the rescuer too, so perhaps that is why their rescuing affects me like it does. I’d clean up the messes, apologize for many horrific social scenes of drunken stupor and I’d make excuses for the drunkenness all the time.
Over the course of time I got sick of being the provoker. I was tired of demanding respect, maturity, love and so forth. I got tired of telling stories of the things I would wake up to. I was tired of feeling embarrassed, mistreated, and unloved. So, I went on strike after that.
To me, the rescuers seem just as bad as the alcoholics themselves. They appear to have every excuse under the sun for the behavior of the alcoholic. Nothing is the alcoholics fault. And I mean nothing. Everything is blamed on people in the past or present days of the alcoholics life.
The rescuers claim they love their alcoholic but tough love has gone astray. They can’t find it no matter how hard they look. And they just can’t stand up to the alcoholic in effort to get them the treatment that they need.
Sometimes the alcoholic wants help but they do not have one person whom they respect to look them in the eyes and say: “Man you have a problem and you need serious help. Are you ready to get better yet? Because I can’t keep watching this. It is hurting everyone around you but mostly you!”
Questions of the day for the rescuers:
If your loved one had any other disease like Multiple Sclerosis, Cancer, Heart Disease, Kidney Disease, Liver Disease etc. and everyone around them could tell just by looking at them…..wouldn’t you try to help them?
Or would you make a bunch of excuses and blame others for the loved one not being in their best health? Would you claim other people gave them their disease? Would you say they had no disease regardless of their diagnosis?
Or would you continue to say: “Screw those people, they are all crazy. You’re just fine dear. Now I would help you but I just love you too much. And if I help you then that means I’d have to admit that I was wrong about you to all those people! So we will just keep this between us and go on about our business. Okay?”
I wrote a poem years ago in regards to people and mirrors. The flow of it was there and it just slipped from my brain to my finger tips in seconds. The words have never left me since the day it was written. It is a simple reminder to myself and others struggling to understand people in general.
God Given Mirror
I asked God for a mirror,
and He decided to give me you.
He said If I don’t like what I see,
then perhaps I have done it too.
He told me to cast no judgement,
on others when they are weak.
And that if I had nothing nice to say,
there shall be no need to speak.
He told me that you were my mirror,
what I dislike in you needs changed within me.
Because we are all one another’s mirrors
and our own worst enemy.
There is a lot of truth to what is said in this poem for the simple fact that “what we do not like in others is usually something that we do not like about ourselves”.
It may seem hard to believe it at first, but not if you really think in depth about it.
When we do not like someone…. it is because they either do something we use to do ourselves and we have attached negative feelings towards that action, or they do something we have suppressed and kept ourselves from doing.
© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
I wrote a piece a few years ago in regards to humility and wisdom going hand in hand. And boy do they ever if you think about it. I mean, they are in deed the best of friends. You can’t have a little bit or a lot of one….without having the other show up. They are just inseparable. (And the two of them together can cause quite a fuss!)
In life we will have experiences that humiliate us. Friends may humiliate us. Co-workers may humiliate us. Family may humiliate us. All in all…. people will humiliate us. ( And if they don’t we may just find some time to humiliate ourselves.😂)
We must remember however that it is only humiliation when there is truth to it. Otherwise it is just a rumor folks. And nobody gives a crap about rumors. Rumors are laughed at, blown off, and just flat out ignored. (By intelligent people they are anyway.)
When truth humiliates us we are given wisdom. After that it is up to us what we do with it. We can take that wisdom in and use it to benefit us and the situation, or we can reject it all together.
When we reject the wisdom we choose to continue on the same path and stay in the same place of ignorance. It is simply a preference to keep making the same mistakes.
What we should really do, is use the wisdom to change the situation. That in turn breaks the cycle, and that is the only way to truly move forward.
I have been thinking a lot about people using people. Whether it be to get ahead, gain information, or reap some sort of benefit it happens all of the time.
There is only one acceptable time to use someone and that is when we use them for inspiration. We should use people daily for this, and we should use people from all walks of life.
Every day I find inspiration through sharing stories with or by interacting with people. Sometimes it is something funny the kids do. It could be the cashier at a grocery store. It could be something pleasant or thought provoking and it could also be by something completely irritating. Regardless, I find it.
So, there you have it, I can now admit that I use people all the time. I never know who it will be or what word will pull the trigger, but when I see it or I hear it I tuck it away for later use. And when I get hungry, I chew on it and then I spit it out.
Do you use people the way I do?
© Angela Bininger and The Empowerer, 2009-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this websites author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Angela Bininger and The Empowerer with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
The Empoweror 