© 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.
They may look good. They may act good. They may even smell good. But it doesn’t always mean they are.
They may look happy, educated, or wealthy. But it doesn’t always mean that they are.
They may seem cool, fun, driven, laid-back and content. But it doesn’t mean that they are.
They may look the part, dress the part, and even act the part. But it doesn’t mean they are the best candidate for what we desire to accomplish. Perhaps someone else would do a better job.
With all of that being said…. the opposite is also true.
They may look dull, boring, and lifeless. They may appear to lack direction and creativity. They may seem negative, empty, or listless. But it doesn’t mean that they are.
They may even look poor, beaten down, or used up. But it doesn’t mean that they are.
They may look like they are ready to be tossed in the trash. But it doesn’t mean that we should.
Looks are so deceiving my friends!
© 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.
We have to stay away from the Negative Nancy’s and the Debbie Downers. They will steal things from us that may take years or never for us to restore.
These thieves I mention, are energy vampires. And they will suck us dry if we let them. But fortunately we have a choice! So let’s choose wisely and protect our harmonious bubbles. Shall we?
© 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.
Money does not buy us the things that truly matter in life. It never has….and it never will.
© 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.
There will always be those people in the world that no matter what we do or how hard we try, we will never have their respect. And that is okay. It is out of our control. We can not force someone to respect us.
Instead, we should only worry about what we can control and that is whether or not we allow others to disrespect us. (We are in charge here! We decide our worth. Hooray!)
No matter who you are, you do not deserve to be disrespected. Period. It does not matter who it is. We never have to agree with someone to be respectful and show compassion. And if we aren’t getting those…… it is up to us to change that. Only we can.
We set the bar for what we are worth. If we aren’t getting the respect and love we deserve then perhaps it is time to change our price-tag. There is no need to mark ourselves down to a close out price. We are worth more than that.
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.
The Empoweror 