Be still and I know that I am. Even a star needs to pull in on itself in order to pulsate out. Sometimes one of the hardest actions in the world is to do nothing.
Silence.
It takes every muscle in my body.
When provoked and rightly so, the first instinct it to retaliate.
But in the long run, I’m the one who suffers.
Serena Williams attacked the judge at the US Open this weekend.
She flew off the handle.
She was mad, she thought the judge was being hard on her because she was black.
That was her past, being projected into the present, to create an unhappy future.
She was so emotional that she based what was goin on on something old in her nervous system.
An old wound.
You see the judge made the legal call.
But Serena was so emotional that she couldn't even stop herself to think for a second.
She reacted from her wound.
She knows the rules. She knows that any distraction during a time like this can be fatal.
Yet, even if she knew it, even if she cared, her lack of impulse control, her need to protect that wound, made her lose that match.
It's a fact.
Not only that, but she tried to bully that judge, to scare her.
But what do we know about bullies?
They are dumb. Not the person, but the bully behavior makes the person act like a dummy.
They are scared, so they scare others. But if the other person has more internal fortitude, if they have healed their wound and they don't feed into the bully, the bully crumbles in on themselves.
If the bully has nothing to push up against, they have to implode.
Fact.
Meditation is not just some weird thing that only wicked spiritual people do. It's a practice that you can take and apply to your everyday human life.
It actually helps you win, because most people have impulse control problems. They have wounds.
So, if you are the one who can remain still while others around you are acting out, you win in the long run.
Internal fortitude means guts; guts to care enough about yourself to protect yourself from a bully, which in the long run protects the bully because they have to suffer the consequences of their own behavior.
You can sit and listen and react to what is REALLY going on. You can stand up with your guts and sometime standing up means sitting down.
This is how the wound heals.
Fact.
The way to do this is to clean out all the things about you're personality that you don't think are part of who you are authentically.
Things, behaviors that you have developed to survive.
I have a secret: those things you developed to help you survive are turning on you and ruining your life.
Find your guts.
The ugly is not you. It's the wound you've created, the puss needs to get to the air to heal.
Once it heals, only the real you is left. Your guts — which is God, which has been in you all along.
The compass that will help you navigate a better life.
And that is when the miracle happens. You are actually listening, not projecting your past into your present to make an awful future.
Slow down. It might hurt at first to not say everything that's on your mind, but once you practice, you might even enjoy only sayin the things that actually mean something to you.
Then the words you say or don't say will match up with the authentic you to create a future different from your past.
And maybe, just maybe, others will slow down too because usually when you set a boundary with someone who has no impulse control they are so grateful because they can't do it for themselves.
Most people don't care enough about themselves to say something.
That is how you stand up to a bully and then the wound of the world begins to heal as well.