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My friends, I hope you're all doing really well. So I listen to this radio show in the morning sometimes and they do this segment called Hot Topic where basically they host a debate on a topic and they have listeners call in and give their opinions on this hot topic. So the topic on this particular day was lateness. And the caller that they had got the hot topic from says that she has this friend and this friend is always really late to everything. And she hates it and she thinks it is so inappropriate and disrespectful, on and on, you know. And the caller's husband thinks she is overreacting and that she needs to lower her expectations. And a lot of people had very strong opinions about this. A lot of people called in to this hot topic and most of them sided with the caller and said that it's so rude to be late, and that the caller should talk to her friend about it and like have her not be late. I have a very different take on this. The actual problem here is that the caller is not taking responsibility for her own time. Your friend cannot waste your time without your participation in that. The friend can't force you to wait around for her. She was choosing to do that. And this is a perfectly acceptable place to set a boundary it would be appropriate to tell your friend look, I love you. And I know you are usually late. I'll wait for you for 15 minutes but after that, I'm just going to leave and then if she's more than 15 minutes late you would leave. Right that's what setting a boundary is. And if you want a deep dive into boundaries, episode two of the podcast will give you that so if boundaries are a little bit fuzzy for you, go and check out that episode; it will give you exactly what you need in order to set and enforce proper boundaries in your life. why I say that the caller is not taking responsibility here is because she cannot control her friend. Right we can never control other adults. And we get into trouble when we start thinking that we need someone to be different than they are in order for us to feel okay. That is handing over the responsibility for our feelings to someone else. And that's going to feel chaotic and out of control every single time because you can't control other people. And it isn't healthy to try to control other people. All of us who have been in abusive relationships know what it's like to be with someone that wants to control you. It's awful. So why would we want to do that to anyone else? If you hand over the responsibility of your emotions, of your feelings to other people, that is a recipe to feel like ass most of the time. The way to have the most peace in your life is to take radical responsibility for your own life and for your own feelings. So if you don't want to waste time waiting around for someone, don't do that. Don't participate in that. You do get to choose what you participate in. And I think the reason so many people don't do this is because it's uncomfortable. but uncomfortable in an unfamiliar way. It's uncomfortable to set boundaries with your friends if you aren't used to doing that. You might be used to the discomfort of waiting around for your late friend, but you aren't familiar with the discomfort of setting boundaries for said friend so you default to the most comfortable discomfort. And that's normal. Our brains are wired to prefer the familiar over the unfamiliar. Even if the familiar feels like total ass. But we have the ability to consciously choose to go with a new path. We can choose a new type of discomfort that helps us live the kind of lives that we want to live that live that that leads us to being true to ourselves. And the other piece of this is not resisting reality. Like it is kind of crazy to know that your friend is always late. And then each subsequent time to pretend like oh maybe this will be the time. Maybe this time she will be a radically different person and be on time. Like that is total fantasy. And part of taking responsibility is telling yourself the truth and sometimes giving up the fantasy hurts. But in the long run, it's so much better than clinging to the fantasy and then getting upset when reality doesn't match the fantasy. When you confront the reality head on, you can decide how you want to show up for it. You can say my friend is always late. How do I want to be in this situation? What am I gonna do? It takes responsibility for what you can control and stops giving it up to other people. I'm telling you doing this will change your life in the best way possible. So much of our suffering is self imposed. And when you start taking radical responsibility for what is in your life, that is when you can start to make some real changes. That is when you start to live the life you want to live and in my opinion ,having done life both ways, hands down taking radical responsibility is the best way. and a word of caution here for my fellow abuse survivors because I know we have a tendency to do this. Do not confuse responsibility with blame. Responsibility asks, How am I contributing to this situation? What are my options? What can I do? It is what allows you to see that waiting for your friend is a choice and allows you to see that you have other options. Blame, particularly self blame, assumes that you deserve to have your friend be late on some level that it is because your time isn't worthy. That it is because of you on some level that she is late. It is feeling bad and throwing a pity party for yourself. And it doesn't allow you to see what your options are ,because in the eyes of blame, there aren't any options other than you not being you. And blaming outward assumes your friend is late because there's something wrong with her. She is disrespectful, disorganized, whatever, she's a bad person. It is all her fault and if she was just different than everything would be good. And again, blame doesn't show options and generally has this air of powerless ness to it. If you are thinking in terms of blame, the situation will feel really impossible like you just won't see options. And so this is how you can do kind of like a gut check for if you are sitting in responsibility or blame. Responsibility equals power and equals options. Blame equals powerlessness. this topic could totally be its own podcast episode itself. Maybe I will do that because there's a lot that can be said on that. but if you have any questions on this or you would like to work through a situation that you're experiencing in your own life, you can use the link in the show notes to schedule a session with me Alright, until next time, my friends be well
