This episode walks through the realities of taking responsibility for your choices through the narrative of a personal story.
Find out more about my work: www.melindagerdungcoaching.com
Book a session with me: https://calendly.com/gerdungmelinda/coaching-session
---
Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io
Produced By White Hot
---
This episode walks through the realities of taking responsibility for your choices through the narrative of a personal story.
Find out more about my work: www.melindagerdungcoaching.com
Book a session with me: https://calendly.com/gerdungmelinda/coaching-session
---
Beat Provided By https://freebeats.io
Produced By White Hot
---
Hey my friends. A few years ago, I got really into trading on the stock market. I even invested in a one on one mentor to learn how to trade options. I saw the opportunity there and I really wanted to seize it. And I did that for like a year. And it was harder than I thought it would be. Like it definitely is a skill. And like all skills, it takes time and practice to improve. But I got to a point where I was really being pulled in a lot of different directions. Or that's how I felt anyway. And I felt like I just didn't have enough time to do everything that I wanted to do. So I thought that I should just pick one thing to focus on. And the things I was choosing between were my coaching business and trading on the stock market. And I thought I really had time to only focus on one or the other. So I chose my coaching business. That's what I feel really strongly about. I'm really passionate about helping others recover from toxic relationships. Because I've been on that road and I know how hard it is. And so it seemed that was the logical choice. Like if I had to choose between the two of the things, I should choose the one I'm most passionate about. It made total sense to me. And so when I stopped trading, I just cold turkey stopped and abandoned everything I had been doing. But I never really stopped thinking about it. It was just there spinning in the back of my mind for years. Almost like that I should be doing it, or could be doing it, or needed to be doing it. And I came to the realization that the 'not enough time' thing wasn't real. That was a false binary that I had given myself, of only being able to do one or the other. And so I decided to rekindle my options trading. So I've started slowly reviewing the materials again and getting familiar with the strategies. I used to keep trade journals so I could track my profits, and my entries and exits, and the reasoning behind things. And before I had just abandoned it, I had bought some stocks. And in my trade journal, I had recorded what I bought them at, and how many I bought, and why I was buying them at that time. So I went and looked at them now. And now, I hadn't even looked at the stocks that I own for like three years. So since I'm getting back into it, I you know, went and looked. I looked and they were all doing really terribly. I was like what the fuck? So I looked at a chart of the last four years and I saw where I entered them. And they all made sense of when I entered them and there were very clear points that should have been exit points. But because I had just abandoned it and didn't look at it for three years, I missed those exit points. The exit points that, if I had been paying attention like I had been before, I would have made some amazing money on. Instead I am massively losing money on these stocks. And it hurts so bad. Like I literally had severe chest pains from this loss. I felt so disappointed. Like oof. I wanted to go straight back to ignoring it because damn it was painful to face. Because that loss was on me. That was a consequence of the choice that I made-- the choice to just stop paying any attention to it. And now I have to face those consequences. And face the fact that the decision I made wasn't a good one. And that stings a lot. And I'm not being mean to myself about it. I'm not beating myself up about it. But I am owning that it is on me. I made that choice and now I have to live with the consequences of it. This is something that we end up having to grapple with in leaving toxic relationships or actually even just realizing that we are or were in a toxic relationship to begin with. I ignored plenty of red flags to get into my abusive marriage. I had been groomed for that relationship from my own family growing up and from the cult that I grew up in. But I still had responsibility for being in that marriage. I still said 'I do' at the altar. And while, yes, there were a lot of factors that contributed to me ending up in that marriage, I still owned a piece. I, notwithstanding those factors, still do have free will. And I still chose that relationship. And I had to take responsibility for that. And realizing that that was my responsibility was a real bitter pill to swallow. Taking responsibility for your actions can really suck sometimes. It can be really painful. is so much easier to try to blame others or to blame external circumstances. But it completely ignores the fact that while there may be other factors at play, at least one factor is still our choices. And the alternative to believing that you are responsible for your actions and your choices, is believing that you are completely helpless and at the whims and mercy of other people and external forces. It is a very powerless place to be. It is a frightening place to be to believe that you have no control in your own life. So, while taking responsibility for our actions in our choices might really fucking hurt sometimes, it also provides us the greatest freedom and the greatest control of our own lives. So when I say 'I do' to someone I wasn't 100% sure about and that goes south in a real bad way. That is a lesson: a painful one, but a valuable one. When I ignore my stocks on the stock market and lose a bunch of money, that is a painful life lesson. These painful life lessons give us the ability to learn and make different choices in the future. So while it can be tempting to blame external forces exclusively, and it's certainly less painful to do so, I would invite you to step into the freedom of taking responsibility for your own actions instead. To really evaluate your own decisions and learn from the things that are painful. And the one caution I would extend to you as you're doing this is that you make sure you are only taking responsibility for the things that actually fall under your purview. Sometimes abuse survivors get stuck in taking too much responsibility in the sense that they try to take responsibility for things that are outside of their control. There is actually a whole podcast episode on that topic. So if you think you might be doing a little bit of that I suggest you review episode 44 responsibility versus blame. Alright, my friends, until next time, be well