At War With The Chameleon

It’s a characteristic that once served me well.  As a young man living on the streets of Colorado, it was beneficial to my survival to be able to blend in with my surroundings, to take on the characteristics of those around me in order to fit, to not draw too much attention to myself.  It worked for me as a child, when needing to avoid the severe and abusive punishments doled out by my parents, those times when hiding behind the couch and becoming, for all intents and purposes, invisible, was in my best interest.

It wasn’t a physical change that took place (though even now I can’t be sure that statement is true), but a way of shifting my demeanor to mirror those around me.  It felt like absorption, as if I was drawing in not only the mannerisms of those I wished to blend with, but the thought processes, the emotional state, everything.

This was not a characteristic that I could will into action. It was, and is, an ingrained part of who I am.  It’s not a con, not intended to bilk anyone out of money, or possessions, or their identity.  However, many times it cost me my own identity. It was such a part of my amorphous identity at the time, I did not know how to turn it off.  I believe that because of this, all of my intimate relationships were negatively affected by it; as if the facade was erected, and once there, could not be deconstructed.  And so I was trapped behind an assumed identity for the duration…which meant that it lasted until either my partner could not face being around me any longer, for they didn’t truly know who I was, or I would grow weary of maintaining that particular charade, and break it off.

Several years ago, I “went underground” in my life, withdrawing from everyone and everything, trying to root out the core person, my fundamental identity.  It’s been very exhausting peeling those layers, all of which had accumulated over the previous twenty-odd years.

During a conversation with a dear friend of mine recently, she also divulged a similar thing about herself.  As adults, though, the ability to “blend” sometimes became something more destructive.  We felt we had to protect ourselves from others for fear of unintentionally absorbing others’ emotions, behaviors, etc.  This was an awakening moment for me, as I felt that I was perhaps the only person in existence who lived this way.  Now I know there are others.  I recognize them almost immediately, and must struggle to avoid them or become endangered by that old pattern.  The pattern I worked so hard at overcoming.  Because I lived as a chameleon for so long, I recognized the assumed colors of other chameleons.

Perhaps that’s why I was so negatively affected by a so-called friends’ recent betrayal of what I had felt was a deep and growing friendship.  I was taken in by a shape-shifter exactly as I used to be all those years ago.  And maybe I still harbor some of those tendencies.  If so, I’m much more aware of an urge to fall into those patterns again, and swerve away from them if at all possible.  If not, I disconnect from whatever situation is at hand, and walk away.  It no longer serves to be that person.  There is no need.  Nor do I cultivate relationships with those who are still embroiled with their own wars with the chameleon.

Yes, I recognize it as a survival tactic.  But no, I no longer want to have to resort to it in my life.

So let it be written.  So let it be done.

The Plastic Age

Liars begin by imposing upon others, but end up deceiving only themselves.

We’ve all known one, or perhaps more than one.  A person who holds no compunction against deceiving others for their own gain, feel no remorse for taking from those they’ve cultivated as “friends” without giving back, and when their nefarious and ill-perceived “needs” are met, walk away without a fare-thee-well.

We may have one of those in our families, or in our circle of friends.  You know them easily because you have never been able to trust them, even if you have never given a name to that feeling of unease you get whenever you interact with them.

There are Deceivers who are so adept at their cunning and craft, you may find yourself being friends with one only to later learn that you were duped in the most egregious ways.

How does this happen?

Of course, we question ourselves first, wondering if it’s some basic flaw in our own character that causes us to trust these plastic people.  Questions that come to us sound like: How could I have been so stupid as to trust them? Or, Why didn’t I see this coming?

Try not to be so hard on yourself, for it’s not necessarily a flaw in you that was taken in by these deceptive souls.  Hell, they may not even know they’re doing it — which is not justifying their actions, mind you, but stating that some of them are so good at it, they’ve effectively deceived themselves as well as others.  They’re not completely innocent, though.  They intrinsically know that their behavior is wrong, self-destructive, and non-productive, but they’ve done it for so long, they know no other way.  It frightens them to consider trying to heal themselves, changing this flaw in themselves.

Sooner or later, though, they’re found out.  And maybe they’re exposed for what they truly are.  Some are so adept at their own con, they simply move on to others when they run out of options with one particular group they’ve cultivated and deceived.  If we learn the signs, we can avoid the heartbreak when their house of cards come a-tumbling down.  There are subconscious and moral implications of deceiving someone: it’s quite simply wrong.

Most lies aren’t detected because people usually give others what’s called the truth bias. People are seen as inherently honest. That’s what many of us are taught from childhood to believe.  Even after we’ve been deceived numerous times, we tend to give the Deceiver the benefit of the doubt.  Liars know this, and they exploit this trait as often as they can.

Some signs that might alert you to the fact that someone you know is trying to “get over” on you (to borrow a phrase from my grandparents. It’s an American phrase.  In Britain, it’s commonly said “to have someone off”), are:

• Ingratiating themselves to you very quickly. Many Deceivers will try to insert themselves into your trust, make themselves indispensable as soon as they can…for the closer they are to you, the more information they can glean for their own means.  This trait can manifest in many different forms.  One I’ve found that many use is the “ego stroke” variety of ingratiation.  Oh, you’re the best writer I’ve ever met! And while their comment might be based in truth, they feel that by saying it (often repeatedly), they’re creating a nebulous “need” in the other person, whether they truly believe what they’re saying or not.
• Portraying themselves as someone in “need” of help, but unwilling to come right out and ask for assistance.  For instance, drawing attention to the fact that they don’t have enough money to buy food by alluding repeatedly to their empty refrigerator or bare cupboard, but never asking to borrow the money to help themselves.  In this way, they hope to solicit another’s help without putting themselves at the mercy of others.  A thought pattern that might exemplify this would be: If I can get someone to offer help to me, then it’s a gift and not a loan. In this way, the Deceiver can avoid having to pay back the kindness given to them.  This works particularly well on those who are “givers” by nature, and who, by their own kindness, are compelled to help those who are perceived as less fortunate than themselves.  Often this is exploited by a Deceiver unrelentingly.
• Creating a false persona. Many times this false persona involves a situation in which the Deceiver was a victim, whether by circumstance or of their own design or creation.  The situation is then used as their “story,” which serves to again solicit assistance without coming right out and asking for it.  I call this the “woe is me” deception.
• Malingering. This one is pretty self-explanatory.  I’ve encountered several Deceivers who have used some form of illness to avoid working or supporting themselves.  In this way, they create a false need of assistance by inaction, when in truth, this is a very intricate and complex form of deception.  The Deceiver must work harder to maintain the lie.
• “Usery.” This is a word I borrowed from the dictionary.  The original word is “usury,” whose definition is included in the link. My definition is: verb – (1)An act of manipulation, using others’ good intentions, friendship, or trust as a means to further one’s agenda or as a way to get what one wants, usually to the detriment of those being used. (2)The negative use of another’s emotions to manipulate for one’s own gain, usually for self-serving reasons.
• Lying. Deceivers are accomplished liars.  The average person cannot usually tell the lie from the truth without training.  However, eventually the lie is exposed, either by accident or by an innate need on the part of the Deceiver to be found out.  It is at the point of discovery in which the Deceiver finds that they must move on and find others to practice their deceptions on.  This is evidenced by a person who cannot seem to maintain relationships for any length of time.  (A warning sign)  While this manifestation can also be attributed to an attachment disorder, more commonly it’s a flag to others that the Deceiver has “overstayed their welcome” in someone’s life and has either been found out, or is in danger of being found out, and they move on to avoid being exposed.   This happened recently in my world, and in comparing notes with others who also knew this person, it was discovered that all of us had been deceived for more than a year.  The Deceiver, perhaps intuiting this, “disappeared” suddenly.  A Deceiver’s survival skills are highly developed and they can detect such things much sooner than others.

Unfortunately, we all have experienced the drama of a Deceiver, probably more than once.  And sadly, many of those deceived tend to blame themselves for being blind to the deception rather than taking a stand and confronting the offending party, by placing blame on themselves instead of where blame should truly lie.

Pronoia

Excerpted from Rob Brezny’s book, Pronoia Is The Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings:

FLIP-FLOP THE TRAUMATIC IMPRINT

Beauty and Truth Laboratory researcher Artemisia had just begun menstruating, and was suffering from debilitating cramps. Massive doses of ibuprofen were not relieving the distress, so she went to her regular acupuncturist, Dr. Lily Ming, to get relief.

Dr. Ming had Artemisia lie down on the table and proceeded to insert 10
needles in her belly and hand and ear. Then Dr. Ming introduced a treatment that Artemisia was unfamiliar with: She lightly pounded the nail of Artemisia’s big toe with a small silver hammer for a few minutes.

“Why are you doing that?” Artemisia asked.

“It is good for the uterus,” the doctor replied.

Indeed, Artemisia’s cramps dramatically diminished as the doctor thumped, and in the days to come they did not recur.

After the session, as Artemisia prepared to leave, the usually taciturn
Ming started up a conversation. Artemisia was surprised, but listened attentively as Dr. Ming made a series of revelations. The most surprising was Dr. Ming’s description of a traumatic event from her own childhood.

During the military occupation of her native Manchuria, a province of China, she was forced to witness Japanese soldiers torturing people she loved. Their primary atrocity was using hammers to drive bamboo shoots through their victims’ big toes.

The moral of the story: Dr. Ming has accomplished the heroic feat of reversing the meaning of her most traumatic imprint. She has turned a symbol of pain into a symbol of healing.

To read other features from Rob Brezny’s book, go HERE.

To buy PRONOIA IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARANOIA:
How the Whole World s Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings, the book from which the above piece is excerpted, go to Amazon and Powells.

Enhancement

During a conversation with one of my coaching clients today, a discussion ensued about how we might perceive our “true purpose” in the world. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this same conversation, though with numerous and varied others over the past fifteen years or so.

It seems that we mortals are on the neverending journey to discover who we are, what we’re meant to do, and how we go about learning the answers we seek.

Some ask the questions, but never take it beyond that. Perhaps they’re not quite ready to take the next step.

There are those who might be afraid of the answer to the question: What is my purpose? For what if they find out, and realize there’s nothing more to know? Can that happen?
I think not.

It reminds me of a “Friends” episode where Joey and Chandler are trying to help Ross get over his ex-wife.

Ross: You know what the scariest part is? What if there’s only one woman for everybody, y’know? I mean what if you get one woman- and that’s it? Unfortunately in my case, there was only one woman for her…

Joey: What are you talking about ‘one woman’? That’s like saying there’s only one flavor of ice cream for you. Lemme tell you something, Ross. There’s lots of flavors out there. There’s Rocky Road, and Cookie Dough, and Bing! Cherry Vanilla. You could get ‘em with Jimmies, or nuts, or whipped cream! This is the best thing that ever happened to you! You got married, you were, like, what, eight? Welcome back to the world! Grab a spoon!

Ross: I honestly don’t know if I’m hungry or horny.

Chandler: Stay out of my freezer!

Substitute the word “purpose” for “woman” in the above dialogue. What if we are never meant to know what our true purpose on the planet is to be? What if we’ve already served it?

I like to relate the story of a spiritual advisor of mine who knew that I loved to do astrological charts for people. She received a letter from a woman she didn’t know regarding the woman’s daughter, who was depressed and had attempted suicide more than several times. This was before the plethora of depression drugs were readily available. My advisor handed the letter to me.

“Maybe you could work up the daughter’s chart and see what comes up.”

I read the letter then looked at her. I was in my twenties and pretty sure I knew everything about everything. Turns out I didn’t. I took on the challenge, though. When I learned the daughter’s birthdate, I knew immediately that I was meant to draw her chart, for we were born on the same day in the same year. And when I sat down to do her chart, the information was just there for me to interpret. A week later, I sent the packet to the east coast, and to the young woman’s mother.

Three months later, my advisor came to me with another letter. This one was written to me. In it, she thanked me profusely, for the information that I’d sent had so resonated with her daughter, the young woman snapped out of her depression and had started showing interest in living again. The change, her mother said, was dramatic and remarkable. I was very pleased that I could assist someone in realizing their own worth. However, the greater question that came out of that for me, and which was an awakening and defining moment in my own life, was:

What if, by assisting that young woman, I had just altered the course of her life? And what if by altering the course of her life, she goes on to assist someone else do something remarkable in the world, and that action influences someone else, who will grow up to have a child who becomes another Mother Theresa? So what if my sole purpose on the planet had been that moment of creating that chart for that young woman?

The doors of possibility flew open in my mind and in my heart. The “what if…?” question has become one of the most important tools to me now, as a writer. But that moment has stayed with me.

We may never know what our actions and words might create ten, twenty, fifty years from now. We are all stones dropped into the stillest body of water…our ripples reach ever outward.

Today, while planting flowers on my patio, a word floated through my thoughts like a lazy, springtime bee.

Enhance.

One of my roles in this life, I realized, is to help others enhance their work, their thoughts, their own lives in some meaningful way. What they do with my assistance is not the focus. I must merely make my self available to them in some way.

This is a new realization for me…one I want to explore more fully.

Conspiracy of Memory

Several years ago, I decided to catch up with people I had known in the past. High school friends, old roommates whom I really liked, people who made some kind of impact on my life. And for whatever reasons, our paths diverged, taking us in different directions.

With the history of exceptionally toxic relationships in the family I was born into, I knew that any family I had in my adult years would be those I created from scratch. Unfortunately, I did not work hard enough to keep all of those people in my life. That’s what influenced my decision to proactively find those who once-upon-a-time meant so much to me and reconnect with them, if possible.

It has been a decidedly interesting journey.

On Oprah’s show yesterday, her topic was “friends,” which she said coincided with the latest edition of “O” magazine (on newstands now!). In a moment of synchronicity that made my jaw drop in surprise, she featured two of my former clients and friends on her televised show: Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova. It was awesome to see them both together on stage, talking about the trajectory of their individual lives, and how their friendship has endured. Seeing them (gosh, they haven’t changed in twenty years!) brought up a LOT of very fond memories of my own past, not only in having the privilege of working with these two amazing women, but all the things I’ve accomplished in my life.

Today I am having lunch with a former best friend, roommate, and colleague, Dean.  Dean and I were inseparable for ten years. He was what I had always wished my brothers could have been to me.

I don’t remember how our connection was allowed to fall by the wayside, but it did. There was no fight or anything like that. Just…life. So I googled him a few weeks ago, asking if he was free for lunch. And so here we are.

This morning during the hour commute to work, it struck me that it’s been nearly fifteen years since I’ve seen him or spoken with him. Then I realized just how much had transpired in my own life during that time, how different everything is now as compared to then. All of the things I’ve learned. The tragedies, the sorrow, the laughter, and the joy.

It has been a season of remembrance, a conspiracy of memory to help me recall all that has brought me to this moment, to realize how truly grateful I am for this life and the people in it. All of those “family seeds” sown ten, fifteen, even twenty years ago, are calling out for harvesting, gathering that energy and bringing it into the moment. I am eager for this work.

I’m A Little Teapot

Over on Rachel’s blog, she has a recurring theme about emptying ourselves out, clearing away the debris and the things that block us from true joy and happiness. She lives it on a daily basis, and while it’s wonderful to behold someone who believes in their happiness enough to be able to radically create emptiness in her life so that she can be fulfilled, it’s also a scary thing for those of us who have been taught that “things=happiness.” That’s my background.

My mother’s house, filled with 14 kids, assorted dogs, cats, and other flora and fauna, was also filled with stuff. Figurines, trinkets, baubles…every available surface was crammed with these things. Her closet was filled more clothes than she could ever wear in a lifetime. Her way of showing affection to her children, if at all, was to spend money. It’s how she justified never giving physical demonstrations of her love…and factor that I believe caused me to think that she did not love her children, nor herself.

Having grown up in that atmosphere, I have been known to hoard stuff that I haven’t used in years.

“Just in case,” I would tell myself in shame, but away it would go, into a closet, onto a shelf, shoved in some corner never to be seen again.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about getting rid of it.  All of it.

I’ve been pondering (he he) on it for over a month, and yesterday, I finally got started. My home office takes up part of my ginormous living room, so that’s where the emptying began. I got so focused on my task, several hours went by before I realized it, but when I looked up, there was 50% less crap cluttering the place up.

It felt great.

For me, baby steps will be the progression, as I am not comfortable “just doing it” like others might be. So I am akin to the little teapot in the song…just tip me over and pour me out.

Today the living room, tomorrow the world!

The Eyes of Truth

We make decisions.

Ultimately, we are responsible for those decisions.  Not our parents.  Not our neighbors.  Not our significant others.

I spent many years blaming.  I felt that the things, the perceived bad things, shouldn’t be my fault, and therefore, someone else’s. And so I looked for another to lay blame upon.  Parents are a good target, usually.  So are siblings.  Then there are politicians and other faceless entities on whom we can lay blame guilt-free.

But it always comes back to us.  To me, the individual who exercised free will and made a decision.  If that decision doesn’t work out, who is to blame?  My parents?  No.  Me.  I am the reason it did not work out.  Why be embarrassed?   Why try to cover up?  There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes.

Blame often stems from embarrassment.  Sometimes from a false sense of entitlement.

Someone I once knew was a chronic shoplifter.  She often went so far as to use her four year old daughter in her shoplifting schemes, filling her daughter’s coat pockets with merchandise, believing that 1) she deserved those items and shouldn’t have to pay for them, and 2) that no one would search a four year old.

I once asked her why she did it, why she endangered herself and her daughter in that way.  She blamed her family, her parents…everyone but herself. It was not her fault, she said.  She also had a pretty serious eating disorder in which she hoarded food. This she also blamed on others.  A few years ago, she underwent gastric bypass surgery to curb her uncontrolled weight gain, but she never addressed the root causes for that gain.  Several years later, she is still overweight, still shoplifting, still intrinsically unhappy in her life, enough so that her behavior has only worsened, not changed.   She has not learned to look in the mirror and address the deep-seated reasons behind her decisions. She rarely admits that there’s a problem at all, choosing instead to continue on her not-so-merry way.

We all know someone who makes such decisions for themselves, in spite of the fact that those choices are not good choices.  And the word “good” isn’t a judgment.  It’s a fact.  We know when choices are good for us, for our lives change, our demeanor brightens, we feel good.  Decisions that are detrimental to us create inner feelings of ill will and shame that grow, mutate, cause us to make even worse decisions, compounding the original wrong turn.

Can we learn to change our decision making process?

Absolutely.

Only we know what’s truly “good” for us.

I knew a young man who lost his car, his apartment, many of his belongings, and eventually his friends, due to his choices.  He chose to party, to consort with those who wished him harm, and his choices created his monastic life.  Which he hated.  He called upon his friends to “help” him, by insisting that they go out of their way to drive him to wherever he happened to be staying that week.  “Floating” he called it.  “I’m floating this week.  Can you drop me at so-and-so’s place?”  “I’m floating this month, can you buy me some food? I will pay you back.”

He never paid anyone back.

Eventually, those he called on to help him got tired of supporting him, tired of enabling his bad choices and began to avoid him. This young man imposed his choices on others, a subtle and manipulative version of blame.  Rather than accept the fact that he had made those choices, he ignored them, calling himself a victim of circumstance.  Circumstance did not make his decisions. He did. He complained loudly when his friends were no longer available.  But instead of changing his choices, he merely found others to impose upon.

If we are not paying attention, we can fall under the machinations of such individuals.  If we are not secure in our sense of self-responsibility, we can find ourselves enabling such people by supplying them with the things they lost due to their own decisions.  Is it up to us to gauge whether someone’s decisions are bad?  No.  They make their choices for their own reasons.  However, it is also not our responsibility to support them in their decisions if we determine that those decisions are harmful, non-beneficial.

I fell severely ill a couple years ago.  At first, I felt that I was a victim, that I had not brought illness down upon myself, but that it was visited upon me, like a modern-day Job.  Now, in retrospect, I see that my lifestyle choices led to those illnesses. I accept responsibility for those choices, and have since changed them, realizing that EVERYTHING I do impacts my life in some way.  It’s not my parent’s fault.  It’s not my siblings fault. It’s not God’s fault.

It was, and always will be, my choices that create my reality.  I have the endless opportunity to change the choices I make.  To recreate my life in the way that I want it.   I am PAYING ATTENTION.  I am ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY.  Not everyone is in a place in their thinking to be able to do that.  Not everyone wants to.  That is also a choice.

Blessed Bee!

No, this isn’t a post about Holy Bees, though that puts a funny visual in my head.

However, it IS a post about being blessed. Every once in awhile, it helps to stop and acknowledge the specific gratitude we feel in our lives. Some might consider it “smelling the roses,” except it’s only March 1st and there ain’t nary a rose to be found outdoors. Those store-bought kind just don’t have the same purdy perfume as ones found in the neighborhood. Of course, the store-bought kind also don’t have bees. Which is a good thing, especially when you’re sticking your entire face into them to sniff. But I digress.

Today has been a truly blessed day, and it has given me pause. And so, in honor of this energy moving through my universe, here are the items I’m truly grateful for, in no particular order:

+ My dogs. They are the best pups a human could ever associate with. They teach me things I need to learn like humility, grace, and how to be goofy without self-judgment. They’ve taught me a few other things, as well, that might be better left unsaid.

+ Friends. They are the family I’ve chosen to share my life with, and I am eternally grateful for their presence on earth, and try to show that to them every day in some way.

+ Writer friends. They’re the motivation for writing every day, and for wanting to be the best writer I possibly can. I do many things with them in mind that cause me to challenge my own perceived boundaries, and I’m a better man for it.

+ Today. After a long winter, today dawned clear and warm…71 degrees. It reminds me of how the earth cycles, and shows me that even in the depths of winter, there is always the promise of Spring.

+ Teachers. Not necessarily the ones found in the hallowed halls of learning institutions (but blessed are we for them as well!), but for the everyday teachers who hold a mirror up to our behavior and actions so that we may see ourselves as others’ see us…and learn from it. I find this especially true with the wonderful clients I get to spend time with each day. As students of the cosmos, we are also teachers. And vice versa.

+ Health. After all that has transpired for me medically, it is an amazing thing to awaken each day feeling healthy and hale. I’ve lost nearly 50% of the weight I intend to lose by my birthday in June, and I approach my workouts with enthusiasm and passion, like I do many things. It is truly a blessing to feel human and alive again and looking forward to each day.

+ Mental Health. It’s hard to feel blessed when one hasn’t the mental ability to see the true joys in the world around us. Having a healthy outlook goes a long way to helping us feel like integral parts of our world.

+ I’ve finally gotten to a comfortable place financially where I don’t worry about where money’s going to come from, nor whether there’ll be enough to feed the pups, or myself. When I’m in such a position, I tend to make much better choices in my life, and that’s a feeling that can’t be traded for anything.

As I type this post, I realize that there are so many things that are blessings in my world, it would take much more space than this site would allow. So to all other things, know that I acknowledge you and thank you for blessing my presence on earth.

Just Sayin’…

So many people need you to behave in a certain way for them to feel good. They condemn you for your selfishness. “How dare you be so selfish as to follow what makes you feel good? You should follow what makes us feel good.”

At an early age, you were convinced that you weren’t smart enough, and that somebody else should make the decisions… You could not live in this culture during the times of your life without getting a huge amount of information relative to that, just in the way people respond to the things you do and say.

Toxicity

If the people you spend the most time with are inspiring, supportive, encouraging, and they demonstrate qualities you want to emulate – great, you are on the right track.

If not, it’s up to you to do something about it. Life is too short to put up with other people’s pity parties, bitch-and-moan marathons, and oh-woe-is-me clubs.

In the past year, I’ve done a lot of soul-searching about what it means to feel happy, secure, and healthy in one’s lifetime. The analogy that keeps coming up is the illness I succumbed to in 2006. Being so deeply physically ill could be a metaphor for the same illness of the spirit.

The health of our spirit directly reflects on the types of relationships we maintain in our lives, not only with others, but with ourselves. And if our relationship with ourself is filled with self-loathing or inner chatter that is non-constructive, that will dictate the types of relationships we attract to us. Certainly we all know people, either acquaintances or friends, who seem to always attract the same unhealthy relationships in their lives. They seem hell-bent on finding every so-called “lowlife” on the planet, yet remain hopeful that “this one will be the one.” This faulty way of thinking can also seep over into our other relationships and we may not know it until we, too, become spiritually ill. Families are a perfect example of this.

A woman I used to know was afflicted with a sort-of cancer of the soul at a very young age. Over time, she absorbed so much self-hate that she first nearly killed herself with drugs and alcohol (as I tried to do in my younger years), and when that didn’t work, proceeded to gorge herself with food to replace the feelings of well-being that she instinctively knew she was missing. It wasn’t until a doctor told her that if she didn’t do something about her weight, her heart would fail. So she opted for gastric bypass surgery. At well over 350 pounds, it was a last-ditch effort.

She had the surgery (insurance paid for most of it). She spent more than a decade piling the weight on, but found an easy answer for removing it. She never addressed the reasons why she had gained all the weight. Her initial weight loss was tremendous. Everyone could tell that her overall health seemed to be improving, except…

Her eating habits did not change. Inside her was still that voice that was poisoning her, sabotaging her efforts. She had the surgery back in 2004. By now she should be a slim and trim 180 pounds or so…or at least that was her target weight at the time.

I happened to see her a few weeks ago at a restaurant where I was lunching with a client. I nearly didn’t recognize her, for she’d ballooned back up to nearly 300 pounds. As we hadn’t parted on the best of terms, I did not speak to her that day, but it was apparent from the weight re-gain that she had continued to surround herself with people who were not healthy for her. Her inner chatter continued to be destructive. This encounter made me very sad. No matter how much one wants to help another person better their life, it will never happen if that person does not have a healthy relationship with themself. Somewhere along the line, she had decided that she was “the victim,” and so attracted the types of people who would exploit her and try to destroy her.

There are many people like that.

In order to maintain our own healthy spirit, we must be very decisive and obstinate about the types of people we choose to allow into our lives. If there’s someone in your life who is constantly making demeaning comments about others or themselves, it’s time to let that person know what the boundaries are for that sort of behavior. If that does not inspire them to reevaluate their destructive speech, cut them loose. The longer you allow them to poison the very air around you, the more insidiously infected you become by their toxic personality. And it could be very subtle…the worst kind. But you have to make the decision to maintain the health of your spirit, or allow your spiritual health to become compromised.