Love The Ones You Hate

Hate is ugly.

Hate is unhealthy.

“But man, he/she is such an asshole.”

They did this to me.

They did that to me.

They make my life hard.

“I hate them.”

It’s Time To Re-write The Narrative

Just to be clear, my approach does not to take away from whatever they did to you, or continue to do to you. It is to look at the situation from the other side of the coin.

What if you were able to take the negative and make it a positive?

What if you could take the hate and learn to love?

The most important thing you can get out of this article is:

“Life is not what happens to you, it is what you do with it.”

If you want to dwell on yesterday, go ahead. It won’t get you anywhere, but, be my guest. The more you look backwards the less you are looking forward. I can’t remember who says this, but there is a reason the windshield is big and the review mirror is small.

Focus on the future, not the past.

And how do you do that Mr. Smarty Pants?

I’m glad you asked.

Step #1

Take the negative from yesterday, and focus on the growth it gave you for today. Focus on how much better you are today because of what you had to overcome yesterday.

They taught you something.

It exposed a weakness.

They broke you down.

If it wasn’t for that, you wouldn’t have been able to build up stronger.

You would still have that weakness, and not even know it was there.

But now do.

Thanks to them.

Value the relationship for what you gained from it. Just because it was not intended to be positive doesn’t mean you can’t make it positive.

Go back to 7th grade math, or whenever you learn this stuff, and think of it like an Absolute Value: the distance from zero. -10 and 10 are both 10 units away from 0. The value is 10. This person may be a -10 on your “life” line, but they are an Absolute Value of 10. You got 10 out of that relationship, even if they gave it to you negatively.

Still with me?

Ok, less with the math analogy and more with some hippy, mental stuff.

Step #2

Sit down. Close your eyes, and imagine the person(s) you hate. Just look at them. They aren’t saying anything, they aren’t doing anything. It is just you and them, in a room, looking at each other.

Tell them why you hate them.

You don’t need to yell. You don’t need to scream.

Just look, and talk.

After you have told them everything, let it sit in the air for a minute. Give it time to sink in.

Now walk over to them.

Put your arms around them.

And give them a hug.

Tell them, “I love you.”

Put the image of love and loving them in your mind. That’s where all of this hate comes from, and it’s where you can turn it around.

Every time you are feeling the negative, hateful feelings, just imagine hugging them, telling them you love them. Eventually the hate will recede, love will fill the void, and you can start using the windshield again.

Does this sound hippy dippy? Absolutely.

Does this work? Absolutely.

Try it and tell me it doesn’t. I dare you.

I triple dog dare you.

The Power Of Your Mind

You control your mind. Your mind does not control you.

Have a thought you don’t want to have? Don’t. Think of something else. Put another image in your head, put another thought in your head. Flip the script.

Your brain is a muscle, the more you use it the way you want it to produce, the more it produces for you.

Want to be more positive, think positive thoughts. Want to love more, think more loving thoughts. 

The more you practice the more you produce.

By thinking about the negative and the hate, you are not only building up your “poor me” muscles, you are giving that person power over you. Remember, the more you practice, the more you produce. 

That works with negative thoughts just as much as positive ones.

What do you want to produce?

Love, power, strength, and resilience?

Or weakness, fragility, and powerlessness?

It sounds like a stupid question doesn’t it? But people choose the latter ALL THE TIME.

You don’t need to be one of those people.

You control your mind.

Your mind does not control you.

“Take the power back” — Public Enemy

Joey

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Messing Up And The Power Of The Second Chance

Being let down hurts.

Being let down by someone you love is awful.

Being let down by yourself can be devastating.

When you make a mistake, or when you’ve been an asshole and now you realize it (assuming you care), it is an awful position to be in. Not only are you mad at yourself for whatever it is that you did, but the people you love are also mad at you.

How could you?

How could I?

What’s wrong with you?

What’s wrong with me?

This is the situation you are in now. If you really do care. If you are actually determined to be a better version of you and never do anything remotely like this again, this is the best possible position you can be in.

You should be happy.

Happy?

Yes.

Really?

Really really.

You are in the only position that will get you to where you want to be. From point A (for asshole) to point B (for better). The place that can take all of this crap and mess that you have created, and wash it away. You are about to do something so fantastic that the “thing” will be an afterthought. Trust me, this is where you want to be.

(This is the case more so because you are the type of person that got yourself IN to this situation in the first place. In actuality, the best position is to not be in this position at, but you are WAY passed that, and you don’t own a DeLorean, so it’s time to deal with reality.)

So how is this the best position?

How in the hell can THIS be the best place to be? This nightmare? This mine field?

Because you have everything you need right here and right now, but you didn’t know it until right HERE and right NOW.

You have messed up, and now will see and feel The Power Of The Second Chance. One of the most powerful tools for turning bad in to good, good in to great, and great in to amazing. That’s you. That’s now.

I am going to use the metaphor of a natural disaster. A total rebuild after a tornado, a hurricane, or (because I am from the SF Bay Area) an earthquake.

Amazing Books To Help You Rebuild

Unlimited Power, by Tony Robbins, Choose Yourself, by James Altucher, Mindset, by Carol Dweck, The Obstacle Is The Way, by Ryan Holiday, Love Yourself, by Kamal Ravikant, Radical Acceptance, by Tara Brach, Success Principals, by Jack Canfield

Your house is gone. Actually, it’s not gone, it’s still there, but it’s in pieces. A shitload of pieces. Scattered everywhere. Unusable. Everything you built up and created is demolished thanks to Y-O-U. Congrats, you are a fuck up. Now is when you decide if you fucked up or if you are, in fact, a fuck up. There is a HUGE difference.

So which are you?

Fucking up is once.

A fuck up is forever.

Think of it like a diamond. A shitty, shitty diamond ……… that no one wants.

(Sorry about the language, I just feel the F word frames this situation so well. I don’t think you would look at your house in pieces and see it as a mess, right? It would be fucked, wouldn’t it? That’s what I thought).

You get to decide right now which you are. If you are even reading this, I am assuming you are the former. Time will tell. Your effort will tell. It’s up to you.

As you are sifting through the wreckage of your life, broken picture frames, shattered glass, splintered wood, you notice one thing still intact! The “Silver Lining,“ the foundation. Your house (life) is unrecognizable, but the foundation is still there, and that’s all you need. This is what you rebuild on, and it is all you need to start re-building.

Here are the three reasons why:

1. The Demolition Of Your Broken Home Is A Good Thing – Say what? You can say that your house wasn’t broken until whatever happened happened, but you are wrong. There were cracks, there were holes. You covered them up. You hid them. “If you can’t see them they aren’t there” was your motto. But the holes and cracks built up, and pretty soon the walls came down. All your “stuff” is out in the open. All your neighbors can see it. They are gawking, and pointing. You feel naked.

“Oooh, he was hiding that? Oh my.”

Yup, you were.

“What an asshole.”

Yup, you are.

But that is the beautiful part about #1, not only can everyone else see your shit for what it is, so can you. As long as it was in the dark, you weren’t seeing it correctly either. You were letting yourself see it anyway you wanted. That’s the thing, when only you can see it, “it” can be whatever you tell yourself it is. Now that you have some different perspectives, you can see it for what it really is, and THIS is where the rebuilding starts. There is no more hiding behind your narrative, it now has some truth to it.

This will be the most difficult part, for you and for everyone else, but now that it can be seen for what it is, it can be handled in an appropriate way. Hiding, lying and “half-truthing” is not an appropriate way to handle any problem. You need to deal with it. Get to the root of. Why is it there? How did it manifest itself the way it did? This is the part where you take all the blame. Guess why? Because it is all YOUR fault. You did the drugs. You cheated. You lied. You hid. No one can do that to you but you. The second you start putting the blame on anyone or anything else but you, you are rebuilding the same old shitty house. Build a palace this time. You have all the tools! It can be anything you want it to be.

A second chance is like winning the lottery. Whatever you want can be yours! All you have to do is put in the work. The demolition is the hardest part. That was done for you! Hell, that was done by you! Great job! Now is your chance to not build a shit home again. I don’t know anything about third chances, so you will be all on your own after this one. Don’t mess up again would be my suggestion.

2. You Can Build From The Foundation Up: This is the first time you have gotten a good look at your foundation. You knew it was there, but I bet it looks a lot different than you thought. Depending on how bad your “disaster” was, your foundation may have worn down to just the strongest parts. That is not a bad thing. Now you know everything you build on is on the most durable, the most reliable, and the strongest materials.

There will be some friends that are not there anymore. Friends you have known for a long time. Friends you were really close with. We will call them Chicken Little friends. When the sky starts falling they are gone! All you heard was a “whoosh!” It’s ok. What you have just realized is that they were not real friends to begin with. They were faux friends, weak walls. You didn’t realize how unstable they were, but now you do. The great ones rally, the weak ones retreat. Fuck em. You don’t want weak walls in your new house anyways.

Whomever is there now, is really there. They are sticking with you. They believe in you. They know the real you. They understand people make mistakes. You can build off of friends like these. You can build with friends like this. These are the friends you should have had in the first place. Not to go on a football tangent, but Johnny Manziel needs friends like this. Hopefully after he gets cut he will be able to find his real friends. Friends that won’t let him be such a dipshit. Let’s cross our fingers for him.

Your family, your friends, your loved ones. Look at them closely. This is your foundation. Embrace your foundation. Appreciate your foundation. It doesn’t have to be here. It chose to be here. It wants a big beautiful house on it, but it needs you to build it.

3. You Build The House You Want, With The Materials You want: Ah. The good part. Not the easy part, but the good part. You have done this before, built a life. Now you get to do it again, but so much better. All the things that worked before, do them again. All the things that didn’t work, do them better. It’s that simple. Green Day had an entire album recorded in 2003 and lost it. All of it. What did they do? Give up? Hell no, they rewrote the album, took the good parts, made the mediocre parts better, and released American Idiot. 15 million copies sold, 5 singles, and even had a hit Broadway play spun off of it. Not bad. Would that have happened with that first album? Probably not.

The power of the second chance is unbelievable.

People don’t get the opportunity you have right now. All of your skeletons are out. You hit the reset button. And by hit, I mean you drove in to it head on at 75 miles an hour. But here you are. You can look at the rubble and see nothing, or you can look at it as a new beginning, a new you. Visualize the future. See that house, how it’s going to look, even before you start building. It’s beautiful.
You know yourself better than you ever have at this point. There is no more hiding, there is handling. You can leave all the shit in the rubble, have it hauled away, focus on where your weaknesses were, turn them in to strengths, and build a mansion.

You have a second chance!

You get to do it again.

It’s the “reset” button on Nintendo when you were getting your ass kicked on “Bases Loaded.” Wait, that was just me? Whatever. You get my point. (I’m 36 by the way, if the Nintendo reference didn’t date me enough)

Actually, you HAVE to do it all over again, you fucked up! But that’s ok. Actually, it’s only ok if you take The Power Of The Second Chance and use it. That’s where your greatness will come from.
You have just had the equivalent of a near death experience. It almost all went away, but here you are. You had a heart attack but still lived. You had a major car accident but walked away. You are the living version of It’s a Wonderful Life. You can be George Bailey! You can be Ebenezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. (ok, enough of the Christmas stuff). You can be The Revenant! Back from the dead! The Martian! They thought you were gone but you weren’t! You were eating potatoes grown in your own shit!! Hooray!!

You can be THAT story. You can be the movie. You can have the movie life.

You just need to utilize The Power Of The Second Chance.

The power of your foundation.
The power of your learning.
The power of your skeletons being gone.
The power of the rebuild.

You can be better than ever.

You can be the You that you have always wanted to be.

It isn’t too late. You’re still here.

It’s time to start building.

Harness The Power Of The Second Chance.

Make something wonderful.

Talk to you soon,
Joey

Amazing Books To Help You Rebuild

Unlimited Power, by Tony Robbins, Choose Yourself, by James Altucher, Mindset, by Carol Dweck, The Obstacle Is The Way, by Ryan Holiday, Love Yourself, by Kamal Ravikant, Radical Acceptance, by Tara Brach, Success Principals, by Jack Canfield

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