Letting Go of Suffering and Taking Responsibility for Your Life

Don't talk about negative things because when you talk about negative things, you

actually increase them and you draw more of them into your life.

Look at the people that you know who have problems.

You notice the people that you know have problems all the time,

never seem to solve

their problems, are people who talk about their problems

all the time.

To him that hath shall more be given, from him who hath not even that

which he has

shall be taken away. Now, this is another and critical point with regard

to

relationships, and I learned this again in my studies.

It is that each of us has a certain amount of suffering that we've

gone through, and people fall in love with their

suffering.

People love their suffering. As a matter of fact,

they feel that they've paid for it, they've thought about it,

they've lived with it

for so long that most people are very reluctant to give

up their suffering. You can't talk them out of it.

You say, "Well, why don't you just forget it?

Why don't you just put it behind you?

Why don't you just get on with it?" They say, "Well, I can't do that.

Do you know how much I've suffered?

Do you know how much emotional investment I've put into this relationship, this

job, this career, and so on?" I remember, oh, I could tell you

a thousand people who have come up to me who are in bad relationships, and they

say, "Well, I've been in this relationship

or in this marriage now for several

years, and I'm miserable. I'm unhappy. We don't like each other.

It's going nowhere." I say, "Why don't you do something about it?"

"But after all

these years?" And what I say to them is I say, "Look, the average life

expectancy of the average American today is between 75 and 80 years,

and it's going up. By the time we reach the end of the

century, the average life

expectancy will probably be 80, 85, 90 years old." Do you know what

that means?

That whatever age you are now, and you may be 20, 25, 30, 35,

it doesn't really

matter, you subtract that from 80, you get the number of years

that you've got left

to live in this current situation.

You ask yourself, do you want to live in this situation for

the next 30, 40, 50

years? And the answer,

the answer, if in all honesty, has to be no,

because it's probably not going to get

any better. People love their suffering. They hate to give up their suffering.

So what we've devised is a very simple bit of advice,

and this advice, I just

recently discussed this with a consulting psychologist, and he said it's the

simplest advice he's ever heard to give to people who need it.

It's when somebody comes up to you and wants to talk to you about their

problems,

you say yes, and you be sympathetic and empathetic.

It's very good to hear people and let them talk out their problems,

except there

are some people who do nothing but talk about their problems.

Every time you see them, they talk about their problems.

Very often, they talk about the same things they

talked about last time.

What you do is you say, "Yes, I hear what you say,

and I'm very sympathetic.

However, you're responsible for your own life.

You are responsible. What are you going to do about it?

You are responsible for your own life.

What are you going to do about it?"

Now, what will happen is this, is that your good friends will say,

"Yes, you're right. I am responsible. I have to make a change.

I have to do something about it." And they'll go out, and they'll do it.

As a matter of fact, they'll come, and they'll lay out all their problems to

you,

and all you say to them is this. You say, "Well, what do you think you should do

about it?"

Now, your good friends can use that conversational time to get their

own thoughts in line, to come up with their own conclusions,

and go out, and they

don't need your advice. Most people don't need advice.

There's an old saying that says that don't worry about the universal

propensity to

give advice because the propensity to ignore it is equally universal.

People don't need advice sometimes. They just need a sounding board.

However, there are some people who don't have any

intentions of doing anything

about their problems. All they want to do

is they want to use their problems

as an excuse to get you to talk about them.

You understand that? The very common neurotic tendency in our

society is to

use their problems as the basis for the discussion. Here's my problems.

Let's you and me talk about them. And the person in himself or

herself has no interest in you at all.

All they have an interest in is having you listen.

As a matter of fact, we say this as a joke.

We say that this is what these people look like, is these people look upon

you as being a person, and this is your face, and this is your eyes,

and these are your ears.

See? And here is your eyes, preferably wide open and

sympathetic. Here's your mouth, preferably shut.

And here's your ears, preferably wide open.

These people don't even look upon you as a person.

They don't care about your problems at all.

All they care about is you sitting there listening

and nodding sympathetically and

giving them advice which they have no intention whatever of

following.

When you run into people like this, it's a very simple way to test the

friendship.

Just start talking about yourself.

Say, "Well, you know, I'm really glad you brought your problems

to me because I've

got some problems of my own, and I'd like to discuss my life with you."

You will

find these people will run for the door. They'll watch their watch.

They've got an appointment. They'll take off so fast you can't

imagine.

All right, now one final point, and this is critical.

It's absolutely critical to the whole subject. It's the wrap-up point,

if you like.

It's this,

is that when we start talking about giving up negative emotions, almost everybody

says, "Yes, I agree. What you say is true.

It makes sense to me, Brian, and I am going to give up my negative

emotions.

I am going to accept responsibility.

I am going to take charge of my life, and I'm not going to blame anybody else

anymore."

Except for one.

Everybody has one that they're not going to part with.

Everybody has that favorite negative emotion that they've been paying for and

holding on to for years.