DREWspective

It’s amazing what comes up when talking to yourself - or as I think of it, talking to God - while walking home late at night. It was one of those times when I found myself "meditating" on something, trying to find meaning from it.

The thing in this case was the line "it’s not them, it’s you". A line I have personal issues with, because most people abuse it a lot these days.

Taken at face value, it’s one of many that takes all the problems you’re facing in life and throws them right back at you. It suggests that everybody and everything else is perfect and right, that only you have issues and faults.

Again this is criticism, and isn’t helpful to anyone. Not only is the person leveling abuse at you, because they aren’t clarifying what it is you should do to fix the problem, but many times they don’t even know what the exact problem is. This "rant" (which won’t be dignified with a title) by a bunch of [expletive deleted]s is a good example.

However there is some good news. It took me a while to realise, but there is an underlying, far more positive message between the lines.

What was that message again? :S

Well, you might come to a different conclusion. The message I got was this: if you let what other people affect you negatively, then it’s something to work on.

Since starting to listen to motivational speakers earlier this year, I’ve made a decision to live a faultess, blameless life. In simple terms, fault-finding and blaming people or external circumstances is no good.
You may feel that someone was wrong for doing or saying something you didn’t like. It doesn’t matter - it was their choice to do what they did, so leave them to live with the consequences. Guy Finley said it beautifully in a Synergy show (I can’t accurately remember the whole speech): "they have their reward already."

You could be like me sometimes and (using an all too familiar example) get really moody whenever you’re called a "nice guy" by the next girl who rejects you. You could also dismiss them as a slut. A better solution would be to acknowledge incompatibility, or to accept that the other person made whatever decision they made.
Whatever you think about other people in this world, we all make choices (consciously or unconsciously) as to how to respond to them. When we brood on what someone else did, we’re giving away control of our lives to that same person.

So, my point here is this: when someone says "it’s not them, it’s you", it’s not necessarily what you did that is the problem, but how you respond to a certain situation.

Besides, anyone who says these kinds of things obviously wasn’t there to witness the events unfold.