Hello Every­one! Wel­come to March. It has to be­gin warm­ing up, right?  LOL

I hope your Feb­ru­ary was packed with warmth, ex­cite­ment and if you’re fol­low­ing the Face­book Group The­Hap­pi­nes­s­Ex­per­i­ment, I know your ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more hap­pi­ness in your every­day walk. Please let me say, I am hon­ored to be a part of your jour­ney into bring­ing more joy into your life! This month is ded­i­cated to “For­give­ness.” I’ve found that, to the de­gree I’m hang­ing onto re­sent­ments, hurts, anger (or the likes), the less I’m able to feel joy in my life. I’m sure you’ve heard the clichés, a re­sent­ment is jail­ing the per­son hold­ing it. Or hav­ing a re­sent­ment is sim­i­lar to drink­ing poi­son Ul­ti­mately, who­ever the re­sent­ment is against re­ceives none of the im­pact from be­ing re­sented and the per­son hold­ing the re­sent­ment car­ries all the bur­dens.

I have a the­ory that I want to share with you. And since this is my col­umn, I’m go­ing to go ahead and do so. Lol!

What if you found out that in re­al­ity there is re­ally no such thing as a re­sent­ment. What if you dis­cov­ered that we cre­ate our re­sent­ments by man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tort­ing facts into our truths, in or­der to jus­tify plac­ing judge­ment on some­one or some­thing, be­cause we don’t like what we per­ceive as an out­come to a sit­u­a­tion, cir­cum­stance or con­di­tion?  An­other words, what if we have such a strong need to be the vic­tim in our life that we cre­ate views where we’ve been wronged, solely for the pur­pose of mak­ing judge­ment out of the sit­u­a­tions we face? A bit much? Maybe. In my book Lifes-lessons, once I ar­rived at the point of be­ing sick and tired of be­ing sick and tired of liv­ing my life from one up­set to the next, I came to a point where I quit plac­ing judge­ment on ALL ex­pe­ri­ences I was find­ing my­self in.

I went about life with a non judg­men­tal mind­set of;

There’s no right/wrong

There’s no good/bad

There’s no Fair/Un­fair

And if that’s the case, the next sen­si­ble ques­tion for me was, “then why the hell is this hap­pen­ing in my life?”

Only af­ter strug­gling with that ques­tion for quite some time with a beat-my-head-against-the-wall-too-many-times kind of at­ti­tude, was I will­ing! And when I be­came will­ing, WHAMO!! All of a sud­den my eyes opened to make sense of things in a whole dif­fer­ent light. Then I able to re­for­mu­late that ques­tion above into “If I am go­ing to de­cide that life hap­pens FOR me and not TO me, then why is this hap­pen­ing in my life?” Out of that my friends, came prob­a­bly the most awe­some growth I’ve ex­pe­ri­enced in my life. See, once I AD­JUSTED MY VIEW, it be­came ap­par­ent to me that the events hap­pen­ing in my life were there to teach me. To as­sist me in grow­ing spir­i­tu­ally as well as hu­manly. And the rea­son things through­out my life felt like the same thing over and over and over again was be­cause that is ex­actly what was hap­pen­ing. Sim­i­lar events were hap­pen­ing again and again, be­cause I had­n’t learned the les­son yet. The les­son kept show­ing up be­cause I had­n’t learned what I was in­tended to learn. Once you learn your les­son, you will quit ex­pe­ri­enc­ing sim­i­lar types of events. But only AF­TER you learned the les­son. Some­thing I never con­sid­ered while liv­ing the vic­tim mode.

Some can say malarkey to this way of think­ing. And that’s OK. I’m not here to de­bate. I know first­hand in my life and the lives of many of my clients that shift­ing think­ing in this way has as­sisted  in break­ing life­long pat­terns in ar­eas of life like peo­ple pleas­ing, lack­ing self-con­fi­dence, al­ways sec­ond ques­tion­ing de­ci­sions. Even things like, who we al­low in the front row of our life and learn­ing how to be com­pro­mis­ing with bound­aries. I’ve gone through some very tough and costly lessons in or­der to have this in­for­ma­tion to share with you and I’m as­sum­ing if your over the age of 20, you too, have some costly lessons in your life. I’ve found that this un­der­stand­ing of re­sent­ments is much less costly and less time con­sum­ing.

On a re­cent trip to MI, dri­ving up I-75, a reck­less dri­ver al­most ran me off the road and I had to laugh. Af­ter hit­ting my horn for an ex­tended pe­riod of time (don’t judge me…lol) my first thought was, “Nope, you sorry case of a dri­ver aren’t go­ing to take me off my mark. I’ve got no les­son to learn in this one.” I still chuck­ling when I think about it.

This is a re­ally easy sit­u­a­tion to ex­plain the point, but I have much deeper lessons, such as a year­long di­vorce, that caused me to close out my 401k to pay off a house in a down mar­ket, and pay out over three grand every month for three years. There are all kinds of other de­tails that any­one would agree I was the vic­tim in the sit­u­a­tion. How­ever, uti­liz­ing the mind­set I de­scribed above, all that was nec­es­sary. Each and every heart curl­ing event was nec­es­sary for me to learn not to live as a peo­ple pleaser. To stop liv­ing life as a chameleon, al­ways try­ing to fig­ure out what some­one else wanted me to be and try­ing to be that per­son. It was so ex­haust­ing for so many years in my life and if you con­nect with this, you al­ready know it shows up in ALL ar­eas of life. Not just love re­la­tion­ships. I still re­mem­ber the day, sit­ting in my front room with my God Fa­ther, Blair and telling him ex­cit­edly, “there is only one me! Whether I’m at work, with a girl, my son, friends, I’m the same per­son in all ar­eas of my life!”

On the Face­book group The­Hap­pi­nes­s­Ex­per­i­ment this month, we are go­ing to ex­per­i­ment in not chang­ing the peo­ple around us, nor chang­ing our en­vi­ron­ments (pend­ing we are over­all safe). But in­stead, chang­ing our per­cep­tions on how we are view­ing our ex­pe­ri­ences. To un­der­stand the lessons built into our ex­pe­ri­ences in­stead of re­act­ing out of the events we come up against. I’m re­ally ex­cited to be a part of all the growth-into-hap­pi­ness that takes place this month and if you’re not in the group… What the heck are you wait­ing for? lol

It’s easy peasy to join us. Open up Face­book and search for The­Hap­pi­nes­s­Ex­per­i­ment un­der groups and click on join. Or, just click on the link and it will take you to the page. It’s no cost to join The Hap­pi­ness Ex­per­i­ment, right now but af­ter June 2019, there will be a cost to go through the pro­gram. And I can tell you first­hand how costly it is to do noth­ing.

Thanks for all the awe­some com­ments, keep them com­ing and look for one of my events in a town near you at Joseph A. Drol­sha­gen and if based on your fol­low­ing my col­umn, I would love to com­pli­ment you a ($250 val­ued) 60 minute phone, laser fo­cused Strat­egy Ses­sion at no cost. Just reach out to IFGT­coach­ing@gmail.com and let me know you’re in­ter­ested! You can also reach me at IFGT­coach.com.

Have a blessed month and live in your Pas­sion! Al­ways!