Learned Helplessness Can Be Unlearned

We often feel powerless as children. We might still feel this way as adults.

Kowtowing to patterns of learned helplessness keeps us small. We can blame others, our health, etc., but blame keeps us small.

We often fight these patterns or the people involved. That will intensify our feelings of powerlessness.

The key is to embrace our experience with our full heart, as it is, including uncomfortable emotions.

We grow bigger than whatever we can embrace. This process activates our true wisdom.

We slowly see that we have a choice. If we keep going, we will find ways to take our power authentically.

Always, we can pray and ask for help rather than sinking into resentment and self-pity.

Remember, just seeing the patterns is good work. Believe in yourself, and gradually you will discover you are becoming freer.

Transcript

You know, The learned helplessness thing that you've been kind of carrying in your head. Okay, I just want to talk about my mom for a bit. My mom stayed and learned helplessness. So she would do things like this. She had some apples. She wanted to put the box, You may have heard me say this, She wanted to put the box on the corner and have everybody just help themselves. We lived in a very knob neighborhood, And so she kind of, Underneath, She'd know like, Okay, This wasn't done. So she asked my dad and he said, Take them to the Salvation Army. Then she said, Came to me and said, Oh, Your dad told me to take them to the Salvation Army, But I'd like to put them on the corner. But, You know, He told me to take them to the Salvation Army. So she went off in this resentment and helplessness and took it to the Salvation Army. Or drive to a different neighborhood and put them on the corner. Okay, So. She kowtowed to her learned helplessness. And sometimes I think that you do. And then you massively try to fix from actually this state of being kowtowed to this learned helplessness. Now, To face the learned helplessness, Again, If you fight it, It will get worse. It's right where your ego grabs you. And it's all made up by your head. I just want to say it's totally made up. It is not true. So my mom did a lot of human potential things. You know, Read a lot of books. But she never got it because she didn't want to get it. She had too much to lose. Or she thought she had too much to lose. I think she could have put the apples on the corner and my dad would have been fine about it. You can, You know, All this stuff, Like, We don't have to leave people. We don't have to make any song and dance. We have to work things internally. We can work internally with ourselves. We don't necessarily have to rock any boat. Do you know what I mean? This non-doing way is just coming week after week after week. And it's the Amma inside you and it is really the way of the Tao. Okay? It's really zen, Really.