Here are 7 steps you can take when someone you love disrespects you.

1. Be Calm

Your initial reaction may be to defend yourself by raising your voice or barking at your friend. Take the high road and try to not react in any way that would make the situation any worse. You are not giving up or giving in, you are just not making anything worse than it is when you are caught up in the moment of your internal pain which is associated with this event. Unless the person has literally stabbed you with a knife (even though it may feel like that) there is no reason to respond in the heat of the moment.

2. No Words

Do not let words escape your lips that would set this tragic event in stone or exasperate the situation, escalating it or making it worse. Refrain from striking back and remain calm (or as my grandma would say, “bite your lip”). Any response will only give the person you care about ammunition for waging a war, and if you participate, you might say something you will regret later. If you must speak, be respectful, direct, and unconfrontational.

3. No Outbursts

Your partner might react to your silence as offensive instead of taking the time to reflect. Do not respond, except to be as respectful as you can, and do not accuse or raise your voice. Any shouting match will be a failure on your part. Keep your wits about you.

4. Leave

Put some space between yourself and the offender. The separation has already taken place at the moment the disrespect was initiated, honor the separation, and use it as your cue to just walk away. This space will give you time to calm and center yourself and give you the emotional wherewithal to review the crime and the motivation of the criminal who would dare to hurt someone who cares deeply about him or her. Depending on who the offender is, there is a chance that he or she is also using this time to reflect on the situation.

5. Reflect

Take this time of separation to look inside and ask yourself, “Is there any hidden truth in this transgression?” Maybe there is something underneath the disrespect of value that you could use to become a better person, which you could sort out if you could review the scenario free from a heightened emotional state.

If you do find some hidden treasure in the event, it will come in handy when you,

6. Talk About It

Do not suppress your feelings. You have an obligation to yourself and in an effort to increase the opportunity for this relationship to grow by speaking your truth, and sharing the details about how this has made you feel in a calm environment after some time has passed.

How much time? There is no hard and fast rule about how much time, it could be anywhere from five minutes to a week, whatever works out best for you but do not forget to talk about it. This is key to your own self-respect and your respect for the relationship as well.

If the person you care so deeply about is aggressive (confrontational) or passive-aggressive (refuses to talk about it) then write it out in a letter.

7. Forgive

People do the darndest things for the most interesting reasons, and they do so out of reactions to who knows what kind of things that happened in their past, and it is often likely that even they are unaware of any demons they have hidden away that show themselves at the most inopportune times.

If they express remorse over the disrespect and may even feel apologetic, there is hope that they relationship could continue to grow. If the person you care so deeply about is a toxic person, and these events occur more often than not, you may need to consider cutting back or severing the relationship for your own protection. You never need to subject yourself to abuse, you can stop it whenever you can.

But always forgive. Realize that your friend or partner is only doing the best he or she can. The same goes for you. Allow the people in your life to be who they are. Forgive them when they hurt you because they don’t know any other way to do it. Send them love and send them on their way with your blessings.

If you will be working on continuing and potentially deepening this relationship, and you have forgiven them, do not use this offense as ammunition in the future.

The good news is, if you establish this respect for forgiveness in your relationship, it goes both ways, for which of us is without any weakness, the potential for making mistakes, or reacting inappropriately?

If this sounds intimidating, consider it a profound truth that places the power of creation in your hands. You are never at the mercy of life’s circumstances—you are the designer of your experience. By understanding how to focus your thoughts and energy, you can shape your reality into one of joy, abundance, and love.

The Power of Choice

Life doesn’t happen to you; it happens through you. Every moment offers a choice—a choice about what you focus on and where your energy flows. The sooner you recognize this, the sooner you can reclaim control of your experiences.

Here’s the secret: when you think a thought, there is a seven-second delay before it begins to build momentum. These seven seconds are precious. They give you the opportunity to redirect your focus, deliberately choosing thoughts that align with what you truly desire.

If you catch yourself spiraling into negativity, don’t worry. Redirecting doesn’t require you to force yourself into a state of bliss instantly. Instead, you can gently nudge your focus toward something productive, empowering, and aligned with your goals.

How to Shift Your Focus

Imagine a moment when negative media grabs your attention. You see heartbreaking images of starving children, and your heart aches with the unfairness of it all. It’s natural to feel this way, but staying in that energy—replaying the tragedy in your mind and complaining about it to others—only deepens the negativity. This emotional wallowing, although well-intentioned, is a form of vibrational sabotage.

Instead, recognize the thought and use it as a catalyst for change. Shift your focus from the problem to the solution. Consider all the ways people like you can make a difference. How can you contribute? Even small actions—like a $5 donation to an organization feeding hungry children—are powerful because they redirect your energy from despair to hope and action.

But why stop there? Leverage your voice to amplify the solution. Share the organization’s mission on social media. Encourage your friends and followers to join you in supporting the cause. In doing so, you transform your initial negative reaction into a ripple effect of positivity and tangible impact.

Every time you choose action over despair, you raise not only your own vibration but also that of the collective consciousness.

Breaking Free From the Past

The same principles apply to your personal life. If your thoughts dwell on painful memories, regrets, or injustices, you invite those negative frequencies to echo in your present and future. Talking endlessly about past wounds, sharing memes that resonate with your pain, or venting to friends about injustices may feel cathartic, but it also perpetuates the cycle.

The more energy you pour into revisiting those hurts, the more power you give them over your life. Instead of healing, you keep the wounds open.

But you don’t have to stay stuck. The moment you recognize these patterns, you can stop them. Interrupt the cycle by consciously choosing to focus on what you do want. Picture the opposite of the pain you’ve experienced. Envision yourself thriving, whole, and free from the burdens of the past. Take action, however small, to move in that direction. Every step you take is a declaration that you are no longer bound by negativity.

Love and Relationships: A Case Study in Energy

Consider how this principle plays out in relationships. Imagine you suspect your partner of being unfaithful. If you obsess over the possibility of betrayal, you invite more suspicion, more emotional distance, and more negativity into your relationship. This focus can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, building walls between you and lowering your vibration into places of resentment, anger, and fear.

There is another way. Instead of dwelling on what you don’t want, shift your energy toward what you do want. Focus on loving yourself first. Nurture your inner joy, confidence, and peace. From this place of strength, you can extend unconditional love to your partner—not because they deserve it, but because you deserve to live in a state of love and grace.

Unconditional love is powerful. It says, “I love you no matter what,” not out of weakness but out of profound strength. When you focus on love, you create a space for healing and understanding to flourish. And even if the relationship doesn’t survive, you will. You’ll emerge stronger, with your vibrational energy intact and thriving.

Be Proactive: The Key to Transformation

The choice is always yours. Will you allow your thoughts to be hijacked by negativity, or will you reclaim your power and focus on creating the life you want?

Being proactive doesn’t mean ignoring reality. It means taking responsibility for your energy and actions. If something feels wrong in your life or in the world, acknowledge it—but don’t stop there. Ask yourself: What can I do to create change? Then do it. Even the smallest act of positivity sets a new trajectory for your energy.

If your current circumstances feel overwhelming, start small. Gratitude is a powerful first step. Take a moment to reflect on what’s going well in your life. Focus on those blessings, no matter how small they seem. Gratitude shifts your energy and opens the door to more abundance.

The Momentum of Positivity

Every thought you choose builds momentum. The more you focus on what you want, the more power you give it. Over time, positive energy becomes your default state, and the things you desire begin to manifest effortlessly.

This isn’t magic—it’s the natural law of how energy works. When you align your thoughts, actions, and emotions with your desires, you become a magnet for the life you envision.

You Got This

You are the architect of your reality. Life is not a random series of events happening to you; it is a canvas, and your thoughts are the brushstrokes. Every moment offers you a choice: to dwell on what you don’t want or to focus on what you do.

The power is within you. Choose wisely. Choose love. Choose action. And watch as your world transforms into a reflection of your highest desires.

When you’re offended, you’re noticing the contrast. Excellent! This is step one.

I know this seems counterintuitive, but you may consider responding only with love. Anything else will bring a tsunami of drama. Seeking retribution or justice will only attract drama to you and your life, in general.

Why? Because any negative energy attracts more negative energy. It doesn’t mean that justice will not be served, because a world of love will see that all things will work themselves out. People do not have universal permission to relentlessly terrorize others without some repercussion. The repercussion will be delayed by you if you are active in pushing against what you do not want.

You assert, “But this is wrong!”

Yes, this is not right. You know it is because of the way you feel. You are offended. This feeling that you feel is the first step in recognizing that something is not right, and you are right.

What you do in the next seven seconds is of the highest of importance.

You can justify your feeling of being offended and submit yourself to be a victim of the overwhelm of negative energy. You can assert your self-righteousness and think about how you can, in your flesh, take matters into your own hands and set right the scales of justice.

No one would blame you for that. It is the default setting for our world. We want justice, and we want it now. Even if you secretly wish some karmic retribution, you are casting a spell or a curse, which can come back to bite you, thinking, “Oh, he’s gonna get his.”

Many options avail themselves to you to hurt someone back. You have the ability in this world to usurp the power of the universe to create balance out of chaos in an instant. And some of these knee-jerk reactions exerted in the seven-second window have far more power than you imagine.

Especially if you put it out using media or the Internet because while it feels good to push back in the moment, the negative empowerment takes on a life of its own and you are unable to take it back if you have a better sense of things later.

Or, you can choose love, which is the higher vibration of the universe which sets all things right. Maybe not fast enough for your selfish desires, but in a way that serves others and the world in a higher manner. This means there will be suffering, and people may suffer deeply in the process of balancing in a way that will serve the greater good of all mankind.

It requires commitment and diligence in loving and maintaining the love vibration to allow this thing to work itself out in a way that is sacredly divine.

Your feeling offended by something is an important part of the process of applying love to all things.

If you push back with any negative response, beyond the seven-second grace period, you are adding momentum to the thing that you are being offended by.

In the best-case scenario, you can take the second step and use those seven seconds to pull yourself out of the negative undertow and focus your attention on the opposite in love.

Instead of taking a defensive position against evil, ask yourself what you could do which to refocus your energy in the direction of love-fueled powerful support for the precious good which could be enacted on the opposite end of the scale.

If you are able to wrap your heart and mind around this concept, the thing which has offended you is rendered powerless. It no longer has power over you. It has triggered that higher part of you and empowered you to support the love response.

This is when the world begins to change massively.

It starts with you.

Others will be joining you in engaging in the love response to those things which you are awakened to.

As more people join-in. the negative energies are no longer sustainable, for they need the negative energy (the pushing pack) to survive.

The love response dissolves negative drama.

You are under no obligation to accept this concept at any time. Do whatever you think is right for you. But rather than fully reject his idea, just file it away, and as you see things progress in their natural fashion, you may want to reconsider at some later date, or not.

In all things, you could have seven seconds to change the world.

Think about it.

“How dare you disrespect me!”

Your ego is riled up and in full force, posting up ready to fight, defending your honor over words that someone has uttered or typed which have offended you and possibly cut you so deep that you are crippled by the assault.

Whatever the reason, someone had the unmitigated gall to bully you, spewing at you their hurtful words. When words hurt you, the effects can be very real, as if you’ve been punched in the gut, hit it the face with a board, instantly suffered a knife wound from being stabbed in the back, or shot through the heart.

While people might accidentally step on a nerve or unintentionally say something that might offend you, believe it or not, there are actually people who might try to hurt you on purpose. This leaves you wanting to confront them and say, “You hurt me.”

They might suffer from deep, dark inner wounds, far hidden from visible or conscious view. This causes them to unconsciously project their fears onto people around them.

There is also a more conscious version of projection which projects their conscious inadequacies, things they know are problems in their own lives, but rather than deal with the issues themselves, they project them onto the people around them. This act offers them relief from feeling inadequate if they can convince themselves that someone (or everyone) else is worse than they are.

Then there are those who have to maintain a sense of superiority over others to make themselves feel better about themselves. If they do have a superiority complex, there’s a good chance they’re a little more adept at putting other people down and hurting their feelings than other individuals.

The stealthier verbal attackers are the ones who are passive-aggressive. They have the ability to disrespect or insult most anyone, without actually using specific words that can be addressed as being abusive, assaultive, or rude.

In these cases, the passive-aggressive might say something in a way that hurts your feelings, and when you respond negatively they reply with, “What?” Insisting they did not say anything (specific words that by themselves would not be assaultive) to hurt your feelings.

Someone with low self-esteem might be jealous of you and what you have. Someone who is jealous of you, your skills, talents, special abilities, station in life, or happiness, might like to strike out at you to hurt your feelings or even falsely accuse you of something to bring you down a peg or two. This offers him or her a bit of relief regarding their own life circumstances.

Everyone is just doing the best they can just to get through another day. There is so much struggle to have a good feeling about one’s self, that some of us (if not most of us) might get some sense of satisfaction by putting someone else down.

For some reason, our psyches are just set up that way. Either directly or indirectly disrespecting someone else for anything that would otherwise make us feel bad seems to be effective when we are very young and left unchecked it carries over into adulthood.

Then, of course, there is the psychopath who seeks to wreak havoc and leave a wake of emotional destruction wherever they go, but that’s a horse of a different color. In this case, see: How to Deal with a Psychopath.

This is happening to me in real time across the parking lot. A man is screaming about something at a woman who is clearly with him. He’s outside the car on the driver’s side and she’s outside the passenger’s side and he is yelling at her, but clearly not about her.

I was far enough away to not understand what the man was upset about, maybe something that happened inside the establishment, or something else personal, but he was clearly upset and a little out of control.

The part that came out loud and clear was the woman’s holding her hand up between her face and his, and boldly asserting, “It’s a mirror!” Which would stop the man dead in his tracks, disrupting his explosive rant.

I could almost feel him going inside himself to take a look in there. After a brief pause, he would murmur, then get himself all worked up again. Only to be interrupted by the woman’s, “It’s a mirror!” again.

Now, I have no idea what is happening in real life across the parking lot, but what I am witnessing through the lens of higher potentiality is blowing my mind.

He might be a highly suspicious person extremely upset about breaking a mirror in the store which would give him 7 years of bad luck, but in my mind’s eye, I saw a man upset about anything. And I saw the woman as one of the most enlightened therapists I had ever seen in action.

For there is little that could be any truer than:

If you are experiencing anything in life that causes you to feel upset

It’s a mirror!

For those of us on the path of personal growth and expansive evolution, we know that when our caveman-like defense mechanism is triggered, unless it is an actual emergency, it is a signal indicating we have some unresolved issues to look at.

These are the sensitive, most intimate, and integral details of our life asserting their need to be noticed. For the most part, people are programmed not to look inside, and instead blame, feel threatened by, or threaten anyone or anything as we project our feelings of upset, fear, or rage on whatever is within reach at the time.

Some of us are better at seeing negative feelings as a mirror. I, for instance, have not mastered the recognition of the mirror at the first inclination to feel something negative. So, I am more likely to exert a negative emotion, than to first look inside for hidden trauma, unresolved issues, or answers.

Why?

Because I don’t have someone to hold their hand up in front of me to say, “It’s a mirror!” when I start to look at or feel something negatively.

This is the profound takeaway I was given in this moment in the parking lot.

And I pray, the next time I begin to feel a negative emotion or start getting upset about someone or something, that I can hear that woman’s voice in my head asserting,

“It’s a mirror!”

That would be enough to break my emotional state and cause me to look within to see what mysteries are waiting to be revealed.

You had no intention of being mean, but you are, being accused of being mean when it was never your intention to be disrespectful or to make anyone feel bad.

First of all, you do not have to accept responsibility for something you never intended to do. Know it is far more likely that the responsibility for the conflict in a situation where you’ve been accused of wrongdoing, like this, has to do with the person who is accusing you of the transgression.

Communication between any two people has the potential for misinterpretation from the get-go. Just because two different people are not unlike aliens from different planets trying to communicate with each other.

Our lives, pasts, and entire world concepts are vastly different, even if we feel like we are like-minded. It’s surprising that any two people can communicate and connect deeply at all.

Some people are just socially inept and hurt other people’s feelings out of ignorance. They have no clue they are saying things that hurt other people’s feelings. They’re just blurting out whatever comes into their mind with no thought of how their delivery might be received.

People who lack the social skills to communicate effectively may be unintentionally offensive, even when they are in the process of learning better social skills, which is awkward at best, as they continue to hurt people’s feelings while they are exercising their communications skill set.

Today, it’s really easy to hurt someone’s feelings unintentionally because we have common methods of communication which do not deliver 70% of the message correctly. You can text someone on your phone, but because the recipient does not have the ability to see your body language, expression on your face, or hear the tone in your voice, can be offended by something you communicated with the best of intentions, or were just being cute or funny.

Sarcasm is potentially hurtful, even face-to-face with full view of the total delivery process. It’s far more potentially misinterpreted via limited communication methods like texting, email, or other social messaging formats.

Then, there are those who have the best intentions. They just want to reach out and help someone in trouble, pain, or struggling.

Sometimes, people just want to share how they are feeling, only needing someone to listen to their expression of their conflict because it helps them release pressure and helps them figure things out for themselves. But you, because you are sensitive, empathetic, or really want to help this person, may try to give advice which is offensive to the person who was just looking for a compassionate ear. Now, you’ve hurt someone’s feelings when you were just trying to help, and you’ve made things worse.

Realizing this can help you to understand what’s going on when your feelings have been hurt by someone who didn’t have any intentions of being mean at all.

Then there are those who are on the path of self-growth. They are learning to hold up their hand and say, “no,” in an effort to set healthy boundaries and protect their sacred space. This can be awkward at first, and it could unintentionally hurt other people’s feelings. Hopefully, they continue to build their communication skills so that it doesn’t seem offensive.

In all honesty, though, there are those who will hurt people on purpose and use the same phrase, “I didn’t mean to be mean,” to cover up the fact that they actually had the full intention of delivering a message they knew would hurt your feelings.

For them, using the “I didn’t mean to be mean,” is a cop-out used as a method to sidestep any responsibility for hurting your feelings when inside they are secretly feeling better or even pleasure from causing you emotional trauma.

Why would someone intentionally want to hurt your feelings?

If you’ve ever been in a knock down drag out fight you know what it feels like to be hit by someone. Adrenaline and other hormones cascade overwhelming your state of being as you as immediately find yourself in fight or flight. Being part of a brutal smackdown is no fun and the trauma, pain, and suffering that comes from the physical abuse can endure and cause even more suffering as you try to heal from the event over time.

How curious is it when we are similarly affected by the spoken words of someone?

When you feel as though someone has disrespected, insulted, ignored, judged, or rejected you, BAM! Just as though you’d been kicked in the guts, all the pain, emotional and physical with all the feelings and hormone overload.

When this happens to you, those words, which cut like a knife, were likely spoken by someone you love, trust, or highly regard. They could be your partner, a family member, a child, a neighbor, someone you work with or for. Because you are more connected to these people than others in your life, their words cut the deepest, can crush you, and leave your heart bleeding in pain and sorrow.

Those you care about the most hurt you the most

The concept, “those you care about the most hurt you the most” rings true.

Interestingly enough, this concept was programmed into your psyche since the day you were born. Based on your life experience, you learned to love and depend on others. Early on, you realized that if you disappointed the people you loved and trusted to take care of you, they would turn on you, leaving you in a state of fear and suffering.

That’s where it starts, and it grows as you trust and are betrayed by those who you love and care for along the way, when all you really wanted was to be accepted, respected, and loved for no other reason than you love others. Family, friends, lovers, fellow students, teachers, and others in your circle of influence. Why can’t they just love you back?

We have been programmed to value the opinion of others so highly that the slightest threat of potentially not being highly regarded by someone we care about can threaten our very sense of existence. Our feelings are hurt. We can either strike back and start an all-out war of words (or worse), and if we’re unable to strike back (for fear of being hurt even worse), we find someone else who we are stronger than to strike out at to release the angst inside. Or we can find ourselves sinking to the depths of depression, even contemplating suicide as a way out of the pain.

You were socially programmed to want what others want, to desire to do the things that others do with them as a part of the crowd. Giving you a sense of belonging, in the belief there is safety and security by being accepted by others, for to be alone would be potentially dangerous, or too much to bear.

This social programming has been a disservice to your highest and best because you were meant for so much more than just being just another sheep in the herd.

Blessed are those who were raised in an empowered sense of individuality and personal awareness. They possess the power of seeing themselves as separate, and in the best-case scenarios, also see themselves as part of the greater whole of community and humanity, though these days this represents a very small percentage of us.

To expect someone to know and appreciate you for all that you are sets you up for disappointment and failure, and your feelings will always be hurt because no one can ever know and appreciate you as much as you do.

Likewise, no matter how hard you try, you can’t fully “get” anyone else. So much goes on inside the heart and mind of everyone that you will never know. Just like when you are silent, your mind keeps working and think thoughts you might never convert to spoken word.

What’s the answer?

There is great personal power in realizing that what anyone thinks or says about you has nothing to do with you at all. It’s about them.

You know that you are always intentionally authentic, open, honest, and want the best for everyone in your life. You know you are always worthy of the best things in this life, and you would never do anything intentionally to hurt anyone you cared about. You don’t need anyone else’s validation of these things because you know them to be true. Your knowledge of and confidence in you is unshakeable.

From this vantage point, if someone barks something that might have hurt your feelings in the past, you can feel compassion for the person who felt like he or she had to react in such a say. And instead of being threatened or hurt by what they said or did, you can just look at them lost in their own life-struggle and think (or say, if appropriate), “That’s interesting.”

You know you can respond with love and compassion because you know that you were like that too.

You are emotionally resilient and bulletproof.

You are no longer a victim of anyone else’s disrespect or abuse.

You don’t have to defend yourself or strike back because they didn’t actually do or say anything that could hurt you. You can bless them because you know they are just doing the best they can with what they have.

You make the choice to allow someone else’s words of deeds offend, hurt your feelings, or affect you in a negative way because you could also choose to not let whatever anyone else says of does to affect you.

While enduring all kinds of torture and suffering, Viktor E. Frankl, said, “The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

While being beaten for practicing civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

These are both excellent examples of men who chose to rise above their current situation to disallow anyone else to exercise dominion over their state of mind. You too, can have this unshakeable resolve, if you so choose.

We go through life with the default setting of allowing other people to hurt us deeply and even feel the pain in our bodies as if we’d been beaten, assaulted, or tortured, when we have not actually been touched, and this is our choice.

We choose to feel sick to our stomachs, suffer sleepless nights, low energy levels, depression, and little motivation even to eat or get out of bed because of what someone else treated us. This is a lot of power over us to be granted to another person.

As perverse as this might be, it’s an attitude which you have been programmed to hold tight to as a method to control you within the prison of your own mind. Many heroic individuals have discovered this and broken through the programming to find their own peace in any circumstance.

You can choose to have the power to not let anyone shake your state.

Once you discover that you have the choice to be unmoved by anyone or anything outside yourself, you also realize that when you let someone hurt you, have made the choice to allow someone to affect you deeply out of respect or love, if you so desire.

From this vantage point you have the knowingness and power of your control over your state of mind at any time regardless of what other people think, say, or do. You are the master of your emotional state.

This high level of emotional maturity is within the grasp of anyone with the courage to grasp the idea and wrap their heart around such a concept.

There’s no need to look back at all the wasted hours, days, and living of life by being overly concerned about the dominion you allowed others to have over you. What is important is that from here on out, you are the master of your emotional state.

Nothing can hurt you.

Disappointment, fear, offensive statements, abusive circumstances (even the most unimaginable) are no longer effective weapons against you.

Also, letting go of expectations can be an effective tool in allowing others to have control over you, for if you let go of the emotional attachment to the expectation of a particular response or outcome, your emotional state is not at risk and cannot be shaken.

You decide to live your life in a state of pain and suffering or love and joy.

When you let someone hurt you, it is not without your invitation or permission.

If you’re in the stage of personal growth where you need to extricate those people in your life who have a negative effect on your life, then setting boundaries to avoid exposure to others who tend to irritate you is definitely warranted.

But what if some of these people who irritate you are angels or brought into your life to awaken your conscious mind to something which is hidden deep within your self that can be the key to unlocking a brighter future for you releasing the flow for peace, joy, and abundance to envelop your life.

This person could be toxic or angelic

Life can be hard, and we can get accustomed to working very hard to have a better life. While this is effective and generally accepted as a good method of creating a better life for yourself by exercising your brute strength to make a change or evoke something better for yourself, consider there might be a better way.

A better way might be allowing yourself to go with the flow of the life you were destined to live, full of all the best things in life. Believe it or not, this is your natural state.

The moment you were born, you were perfect in every way, and all the best things in life were perfectly attuned to you. Yet, not long after you were born, you were subjected to the social programming of those around you which robbed you of your divine destiny. This continued throughout your life and you became acclimated to life’s struggle for survival. Yet, struggle is not your destiny.

If you look at the body chemistry of those who struggle through life, you can see high levels of Cortisol, the reward for fighting for a better life. For those who allow all the best things in life to come to them, they are rewarded with Dopamine and have very low levels of Cortisol in their bodies.

Don’t believe me. Google it. Cortisol makes you feel stressed and causes deterioration of the body system, while Dopamine makes you feel good, and increases the body’s immune system.

How you approach life makes a difference

The sooner you can start to change your thinking process, looking for precious learnings or gifts when your emotional triggers are firing, the happier and longer life you will have.

You can apply this approach to those who make you upset. While these people may seem toxic on the surface, they may have been attracted to your life at just the right time, when you were ready to consider talking some deep inner work which may be hindering your personal growth or potential.

This is common in romantic relationships, where we are magically divine mirrors, one to the other, reflecting back those areas of our lives where we can find deep work waiting to be brought to the surface, so they can be dealt with.

Remembering that we all get upset when we are triggered is a normal human condition. No need to berate yourself for feeling this way. It happens to everyone, especially the more we expose our true selves to someone who is close to us. You are not broken or in need of fixing. There is nothing wrong with you.

If you are a highly sensitive person, you will find you are more sensitive to the things people say or do, and even those things that are not said or done, as you rightly (or wrongly) interpret the meanings behind or underneath that which is obvious to the naked eye or attentive ear.

The basic function of triggers is to protect you from potential danger which may or may not be present but projected onto the screen of life. This is rooted in fear, and while this method is instilled in you to protect you, the fear of it all does hinder your progress.

Often, if you are in the process of excluding others from your life who do not make you feel good (though this may be necessary for a time, while you define and get acclimated to who you really are, it is limiting your becoming aware of those things which block you from the best things in life.

The next time someone triggers you, think about it. Ask yourself if there’s any shadow experience of belief hiding inside? There might be something lurking to be exposed and expelled when you feel like you’re getting upset, especially if your reaction seems to be more than the present circumstance requires.

Love is waiting for you.

Your greatest love adventure of all

Your greatest love will require vulnerability, trust, and welcoming all the good things of life, which long to be found in all things, even those which appear to be bad at first glance.

Try,

Looking through the eyes of love

This is a tender and sometimes shocking moment of truth, when you realize that your partner is not the person you thought he or she was.

First of all, do not discount your feelings. You feel the way you’re feeling about this realization, and you, or anyone else, has no right to disrespect what you are feeling. Even when you’re processing ill feelings about this current stage of your life, try to keep your wits about you.

Try to avoid striking out at your partner with an emotional outburst. If you can’t help it, no one would blame you. Resist the urge to blow up in rage, and hurling negative projections, which you may feel obligated to apologize for later, and begin your review process, as soon as you are able to find the space to think as possible.

Remember, this is someone you love. Unless you’re dealing with a psychopath, this person with whom you have trusted your heart, would not do anything to hurt you, because he or she does love you. It’s just that in this moment, his or her love for you looks differently than what you expected.

You build a vast array of expectations which represent what you expect your lover’s love for you to look like. When you see expressions of love which are contrary to what you expected to see, you feel like you’ve been assaulted, and the emotional impact is tragic.

Nothing wrong with having expectations and being deeply attached to them, this is completely normal and natural, but realize,

Your partner wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.

Up to now, your life has been full of experiences which have culminated in the person that you are in this moment. You’ve faced certain situations and circumstances throughout your journey and you’ve dealt with them in the best way that you could have in the moment.

Every one of those experience has left a residual energy inside of you, whether the experience resolved graciously or tragically. No matter how you’ve managed your life in the past, the truth is, you did the best you could have in that moment, with what you had to work with at the time.

This is your journey.

Just as you are on a journey, so your partner is on his or her own journey, and is a collection of his or her experiences up to this moment in time.

When your partner surprises you with his or her doing the best he or she can with what he or she has, it can sometimes be disturbing and shocking. No one would blame you for being taken aback by this unexpected reveal.

In your attempt to rationalize and figure out why he or she would have done this thing which has captured your attention, consider that while your partner loves you deeply, he or she is just doing the best that he or she can with what he or she has moment to moment.

Sometimes, a person does something that has nothing to do with you, but it feels as though it is a personal affront, or outright attack, focused at you. Even though, in real life, any thought of you was not present when this event happened.

You’re upset because you feel like every moment of your partner’s life should be viewed through your consciousness. You think this is a fair expectation because it feels like everything that you think, say, or do, is run through your partner’s consciousness, even though you know that to do so would be impossible.

Sometimes you will react to life circumstance and in the moment of impact you respond intuitively or instinctively without first considering how your reaction will affect your partner.

If you’ve reacted to something life has presented you with, and your action or reaction triggered your partner or caused him or her to be shocked by your response, how would you like him or her to respond?

You would feel bad for hurting your partner’s feelings and you would be apologetic because you wouldn’t have done anything intentionally to cause your partner pain. You were only doing the best you could do with what you had in the moment.

Consider why your partner might have felt like he or she had to respond in the manner which has surprised you and captured your attention. After all, he or she has lived a whole life which has led him or her to this moment.

Try to imagine what it might be like to be your partner, living his or her life up to this point, and ask yourself what he or she may have experienced in the past which has cause him or her to have such a reaction today?

Often when these situations and circumstances who up in life, it is grounded in a hidden set of programming which has built up from the past. Sometime very early in life, early childhood, and in many cases, the person who is reacting has no idea the reaction is energy recoiling off a childhood memory.

Find a place of compassion and empathy for your partner when you are surprised or shocked, even if you’re the victim of his or her abuse. But if you’ve been abused, take action to stop the abuse, because you never have to submit to being abused by anyone.

Love your partner but look after yourself.

After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have.

Depression is hard to go through and in our contemporary society, we do everything we can to avoid it or stave off the effects of depression. We self-medicate or reach out for prescription medications to keep us from feeling bad and this works to some degree. It makes us numb to the effects of depression, and we feel better.

We know, that the approach of self-numbing without some attention being paid to the underlying causes of the depression is counter-productive, now that we have statistical data to look back on to evaluate the lack of success due to the “ignore it for long enough and it will go away,” approach to dealing with the feelings associated with depression.

Creating a false sense of wellness is not good medicine.

We now realize that creating a false sense of wellness and not dealing with the issues related to the causal factors of depression is not good medicine.

And while we’ve been spending all this time focusing on tweaking the brain’s chemistry to make people feel better, we’ve missed the point completely:

Depression is a Good Thing

Why do you think you get depressed?

You get depressed because something’s not right, and when something’s wrong, it needs some attention.

Depression is like the Check Engine light on your car.

Sure, you can still drive your car with the Check Engine light on, so what’s the worry? You can ignore it, even put tape over it and pretend it’s not even lighted at all.

If you ignore it, your car will fail. Left unchecked, your car could be reduced to 3,000 pounds of useless equipment on the side of the road.

Depression is God’s gift to the humanity, a sort of check engine light, alerting your consciousness in a profound way that things need to change.

Just like the check engine light, when you become aware of depression, at your earliest convenience, you would be well-advised to take your vehicle (body) into the shop to at the very least run diagnostics to see what might be amiss.

Depending on the cause of the depression (check engine light) you may not need to take immediate action. You may be able to continue to operate your vehicle unimpeded for a while, while you make plans for dealing with the underlying issues causing the fix engine light (depression) to catch your attention.

You might be able to spray something here, dab something there, or pour a little something in the gas tank, while you’re figuring out what approach you’re going to take to resolve the issue, but this is only temporary. If you do not deal with the cause of the indication of the need for repair, replacement, or radical change, you will be left with a situation which may be far worse, possibly altogether unrepairable.

Depression is a Good Thing

While it is uncomfortable and painful, depression is alerting you that something needs to be done to change your life for the better.

Don’t be shy about getting third-party assistance in seeing what’s wrong because often we are unable to see what’s going on under the hood. Check with a trusted friend or seek out a therapist, coach, counselor, or member of the clergy to reach out to for a more in-depth diagnostic.

The good news is, on the other side of the depression, if you’ve tended to the reason for the depression and made the necessary life-changes, a brighter, more meaningful life of love and happiness awaits you.

Once you’ve dealt with and resolved your depressive issues, you can start to live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

So, the next time you get depressed, don’t run to the “drug store” to numb the feeling. Instead, consider drilling down into your soul to see if you can figure out what repairs, replacements, or radical changes need to be made. Massive change will make you feel much better than any form of self-medication. Plus, it will raise your vibration and change the direction if your life, creating a whole new world of possibilities.

Your new, more expanded and evolved, life is waiting for you.

You could be moving on down the road of your life humming and singing along with your life’s soundtrack, smiling and having the best time and a friend might take note of it and say, “I wish I could be more like you.”

Of course, they could, if he or she chose to do so, but after a while, their reverence for your optimistic lifestyle wears on them and can turn to resentment. Because he or she cannot understand what it’s like to live a life in a higher vibration this person might secretly wish something ill, bad, or evil will visit your life for a little reality check from his or her point of view.

People who do not live their lives in the higher vibrations often cannot conceive of such a thing. To them, the good things they covet in life (like happiness, beauty, abundance, freedom, good health, and life, etc.) are only available to those who are unworthy. By unworthy, their paradigm would suggest that one may only possess the good things in life by working hard, sweating blood, forsaking all, in selfish dedication to the pursuit of money.

And even if the object of their attention is a person who has done just that, and is by their own definition “deserving” of such favor, they demonize that person for being a selfish glutton and money-grubbing fiend, or even worse, if they haven’t earned it, or it came to them easily by inheritance, winning the lottery, or some other undeserved good fortune.

Journalists and paparazzi cannot resist the idea of knocking someone down a rung or two if given the slightest opportunity, likewise your friend or neighbor might like to see you have a little attitude adjustment every once and a while, and might be willing to play a role in it behind your back.

This kind of tug-of-war isn’t just between the haves and the have-nots, you will also see this in moral fixations. For instance, if someone is always polite or kind, generous and serving others, is always on time or maintains a strong work ethic, or any other life choices one may have made which separate themselves from the majority their peers.

If you are one of these people, you have chosen to live your life in a way that is differentiated from the rest of the people who choose by default not to do so. In this respect, you are no longer normal, and you cannot blame normal people for acting normal.

While normal people might admire your qualities or lifestyle, they’d feel much better seeing you fall to a level of “normal” and be like them.

Sometimes, the same people you hope to trust, or call friend will do or say something intentionally to hurt your feelings or even damage your reputation, in hopes of bringing you down to a lower vibration.

Then there are other times when you find yourself compromised, disrespected, and hurt by someone, at least not maliciously or on purpose, “but you have intentionally hurt me.”

In neither circumstance, whether you were maliciously attacked or unintentionally harmed in some way, you cannot blame this person for doing so.

It’s easy to make it all about you because you’re the one who has been attacked and is hurting, but you fail to see the pain being borne by the person who has lashed out at you. You have no idea what he or she is going through. This I know, if you were that person, who had lived his or her life up until that moment, you, too, would have done exactly the same thing in that moment in time.

When people are feeling bad, sometimes making someone else feel bad makes them feel better. Can you blame anyone for looking for any means to relieve some of the pressure of the constant pain of living their lives? Maybe yes, maybe no, but who knows what you might do if you were in such pain?

If someone is mean to you, how should you respond? With dignity and compassion. If someone says something behind your back with is not true, ignore it. If you are confronted with it, laugh it off and walk away. You do not have to dignify a false accusation with a response.

Don’t pay attention to what anybody says about you unless it is true.

You are not obligated to ever participate in the perpetuation of anyone else’s drama. Simply, let, “your yea be yea and your nay be nay,” (because anything else is plain evil, anyway) Matthew 5:37 (my translation). Just don’t go there.

Always be kind and compassionate, being mindful to not call-out the state of pain your accuser might be in. Just smile, gently laugh (not to humiliate), and thank them for sharing their point of view, possibly inviting them to do some fact checking elsewhere.

People who like you, admire you, maybe even love you, might do or say something to hurt you, either intentionally or unintentionally. And when they do, remember this,

It’s not about you

It’s about them

Let them now that no matter what they do or say, you’re not going to take it personally, and you still care for them. Bless those who hurt you.

That negative feeling in the pit of your stomach, the ache in your heart, any of these negative physiological manifestations of your incongruence when you think of something from your past blocks the abundance, peace, harmony, prosperity, and true love that awaits you.

Holding a grudge or discontent blocks you from love. The negative feeling associated with any memory from the past pulls you out of the flow of love, the vibration which encompasses abundance, peace, harmony, and prosperity.

Therefore, if you seek all the good things this life has in store from you with the least amount of effort, all you have to do is to attune yourself to loves vibration, take the inspired action, and all these things will come to you.

Everything you’ve ever wanted, or dreamed of, is just waiting for you. God would not have put those ideas in your head or those desires in your heart if He did not want to give it to you. All you have to do is to let go of anything that is preventing you from being in the vibration of having it, and you will find yourself enjoying it, first unmanifested (enjoying the expectant feeling of having it, while it has not been realized), then manifested. Here it is, in your life, in all its glory to be thoroughly enjoyed by you.

Now, you can also have all the things you want in life by making them happen all by yourself without regard of any vibration whatsoever, but this method is generally not associated with joy, at least not for very long.

Living in a higher vibration, attracting the things you desire and love into your life, is far more sustainable and prolongs the joy of the whole affair indefinitely.

To achieve the desires of your heart through the flesh only, by sheer determination, hard-work-and-dedication, or brute force, is effective for the accumulation of material things, wealth, or the appearance of wealth, but there is rarely any lasting joy, and the satisfaction of attainment is fleeting.

And the secret code to unlocking the sustainable love vibration is this:

Remember Everything Learn Nothing

Remembering everything (every detail of something that made you feel bad or caused you pain) leads to holding grudges and lowering your vibrational frequency, and also prevents you from extracting the precious learning which is lovingly provided to you by the experience. The more you remember and think about these things that make you feel bad, the further away you move from what you want.

Every experience you traverse through along your life’s journey has a treasure inside of it just for you. This treasure is usually represented as the gift of knowledge, something for you to learn which may not have been possible (or more effective a lesson to be learned) in any better way.

Every challenge or occasion for you to feel pain, bad, or as though an injustice has occurred, is an invitation for you to move closer to the life and everything that you want. Without the token gained from this experience, you will not be able to make it through the next gate.

Yet, God is holding all the desires of your heart in store for you and desperately wants to shower you with all you deserve, if you will only come to it. So, if you do not receive the token to allow access for you to pass through the next gate, a new opportunity will be presented to you.

As you may have noticed, some people get stuck between two gates for a prolonged period of time because they are unable to take hold of the gift to be learned which is necessary to move on. You may even have noticed yourself caught in this cycle of similar recurring challenges.

Now you know why. It is God giving you opportunities to move closer to everything you want. In this way, all pain is a gift. Pain is God’s way of saying, “Trust Me.”

Pain is a feeling. When you feel it, if it is God begging you to trust, you will find when you actually do trust Him and know in your heart that all things are in divine order, then you find yourself not feeling the pain of whatever it was that was upsetting you in the past.

You must be able to truly forgive, acknowledge the divinity of the conflict, bless all participants without judgment, and let go of the negative feeling. Wipe your memory of the negative associations you previously held in attachment to this event. Retain the lesson, the blessed learning, and move on.

When you are able to do this, you will find yourself hovering in unconditional love’s vibration, free from the negative strongholds (the feelings) of your past.

Now you are

Remembering the Blessings and Learning in Love

This is the fast-track to your heart’s desires.

As two people come together and get to know each other, it is reasonable to expect things will come up as an indication that the two of you don’t see eye to eye on a particular subject. In some cases, you may feel bad, disrespected, disregarded or betrayed, and depending on how a sensitive a person you are, you could be hurt badly.

But you’re getting to know this person, are developing feelings of attachment, and/or falling in love with this person. You fancy the idea of having him or her in your life enough to reach out to them in an effort to help them understand how you feel, which is a normal course of action in any relationship.

On your first attempt to explain yourself to someone, you expect to be heard and felt. Everyone is entitled to make mistakes, as you know you, too, probably have disrespected some one else, not on purpose but in a moment when you were busy, focused, distracted, or had lost track of time, etc… and hurt someone’s feelings unintentionally.

Or maybe we’re talking about crossing boundaries. When you’re in a relationship, you can expect to cover all the rules and boundaries that exist in your head and your heart in the beginning, and you just sort of assume that you’re both completely compatible based on how you feel about this person.

If you and your partner have healthy boundaries, of course, the best way to communicate your boundaries is to merely talk about them and establish a mutual respect about each other’s boundaries. The next best way to bring up your boundaries is when either one of you find yourself crossing the other’s boundaries.

This is a good time to communicate, establish and negotiate the honoring of the boundary in your relationship or to make amendments or accommodations for the boundary in question. Some boundaries protect us from physical or emotional pain, but may change over time, the less we need them and as we continue to grow emotionally, while some may remain non-negotiable.

Okay, so someone’s crossed the line, and your feelings were hurt. You were considerate enough to explain the situation to your partner, and he or she heard you, respected you, apologized and agreed to take your feeling into consideration, should the same set of circumstances appear once again. And in a perfect world, in an adult relationship between two people who care about each other, this is the highest and best approach and outcome.

But what if it happens again?

Even though you felt like the two of you were perfectly clear and in agreement, now, you’re second-guessing, wondering if your initial expression was misunderstood, maybe you didn’t make yourself clear enough and it may be reasonable to talk about this particular situation again.

So, this time, you’re explaining to your partner in greater detail, including much more stories, demonstrations, possibly including audio/visual tools, drawing charts, graphs, maps and using bullet lists (yes, this can go into outrageous extremes, depending on the one doing the communicating) to make sure there is no misunderstanding in the future.

If you feel like you’ve been heard and your partner has endured your presentation, thanked you for clearly expressing yourself, understanding the two of you are basically using a common language and level of understanding in respect and honor of your clearly expressed ideas, and he or she agrees to honor your perspective if faced with similar circumstances in the future.

Well done.

That should do it.

If it doesn’t, and the same grievance comes up again, you can be relatively certain that something else is going on, here. You know you’re being heard. You’ve made every effort to establish rapport and understanding, yet here you are again.

This could feel like abuse, and anyone who knows you intimately, like your friends and family, might jump to that conclusion immediately, especially if you (or they) have had experience with a similar situation which did not fare well in the past.

The truth is, by this point, you can ascertain that this person is not going to change his or her thoughts or actions on this deal to accommodate you. You have to realize that this person is hard-wired this way and is never going to change for you.

Going back to the drawing board once again to try to explain yourself is fruitless. Nothing good could come from it, and your partner will only be going through the motions, agree to do or say anything you want to hear, but not really. They just want your grueling expression to stop, so they can get back to living their life.

Plus, you might be imposing abuse on your partner by badgering him or her endlessly about this particular subject. Just stop it. This could go on forever, and nothing good could come from that.

It’s not on you to expect to change your partner, just as you would not expect your partner to want you to change for him or her, although, some compromise along the way is reasonable, as long as it’s not too extreme.

Oh, you might think that if you love him or her enough, that they will realize one day that you were right all along, he or she instantly changes, as if being touched by a magic fairy’s wand, and the two of you will walk off into the sunset hand in hand in perfect harmony, with sparkles and butterflies all around.

The chances of that are pretty slim. So, at this point, you have to ask yourself, “Can I live with this?” It’s on you at this point, not the other person. Someday this person might change due to their own personal growth and evolvement, but you have to know, this is the way it’s going to be, probably forever. Can you live with that?

If loosening up on a boundary here and there is acceptable to you, then think about changing the way you think about this particular situation, consider making a compromise. Keep in mind if you are making the majority of the compromises, this will likely not be in your best interest in the long run, and you’re likely going to resent or regret this later.

On the other hand, in the rarest of circumstances, both parties begin to grow and change in synergistic harmony, evolving together in a symphony of continued awareness and enlightenment. If each of their individual paths is harmonious with the other’s, this can be the bliss which we all seek in a long-term relationship.

No matter how much you try to plan, prepare, have the right mindset and heart-set, are kind, benevolent, righteous and/or deserving, stuff happens when you least expect it. And anyone – even me – would be knocked off their otherwise content horse of courage and possibly falling into the muck of disappointment.

What are you going to do about it?

That’s the question. You’ve suffered a setback, no doubt, and you’re feeling discouraged, rightfully so, but what you do about it makes all the difference in your world. If you focus on your misfortune and wallow in it, feeling dejected and blue, you could let it wrap you up in a cocoon of despair and you might find yourself sinking into a deep depression. Rather, keep your wits about you and try another approach to this predicament.

You feel bad, justifiably enough, so let that emotion pour over you. Allow yourself a predetermined amount of time (set a timer, if helpful) and feel all the anger, frustration, hurt and shame you can muster… then, when the time is up, pull yourself together. Get back on your horse, albeit a little less enthusiastic than prior to this unfortunate event, and stay the course, realizing that sometimes in life, bad things do happen to good people.

This is when you can start looking for the hidden treasure.

More often than not (if not always), unruly incidents that catch us off guard are blessings, though you may not be able to see it in the moment of being shocked by the unexpectedness of it, you find yourself in a much better position. It might not make sense now, but at some time in the future, you will find yourself grateful, having gone through the experience which prepared you for something far more significant.

Think about it. Isn’t that they way it’s always been?

When you’ve suffered an undesirable circumstance, hasn’t it always either led or prepared you for something better? And if you cannot see that, it might be time to take a closer look at those otherwise negative experiences from your past. If you can look at it (hopefully not overcome with emotion. Try using your imagination as if you were watching the event on a TV screen without sound), give it an honest review and see where it led you to or prepared you for: Voilà! You can see it. There is something more magnificent at work than meets the eye.

Life can have hidden cosmic Ninja training included for you that will imbue you with the experience and skills to allow you to deal with greater challenges in an effective manner further down the road, beyond your field of view.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by emotion, just realize that this is a part of your life experience. There’s no need to avoid or deny it. Just allow these feeling to envelope you, then put them aside when you are able and move on.

Sometimes friends or family can hold you to an impossible standard, likewise, you may hold yourself to unrealistic standards. Remember that no one is perfect, and we all will make missteps. Be forgiving of yourself and others. After all, we’re – each of us – are only doing the best we can with what we have.

Remember, in the face of adversity; try to look at it as if it were a test, challenge or gateway to something far better.

When things don’t turn out, like you expected, look deep into the situation or circumstance for clues of deeper meaning or a lesson to be learned, then release your emotional attachment to it.

Don’t let disappointments get you down, be the victorious warrior who seeks your highest and best in all things. Know there is a silver lining and keep going.
If you’ve reached what appears to be the end of a journey, begin looking for an opening. A door a window, a path will appear.

If you’re feeling overcome with overwhelm, seek the aid of a professional, a counselor or coach who can help you work through this event. Invite the process.

No one ever said life would be an unfurled bed or roses, and if they did, well… you know better. Life is full of ups and downs; learn to find enjoyment in the ride, like the exhilaration of a roller coaster.

I have learned that when I’m blindsided, I start to get excited because something really good is coming. So, get up, brush yourself off, put a smile on your face and be looking… Because no matter whenever things don’t work out like you had planned, something so much better is coming your way.

Don’t give up: Think.