Coping

You and I are experts at coping. We grow up learning to cope. We grow up believing that coping is a success strategy. We grow up believing that coping is how we deal with a life full of crap that we don’t want. We’re sold a load of crap about coping.

The last time I checked, there were over 10,000 titles available on the subject of coping. Ten thousand titles on how to cope better with this or that – coronavirus, STDs, bad bosses, you name it.

People who engage in a Responsibility practice, find that they don’t need to cope. They prefer to be free, powerful, and at choice. The mental state of Responsibility is the mental state of freedom, power, and choice.

All the positions below the line in The Responsibility Process^® are coping states.

Below the line are positions of victimhood, of being done to. Below the line we are at the mercy of the world – instead of being in a position of being able to create the outcomes that we want to experience.

As long as we are in those mental states, we’re coping, and above the line we grow.

If you want to put this to use today, here’s something that you can do.

Catch yourself with any thoughts, any behaviors, any actions, any words that have to do with coping.

That usually means behavior that says, “There’s nothing I can do. I just have to put up with it. This is just the way it is.”

Catch yourself having any of those thoughts or any of those actions, and then just decide, you’re not going to go there.

Decide that you would much rather face reality and own your life. When you do that, your mind actually automatically, moves you towards the ability to respond.