“Good for you Monica!”

“Good for you!” – What does that bother me so much? Recently I was excited about something new I’d taken on and shared with a friend. His response: “Good for you Monica!” I wanted to throw my phone across the room, thank goodness I held it together and didn’t. That would have been an expensive tantrum. Instead I chose to share some more and shared with a close girlfriend about those three harmless words, “good.for.you”, bugging me. Sidenote: Props to me for choosing to share my feelings with my girlfriend rather than penting it up inside. She agreed with me! Gotta love besties! Something about that statement just doesn’t sit right for me.

I sat with it and ran it through my mind asking myself what is it about “good for you” that causes me dis-ease. Then I worked my process and got down to the real issue. In “spirit school” they’ve taught us to look at your reaction to something and not the actual event that took place. “Your reaction to the issue is the issue, not the actual issue.” So in this case, my being annoyed by my friend’s response is what I need to take a closer look at and not his response. So let’s set the record straight here: His telling me, “Good for you!” is all good, I accept the kind words from a kind friend. His response was genuine and heartfelt for all I know.

Now back to the issue. I realized in the split second it took for me to read “good for you” I judged myself. Those words brought on feelings of not being good enough, being small-minded, childish. “Good for you” is equivalent to padding me on the head and brushing me off. I instantly regretted having shared that with my friend and wanted to delete the whole mini exchange. I assure you and myself, my friend is one of the kindest people I know. He doesn’t have a single mean bone in his body I’m convinced.  Never at any point did he judge me as small-minded, childish or not good enough. What took place was my ego projecting all of the self-judgments I have of myself on him in the time lapse of a nanosecond! In our spiritual psychology course they call that negative projections. I realize I do that a lot… I negatively project all of my self-judgments on to others and assume that they are judging me. I lived my whole life up until now projecting negatively and not being aware of it. I walked around convinced that everyone was passing judgments on me constantly. Is this unique to Latina women and not other women? Is this unique just women and not men? I don’t think so.

What do I take away from all of this?  I’ve reached an understanding; you could call it an awakening.  What comes out of other people’s mouths is not a reflection on you. It never is.

 

 

 

 

 

Latina goal: Not place so much worth on other people’s words and actions, but ultimately my latina goal is to be kinder to myself and not judge myself so much.