Unorthodox Angles/Andrew Gramling
The Path to Self-Fulfillment: Part XI– Insanity
A continuation of our series on personal evolution, truth, and accountability.
By Andrew Gramling and Harry Petsanis, Corporate Consultant, Owner of Accountability Coaching
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Because most people refuse to take accountability, their thought process becomes “insane.”
The one common denominator in every situation is you. Every day people will bemoan, or lament all of the problems and issues in their lives. They will complain about their job, their boss, their spouse, their kids, and their friends and family, always wanting to convey that the reason those relationships are not going well is because everyone of those people are the problem. Instead of taking a few steps back, reflecting, and realizing all of those relationships are going poorly because there’s something inside of them that’s the problem, and because they refuse to acknowledge and address that problem, that problem then leaks and pours out from them and taints or poisons everything and everyone it touches.
The accountable person immediately looks and reflects inward. The unaccountable person immediately looks and projects outward. If everything in your life seems to be crashing down upon you, it’s just an acknowledgment that everything or most things within you are crumbling. If the foundation of a house is not solid, then nothing that you build from that foundation will ever be sustainable. It’s the same with an individual. If their foundation is flawed or fractured, then nothing they touch or encounter will have sustained substance, even when appearing quite “busy.”
To fix the things in your life, you must first fix you. What we get back is nothing more than a byproduct of what we put out. People look at karma as what they put out into the universe and what the universe reciprocates. In actuality, what most people call karma is just the essence of who we are. Life often behaves as a mirror or gigantic feedback mechanism. Metaphorically, a lot of people, when they don’t like what they see in their reflection, try changing the mirror, but mirrors don’t lie.
Most people live from the external, and the reason they don’t dig deeper to the core or foundation of who they are isn’t because they don’t have the time or emotional bandwidth to dig that deep, it’s because they don’t want to dig that deep because they don’t want to see themselves for who they really are, so if they choose to never dig that deep, then they don’t have to admit or acknowledge to themselves who they truly are. It can take a lot of courage to examine one’s own flaws and take action to do something about them, either owning or discarding them, but it’s the only way to prevent the same outcome playing out in different places, because the mirror will never stop reflecting. The reflection we see known as karma, mentioned earlier, is not a punishment. Karma is a question that asks: “Is this who you really are?”
One reason people don’t claim the power to change their own inner circumstances is because of the ego. While the ego may not be the swear word that some people think it is, and does play a large part in protecting us and allowing us to choose ourselves over others when it becomes necessary or prudent, it can work overtime keeping us “safe,” meaning “stuck in what’s familiar or comfortable to us,” which will prevent us from embracing what is there to help us grow.
If you want to change how people view you, treat you, respond to you, and benefit you, you have to change how people view you, perceive you, feel you, and interpret you. To accomplish that, you have to be willing to fix yourself. To fix yourself, You have to acknowledge that parts of you are out of alignment. To fix the parts of you that are out of alignment requires you not directing your focus and energy towards others. You will quickly see if you have truly changed by how people react and interact with you. If their reactions and actions change, it is often a result that the work you are putting into yourself is paying off. You will also see and feel a difference within yourself if you are truly changing for the right reason. Start looking at things from a micro perspective instead of a macro perspective to identify the causes rather than the effects. Don’t worry about changing the world or the world changing to conform to you. Simply begin by changing your world.
For more of Harry’s work on accountability, find him online at:
tiktok.com/@harrypetsanis