Break the Mitote and Make Father's Day A Truly Happy Day - 4 Agreements

Father’s day has never been my favorite holiday, more like a hated, sad day, it’s been my least favorite day of the year for much of my life.

My despising Father’s Day - that is changing now like so many other things, flipped on its head in true bipolar fashion. This year I will celebrate the fact that instead of a father, I had more than three of them – very loving, smart, inspirational men who always have been and always will be there for me. They did their best to educate me, to show love, protect and guide me; the only problem for many years was me. Happy Father’s Day Jeffrey, Papa Marsh, David, Mr. Mitchell and so many others. I love you more than you could ever know.

I had so much anger inside me growing up, another child turning unanswered questions, confusion and sadness into being afraid initially, and then turning all that into the easiest weapon to forge - hate. And I didn’t even need to be armed, I had an army around me, yet I couldn’t see it for all those years. For that, I am ashamed and I have regret – foundation regret, the heaviest of all breeds as I learned (read about regret and foundation regret – Brene’ Brown and Daniel Pink: https://www.mindentropy.com/post/regrets-what-s-in-a-name-josh-jones-jumps-the-grasshopper-learns-from-the-ant ). And you wouldn’t see it 99% of the time, I was good at protecting or more accurately said, hiding, my emotions and feelings – you would only see my true feelings in a few small minutes or testy situations, and you would have to be so attentive to catch those things and ever think there’s something more than a mere kid getting frustrated, as we all do.

Simple questions I didn’t ask, other perspectives I didn’t see or seek, misconceptions that grew up into monsters, that allowed a small flake of snow to roll down a mountain and cause an avalanche in my head and my life, over and over for decades. I didn’t know why, and I never asked the most important question – why? I never even asked the simple questions.

I read a book recently, The Four Agreements, surprising this was a book recommended by someone at my work, usually all the recommendations are directly tied to how we can advance our equipment, scientific or engineering topics, and if they stray from those core concepts, we go to the standard leadership books or the operations improvement realms – set the course, drive strategy more effectively, do more with less or drive efficiency in other ways through things like lean and six sigma. This book is quite a bit different, and different in a very helpful way to me and where I am personally.

A few notes from the first chapter or two that ties right into my mindset here:

The lies we let into our minds and what they do to our thoughts, perceptions and actions (95% of the things in our minds are lies or skewed). What blinds us are all of those false beliefs we have stored up in our mind.

Anger, jealousy, envy, hate are the emotions that create a fire inside of us – that come from fear

MIH – TOE – TAY: mitote – this is the Toltec word to explain that our entire minds are a fog; India mitote maya – which means illusion. We all carry around, or tote around, lies and misconceptions that have a heavy weight on us and lead us down wrong paths all the time. How we can learn to create a protective shield to prevent these things from entering our mind, how we can extract them and kill them, filter them out, sanitize them if they do infiltrate our minds, those are the skills we need to develop.

I don’t know if The Four Agreements will change your life or anything of that magnitude, but the principles are worth a read and processing, maybe you will find personal freedom as advertised. I believe in this at my current state: We cannot see who we truly are, we cannot see that we are truly not free. We have to do work to protect the narrative in our minds, we have to work at that tirelessly.

Be Impeccable With Your Word

Don’t Take Anything Personally

Don’t Make Assumptions

Always Do Your Best

Good things to consider at the least, and can alter your thinking in a positive way – very likely. What you say can truly make a huge difference, what you hear and what you do with it, certainly can be impactful. Always do your best – so that you can avoid foundation regrets, so that you can look in the mirror at yourself and be content. Maybe I’m just starting to pay attention to what I see and read, processing things correctly. Or at least I hope I am.

And so I will treat Father’s Day very differently this year. Over the last 5-10 years I have changed and taken a better direction, but only half-heartedly. Sure I have acknowledged and thanked, embraced, recognized the sacrifices and love, time and focus put into me by my stepfather, my godfather, others close to our family; they know how I feel but I still can’t fully reprieve myself. I have more to do, more growth is needed. So now it’s time, long overdue, for a more drastic inflection of thought and expression. For we only have so much time, and we should continuously ask the question of if are we using it correctly (I think I saw that as an apple news headline recently – that is another golden nugget in a sea of rocks and junk).

It's not that I need to tell those men in my life, those great role models and protectors of me, how fortunate I was, or how thankful I am for them, I have to show them and show myself that I truly am in a different space now – and moving forward, do something worthwhile with all the gifts they have given me. Make a difference beyond just being there, be consistent in actions that do good and inspire others along with yourself. For influencing change, being an example, working to be better every day, making the most of your time, motivating outcomes and others, that is very different than mere presence or faking it through life.

Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be truly alive, to express what we really are. Instead, we live trying to satisfy others, live up to others standards that we incorrectly perceive – we are trying to be accepted but do not understand what acceptance means or what the true target is. We create a false image of perfection and then we chase that, become lost.

In most of my life growing up, I focused on what was absent – I met my father for the first time when I was 23 years old. And that experience was a culmination of hate, anger, lack of perspective and when the moment gave me no closure or understanding I made more negative assumptions and birthed more horrible and destructive thoughts. I almost killed myself, I could have hurt others also. My meeting with my father was tragic on many levels, all self-created: https://www.mindentropy.com/post/a-gypsy-a-rose-headringing-lunatic-born-from-a-waxing-gibbous-moon-crashing-into-saturn-friday

For so many years I wondered why someone would leave me, what was I missing and why wasn’t I enough to be cared for. I had it all wrong – everything that mattered was right in front of me, nearly every moment and evident in so many other positive things in my life. Yet I had something to prove, to show that I was worthy, all the while being unworthy and now realizing I missed so much time and opportunities. The only person out to get me, became me and I created that. And when it got to be too much, I compounded the situation by running and trying to escape, I created issues that will likely take more than the time I have left to remedy. I have to also get over punishing myself for mistakes, pivot to learning from and helping others to avoid them from today forward, for that is all we can control. What happens to you, or what you perceive as happening to you, perhaps we have less control than we want to admit, but how we respond, we control fully. I let things control me that shouldn’t have, and for that I lost control, for that I will never be a father myself as I squandered that opportunity with no one else to blame by myself.

In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused yourself. My greatest enemy is me and my misconceptions spun out of control, increasing every day in my head like the entropy that governs energy and order in our world through the second law of thermodynamics: https://www.mindentropy.com/about-4

The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. We are our own most difficult judges, but coaches, friends, family – they are also powerful judges (or we believe them to be further creating a false pressure inside of ourselves). Our image of perfection is very disruptive.

We are tired each day trying to fulfill so many agreements we have made with ourselves and others – we barely make it through each day, our energy dissipated on these agreements.

If you surveyed many people who have overcome issues, they will say they are far less proud of what they overcame or how they changed compared to what they have been able to do for others based on their example, what they have learned and what they have been able to show others. I take solace in that because if I focus on myself I will never be proud or feel worthy, perhaps if I can influence someone else positively I can chip away at the wall I’ve built, bit by bit.

I just want people to be happy. Maybe if I learned these lessons earlier a few friends I no longer have could be here and be happy: https://www.mindentropy.com/post/don-t-be-fooled-learn-the-lessons-your-friends-are-teaching-katie-meyer-aaron-james-shane

All the inspiration, heroes and love you need are right in front of you. Perhaps for the first time I truly do have something to prove. Not to anyone else, but to myself. And I just want to be happy.

Overview of The Four Agreements from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Agreements

Everything a person does is based on 'agreements' they have made with themselves, with others, with God, and with life itself.[1] In these agreements, people may tell themselves who they are, how to behave, what is possible, and what is impossible.[1] Some agreements that individuals create may not cause issues, but there are certain agreements that come from a place of fear and have the power to deplete one's emotional energy as well as diminish the self-worth of a person.[1] The book states that these self-limiting agreements are what creates needless suffering.[1] Ruiz also believes that to find personal joy, one must get rid of society-imposed and fear-based agreements that may subconsciously influence the behavior and mindset of the individual.[5] Another basic premise of the book suggests that much of suffering is self-created and that most of the time, individuals have the ability to transform themselves and the negative thoughts they may have about situations occurring within their life.

Be Impeccable With Your Word

Ruiz describes a sin to be anything that goes against oneself, and therefore being impeccable with language means to take responsibility for one's actions and remain without judgment against oneself and others.[8] In essence, this agreement focuses on the significance of speaking with integrity and carefully choosing words before saying them aloud.[9]

Don't Take Anything Personally

The second agreement provides readers with a way to deal with hurtful treatment from others that they may experience in life. It advocates the importance of having a strong sense of self and not needing to rely on the opinions of others in order to be content and satisfied with their self-image. This agreement also allows readers to understand the notion that each individual has a unique worldview that alters their own perceptions, and that the actions and beliefs of a person is a projection of their own personal reality.[1] Ruiz believes that anger, jealousy, envy, and even sadness can lessen or dissipate once an individual stops taking things personally.

Don't Make Assumptions

When one assumes what others are thinking, it can create stress and interpersonal conflict because the person believes their assumption is a representation of the truth.[10] Ruiz believes that a solution to overcoming the act of making an assumption is to ask questions and ensure that the communication is clear between the persons involved.[9] Individuals can avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama by not making assumptions.

Always Do Your Best

This agreement entails integrating the first three agreements into daily life and also living to one's full potential.[8] It involves doing the best that one can individually manage, which varies from the different situations and circumstances that the individual may encounter. Ruiz believes that if one does their best in any given moment, they will be able to avoid self-judgment and regret.

A lot of this reminds me of Siddhartha, written by Herman Hesse in 1922 and the despair needed in order to find enlightenment: https://www.mindentropy.com/post/lit-achieve-what-you-are-looking-for-siddhartha-and-nirvana-the-river-speaks-to-you-on-the-road