When I taught a middle school writing class, I taught my students about the types of conflict that exist in stories. We learned body motions to go along with each type of conflict to help us remember. Every story has a conflict, both a protagonist and an antagonist. Person versus person is the most common type of conflict — think Cinderella versus her evil stepfamily. Person versus their environment is another one that can come up — Little Red Riding Hood versus the Big Bad Wolf. Conflict with the supernatural can be seen in stories like the Lord of the Rings. And finally, we have internal conflict, when a character’s primary conflict is with themself.
Something I’ve been pondering lately are the ways in which we can be our own worst enemies.
I think this may be the case more than we realize. While other people typically don’t care enough about us to put much energy towards actively opposing our interests, we can easily do this to ourselves. We may be able to avoid a neighbor we dislike, but we are always around to oppose or even sabotage ourselves.
I am my own enemy when I engage my mind in unhealthy comparison with others. I often find myself comparing myself to others in unflattering ways when it comes to my career, my parenting, my home, or anything else that I’m focused on at the time. Instead of appreciating myself for the strengths I have, I compare myself to friends with doctorate degrees and fancy houses and feel that I’ve fallen short. I tell myself that I should have made different choices in the past — gotten a science degree or maybe a law degree or a PhD in literature. On the other hand, I might compare myself to a stay-at-home mom friend who has more children than I do and who still seems sane, with children who listen to her and have clean clothes and brushed hair, and then feel that I’m falling short as a parent.
I need to practice loving myself by not making these kinds of destructive comparisons. One thing I’ve done to help counter this is to stop using social media. I can also choose not to dwell on these types of thoughts and try to bring my thoughts back to the present moment, grounding myself in gratitude for the blessings I do have. I’ve read that Olympic silver medalists are often unhappier than bronze medalists because they are focused on the gold medal they didn’t win, while bronze medalists are happy just to be on the podium.
Romans 12:2
“Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
We can be our own enemies when we tell ourselves the wrong story, like in the above example about how I tell myself I should have made different career choices in the past. This is harmful as well as not being very accurate. Instead, I could recognize the truth, which is that I am and have always been very hard working in both my personal and professional life. If I don’t have a big paycheck or a compliant, hair-brushed child to show for it, and my house looks like a tornado has recently blown through, then that’s just the way it is. Even when we’ve made genuinely poor choices that have actually been harmful, we have to seek forgiveness and move on, if not we become locked in our own mind prison. Again, I believe that practicing gratitude is key to stop ourselves from ruminating on unhealthy stories about ourselves.
We can also be our own enemies when we assume the worst in others, as this can sabotage our relationships when continued over time. I have a friend who communicates only via text message with a family member that he dislikes. He has read text messages to me from this person that seem completely neutral to me, but to him they seem to be full of negative intent. This was confusing to me as it’s impossible to read someone’s underlying intentions in a text message, with no facial expressions or even tone of voice to provide clues. I wonder if this relationship could be restored if my friend just started assuming neutral intent in these communications.
In general, it’s best not to take things personally and to assume neutral or even positive intent in our relationships with others. I’m very sensitive, but I’m trying to take this advice to heart and assume that even if someone seems rude, it’s not about me. There are a hundred different reasons someone may interact with me in a way that seems rude: they could be tired, hungry, sick, depressed, worried about something else, have poor self-control, or just be unaware of the way they come across to others. We should work to assume the best in others.
Even when someone is direct about telling us they dislike us, it may say more about them than it does about us. We don’t have to choose to focus on it. In high school, I heard that another girl disliked me because of the brand of shoes I wore. Did I hold a giant grudge against this person, or switch the brand of shoes I wore to something that might not offend her? I did neither — I felt that someone who didn’t know me and disliked me for such a silly reason was not worthy of my concern. But I bring this up now to say that people will judge us and dislike us for all sorts of reasons in our lives. We can be our own enemies when we fail to fully live because we fear other people’s opinions. We should live our lives the best we can regardless of the judgements of others. I’m reminded of the following quote:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena...who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”
~Theodore Roosevelt
About the Author
Ursula and her husband Spencer have two young children, and their family enjoys playing hide-and-seek and dancing in the living room. She works as a communications and events coordinator with the University of Oregon.
You can read more from Ursula at motherbearblog.com.
