Today is the eleventh day of the 33 days challenge. The question for today was: “Who’s your most dangerous enemy…”.
Let’s see the answers.
A.A. “My most dangerous enemy is a SHE. I feel a little beet mean to call her ‘enemy’ but it seams the right call, after all. Actually, she wants to be my friend. I guess she’s watching me for a while from the distance. She knows me so well, by now. She can totally say when I feel the need to be alone. Or when I need to quit an unfinished task. She probably believes that change is not possible and that people will eventually fail, returning to their old habits. She would celebrate such a moment with me … winning my heart with a rainbow range of macaroons or maybe a surrendering kfc meal. And a hug 😉 Weird, huh, considering that I was talking about an old version of me.”
So, your old enemy is an old version of yourself. Neat! Like in “never get back to who you used to be”. I like that. Keep walking!
S.C. “I used to think that my enemies were certain people in my life. I left that belief way behind. Like you, I realized that the most dangerous enemy is the spiritual force named “evil” IF we let him play with our mind, thoughts and feelings. But these days I am reading about these dangers and I am working hard to resist them.
As Tony Robbins puts it:
Emotional mastery is the key to living a life that you direct. The capacity to have absolute direct power over what you feel in every single moment—no matter what happens around you—is one of the most important skill sets you can have.
So there you have it. I have no human enemies. The real war is in the spiritual realm and that’s the one we should really be aware of and resist it with all our might.”
I’m so with Tony Robbins on this one. It’s not what happens to us. It’s how we react to what happens to us. Ultimately, we create the outcome. That I can agree. With a generic notion of “evil” I do not agree, though. It think good or evil are just mental projections.
L.C. “As much as I love myself, I know I can be the most dangerous enemy to me!
when I sabotage myself, when I go for less than what I really deserved, when I undermined my own power!”
Absolutely. I can write a novel about sabotaging myself. I really know what you mean.
Anonymous: “My sister is my most dangerous enemy. We used to be best friends but she completely turned on me and unleashed things (insignificant to insulting) that I never knew she felt. She wrote out an entire email about them. I still have it to remind me. I never responded and refuse to go to certain family functions because of the mean things she included in her email and I just don’t want to deal with her. She has anger issues and other family members know this. You can’t have a conversation with her because she will continually talk above you. I no longer am going to listen to excuses for her or turn my head. Things she wrote in her email were above all hurtful. She has yet to apologize. It has been about a year and a half since I have spoken to her.”
Looks like you really have some work to do there. It’s up to you.
B.D. “I’ve thought about this question of enemies for a whole day now, and the only person I can think of who is my enemy, is ME. I keep myself from becoming successful. I sabotage my every move with procrastination, shiny object syndrome, lack of self confidence, fear of failure, laziness, and putting others’ needs above my own. On the one hand, I want to do the work and make the money, but on the other hand, I feel overwhelmed and that maybe I won’t do a good job, so I put it off any way I can. Then I stay stuck in poverty and unhappiness/unfullfillment. I have no idea how to become my own friend…how to break out of this box I’m in.”
Just keep being there. In the end, it’s just a matter of getting up, getting out of bed and doing what you have to do. Nothing more.
S.L. “I used to like a boy during my primary school years. I immediately made two enemies: Bridget and Roxanne. They were very beautiful and had a lot of admirers. They were also closer to the boy that I liked. I got jealous of them and saw them as my enemies. I had low self-esteem at that time. I hated my average look as I couldn’t attract boys that I liked. I thought they were also very arrogant. I had been used by Roxanne once. It took me a long time to understand that my low self esteem played a major part in my daily interaction (or the lack of) with people. I couldn’t attract guys because I didn’t even talk to them. Sometimes, I still envy them but I do not despise myself anymore for not measuring up. I know that they are not perfect too. ”
Nice story. I think we’ve all been there. Maybe it will sound weird to you, but I had low self-esteem issues for a long period in my life. I think it was only in my late thirties that I made peace with that.
C.F. “Just as your best friend usually is not your closest friend, your worst enemy is not always your most dangerous enemy. I’ve realized, too, that I myself am my own best friend and most dangerous enemy…”
I liked that parallel: the best friend and the worst enemy are both inside us.
C.E. “Oh, this is sooo easy! Myself! No one can hurt me like I do! I’m the master of disaster as I’m concerned 🙂
I let others hurt me by not being straightforward enough, withholding my true feelings, giving erroneous interpretations to different facts and not being perseverant enough.
I have no other enemy but me: when I abandon my dreams; when I doubt myself; when I don’t show the people I love this fact with my facts, taking very well into account their needs; when I don’t follow through on my promises, when I don’t have clarity and act out of confusion; when I don’t show up where I would really like to me; when I don’t really respect myself and let others project their views upon me without showing them the truth; when I let myself put off without a fight.”
Looks like you’ve done a lot of work with yourself.
Now, my answer to this one.
I do not think in terms of enemies anymore. I think in terms of projecting my own reality on other people. I cannot understand anything beyond what I’ve experienced so far. So, if I identify someone as “my enemy”, I know it’s something inside me that wants to be revealed in that way. It’s something that I created somehow, something that left an imprint on me that now needs to manifest. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that it works the same with friends. If I identify someone being nice to me, I know that this is also an imprint of me being nice to somebody else, an imprint that takes shape through that person.
So, in the end, it’s only a matter of choice: how much do I want to project aggressively into my world, and how much do I want to help and create value.
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