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China Elevator Stories
“Stop Saying You’re Fine, The No BS-Guide To Getting What You Want” (by Mel Robbins)
How do you change your situation when it seems like there’s nothing you can do to change it?
11/01/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
The day my (now ex-) husband appeared in a video call at the Austrian court, I wasn’t fine.
When I was stalked, over and over, by various men, I wasn’t fine.
When I received the custody verdict, denying me access to my children—who are being kept hidden at an unknown address in China—I wasn’t fine.
When people in Austria harass me (living in a society as cruel, conscienceless, and egotistical as the one during World War II), I am not fine.
When others project that I deserve what happened to me, I am not fine.
When a man bullies me, believing he is better and more intelligent than I am (though this is far from the truth), I am not fine.
But every day, when I meet people, and they ask me how I am, I usually tell them: “Thank you, I am fine. I am doing well.”
What happens if I don’t?
Well, people will probably think I’m some kind of weird person with a negative attitude. Or they’ll start asking why I’m not fine when I should (pretend to) be fine, just like everyone else (and maybe some people actually are fine because bad things haven’t happened to them!). More often than not, when I say I’m not fine, it turns into an uncomfortable, sometimes abusive, 3-hour inquiry into my personal life, as though I were some strange zoo animal—odd because, unlike others, I admit I’m not fine when I’m not. Most people I come across just say they’re fine all the time, because admitting otherwise makes others uncomfortable. Those of us who aren’t Truth Tellers might find this harder, but Truth Tellers don’t mind being blunt and talking about things as they are.
When too many bad things have happened to you in your life, and when many of those things have happened at the hands of cruel, conscienceless people, without you being able to control the outcomes, you won’t be fine.
I would like to hear from you: What haven’t you been fine with?
“Stop Saying You’re Fine, the No Bs-Guide to Getting What You Want” (By Mel Robbins)
Mel Robbins, who shares life advice on her YouTube channel, and whose “The Let Them Theory” I really enjoy (she wrote a book on the same topic, titled The Let Them Theory, which was released at the end of December), also wrote a book called Stop Saying You’re Fine: The No-BS Guide to Getting What You Want. She starts her book with the following words:
“Every day you’re bombarded with images of people doing better than you. There is an endless stream of reality shows selling the fantasy that somewhere out there are celebrity trainers, designers, and talent scouts helping people just like you lose weight, spice up their wardrobes, or launch music careers. Hollywood cranks out movie after movie about ‘ordinary people’ who are impossibly sexy, funny, and adventurous. Log onto Facebook, and it seems as if everyone but you spends all of their time having fun. Of course, this is not how the world actually lives. There’s no reality-show fairy godmother coming to whisk you away to a magical life. You don’t have an entire Hollywood makeup team helping you look good, or screenwriters coming up with adventures to spice up your day. Facebook is nothing but heavily packaged ‘Kodak moments’ that bear no relation to how people really live.”
But then, when you have been narcissistically abused, or still are (like, by the way, many people have been, many simply don’t talk about it, making those who are in a situation of narcissistic abuse feel even more lonely when they go through this experience), you will feel even more like a failure than others.
Some people may even really be fine, live enjoyable lives, and their Facebook pages may resemble their real life rather than a fake one, but if you don’t see all the negative experiences and bad situations others are experiencing on Facebook, your mind will form a belief that you’re the only one going through an abusive situation, or who is in a bad place in life.
Some of the bad stuff that has happened to me are things I have shared with others, and others were so bad I didn’t share them with anyone—because I knew people would shame me, bully me, harass me, and have no understanding for what I went through if I shared these experiences. So, if you read my blog, know that what I have been through has even been worse than most people would know (probably about 100 times worse). I have met others who have been through similar experiences, and I know I’m not the only one, but these aren’t the experiences people usually share on Facebook. It creates a bias, where we see only the positive, and the negative is left completely out, causing cognitive dissonance within those who look at other people’s pictures, thinking that, for example, that happy couple over there is a happy couple, not knowing that they are in an abusive relationship that is going to end in a horrific divorce a few years down the road.
Mel Robbins goes on to write in her book:
“There’s a name for that feeling just below the surface, when you know you want more from life but you don’t know how to get it. When you constantly say things are fine while knowing that you really want something more. It’s called stuck. Feeling stuck builds slowly from the inside like corrosion on a metal pipe. It’s easy to miss because it starts with a vague feeling that something’s a little off. There’s no big, obvious problem to solve. On the surface, everything seems fine. But something is missing from your life and you can’t quite put your finger on what it is, though some words come close—fulfillment, happiness, purpose, empowerment. Instead of taking action, you placate your ambitions with excuses and rationalizations. You can’t change your career. You don’t have time to exercise. You can’t find love. You can’t start over.”
Now, for some of us, for example, those who are the target of a malignant narcissist, we may indeed find ourselves in a situation we can’t easily get out of (and if you do, you may lose everything, just like I did—your job, your savings, your kids, or your life, quite literally), and these kinds of situations don’t count as situations you can easily change.
Mel Robbins explains the difference between being stuck and being in crisis:
“The key difference between being stuck and being in crisis is your relationship to change. When you’re in crisis, your life will change whether you like it or not. Your major task is how you manage the change. But when you’re stuck, the major task is deciding if you’re going to change at all. The challenge is finding the ability, in the face of an overwhelming amount of resistance, to create a small change in your life and build on it. The only way to get unstuck is to force yourself to change and grow in meaningful ways. When you were younger you had all kinds of experiences to look forward to as an adult: college, moving out on your own, making your own money, blasting music, drinking, travel, dating, getting a ‘real’ job. You were excited about what the future may hold. The last time most of us felt that kind of optimism was on the eve of college graduation, anticipating what adult life would be like.”
Of course, for many of us, this is not what our life held for us. In my case, my view of life and people used to be too positive, too naive, and too optimistic. I didn’t know that narcissism existed, that people would try to destroy my life, my relationships, and that they would try to kill me, and that we were living, quite bluntly, in a world filled with so many malignant narcissists who would try and get me off my life path at every corner I turned (and this is not a projection, but based on my own life experience), and that getting unstuck was pretty much impossible at times. Mel Robbins writes that these experiences can lead to our head forming beliefs that were inspired by what has happened to us, which can keep us stuck.
I like to think that we can’t change other people, but a lot of the time, we can at least try to change our own situation. Of course, if you are in a really bad situation, please don’t blame yourself, thinking that you can easily get out of it. If you have been in one bad situation after another, you may have come to realize that some situations are simply not within our control (and in these situations, we may simply adopt a mindset of 无为 wuwei—sometimes translated as “inaction,” “inexertion,” or “effortless action,” known from Daoism—which is a Chinese concept similar to ‘The Let Them Theory’).
Trying to change our own situation, according to Mel Robbins, starts with making small changes that are within the range of things we can change. Of course, when you have been through three instances at court and even gone to the ECHR, receiving nothing but rejection, you may be in a place where you simply give up. But at least you did try (even when it didn’t make any noticeable difference and couldn’t change anything about your or your children’s situation—we cannot change how other people act, but we can change how we go about doing things):
“Control cuts to the hearts of our lives. A lack of control inspires all sorts of negative philosophical questions. Without control, you start to question your place in life, where you are headed, and what the point of it all is. Were my expectations too high? Is my life really supposed to be this unfulfilling? Is there something wrong with me? You start to feel hopeless and too afraid to try anything new. You get mad and start acting like a jerk. You find yourself jealous of people who have more than you. You adopt a victim mentality and judge the world critically in order to make yourself feel better. Obviously, these mindsets keep you stuck.”
Now, please don’t confuse being a real victim with having a victim mindset. An extreme victim mindset is commonly seen in narcissists, who often perceive themselves as victims even when they are not. They tend to blame external factors, even when those factors are not at fault. When external factors are responsible, blaming them is, in my opinion, legitimate. However, normal people can also inadvertently adopt a victim mindset.
In every situation, we can check ourselves: Even though I may be stuck, is there still something I can change about my situation? Sometimes, these changes are small changes. These changes may not always mean ‘action’; sometimes, they may mean going into ‘inaction.’ Sometimes, these may be changes such as accepting that certain people don’t want to talk to you (when you have been shunned by family members who stopped talking to you, for example, after you have experienced adverse events). You may have tried to change the situation by trying to get in contact with them and force them to have contact with you, but after trying a few times, you realized they weren’t interested and therefore changed your own perception by going into acceptance and accepting that they simply weren’t interested in having a working relationship with you. A lot of the time, it means confronting the situation in a way that aligns it with reality.
The “Let Them Theory” is a similar approach:
People don’t want to have contact with you? Let them.
People want to kill you? Let them (don’t let them kill you, but let them do whatever they are doing—I realized early on that I couldn’t stop my ex-husband from trying to have me killed, but I could accept that he was trying to have me killed and probably wouldn’t ever stop trying to have me killed as long as he is alive).
Your ex-husband is stealing your kids from you? Let him (if you can’t do anything to stop him, like me).
Your ex-husband won’t let your kids talk to you? Let him.
People blame you for stuff you didn’t do? Let them.
We live in a crazy world filled with crazy people—let them be! Let them be crazy! This kind of acceptance is far more useful than trying to change everyone on the outside (which, by the way, is impossible anyway).
Do you know Mel Robbins?