Support – Does It Mean What You Think It Means?
Actions speak louder than words.
Lots of people will tell you that they support you.
They might offer platitudes, tell you about all the ways they’re supporting you, and/or claim they’re being supportive by doing this, that, or the other thing.
But then, when you get down to it – are they taking actions that genuinely support you?
Let’s say you have a “friend” who always must one-up you, always seems to find some way to belittle you, or in certain situations makes you feel uncomfortable. Now, let’s say you tell a friend whom you consider a confidant this, and they commiserate, claim they understand and validate you, and then tell you how much they support you.
That’s what they say and tell you. But then, they host a gathering – and invite both you and the “friend” you have the issue with. Is that genuine support? Of course not.
Whatever the situation might be – genuine support isn’t just words. It’s also actions. You can tell someone over and over how much you support them. But do your actions back this up?
Then, because support can be a slippery slope – what about when the support being requested isn’t reasonable? For example – you have a friend who claims they’ve been harassed and bullied by another friend. But you know for a fact that they were being a bully and harasser to the person they claim to be the victim of. Can you offer support to them in some way without validating their victimhood?
You, and you alone, know true support from false support – no matter the situation.
Let’s start with mindfulness
Mindfulness is active conscious awareness – both from within and without.
Active conscious awareness is derived from external and internal forces belonging to you, and you alone. Those forces are always on – but passively.
Making them active is a matter of actions taken.
Externally, this is about your six senses. Taste, touch, sight, sound, smell, and the hard-to-describe empathic, extra-sensory perceptions. You observe and take in your immediate surroundings around you and outside of your head, heart, soul, and physical body via these senses.
Within your head, heart, and soul – or however you experience your inner, non-physical being – you can be actively consciously aware of what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, what your intentions are, and your actions (and inactions).
Combined, and actively employed, you use mindfulness to be actively, consciously aware in the present, here and now. With mindfulness, you’re empowered to take control of who, what, where, how, and why you are.
That control is the ultimate control you have of your life experience. To some, it doesn’t appear to be a lot. But it’s everything, and huge.
Via mindfulness, you can recognize genuine support that you receive, and also any support that you provide to others.
Support can be positive and negative, passive and active
Part of the human condition is the need for social interaction. Even the most introverted people need at least some interaction with individuals. The human animal is a social animal, after all.
Support can be passive and active, depending on what form it takes. For example – as an author, some people passively support me by letting me bounce ideas off them. Active support is from readers of my blog articles and people who buy my books.
Likewise, support can be positive and negative. Positive support feels good both given and received, while negative support is a lot more nuanced.
For example, let’s say you feel someone majorly wronged you. You blame them for all sorts of ills in your life. What’s more, you take zero culpability for the things you place on them. Negative support is someone who reinforces this. They tell you that you’re right, that someone gets all the blame, and your victimhood is justified.
Please note – when I write about this sort of victim, I’m not writing about someone who was raped, mugged, shot, abused, or otherwise received pain and suffering that was someone else’s doing. I’m writing about the “victim” who is frequently not accountable for anything in their life. They blame it all on other people, faceless entities, “them”, and the like.
Some people get their point of view reinforced by “supporters” who are either equally lost and seeking answers, too broken to recognize the deception, or narcissistic and charismatic demagogues.
What can you do to know if it means what you think it means?
By practicing active conscious awareness – mindfulness – you can use your senses and ask questions of your present, mindset/headspace/psyche self, to look closely at support both given and received.
But – and this is important – you need to forgive yourself.
Why? Because nearly everyone at one time or another supported something or someone – passively or actively – that was negative, or false.
Years ago, when a woman sued McDonald’s for their coffee being too hot and burning her, lots of people thought this was a really spurious lawsuit. Seriously? You got millions because your coffee was too hot?
When you look past the simplistic notion, you learn that it wasn’t slightly too-hot coffee, but dangerously too hot. Worse, the woman wasn’t a little burned, but seriously injured. The notion you might have previously supported – that the whole thing was ludicrous – gets reshaped, and what you support changes.
This is worse when someone you know and trust that you support turns out to be false. Learning that all the time you supported them because they were victimized by someone – who it turns out either did nothing or did something far more minor than what the victim has claimed – can make you feel bad.
When you receive half-assed support or are told someone is supporting you – but their actions say otherwise – there’s nothing you can do about them. But you can distance yourself from them, and recognize and accept that their support isn’t going to be what you need or desire. That won’t lessen your feeling hurt – but it’s not your fault you have zero control of anyone else’s actions or lack thereof.
Finally – being mindful of what you do and don’t support can help you both give and receive it better.
Recognizing the meaning of support given and not given isn’t hard
It’s all about working with mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, and intentions to direct your actions.
When you recognize via conscious awareness that actions speak louder than words, you can see the power of support that you both give and receive. Knowing that you can use mindfulness to recognize the genuine from the false, you can make choices when and how to give more, as well as when to move away from the disingenuous.
This empowers you – and in turn, your empowerment can empower others around you.
Taking an approach to positivity and negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and third (503) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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