I have been reading a rather hilarious new world record… Yes indeed, a crowd of 756 committed people formed what is a record-breaking, world’s longest ever queue for the toilet! Haha…
Right in the centre of the Belgian capital of Brussels earlier this week to raise awareness for the need for clean water on World Water Day. Good for them, it is a good cause I reckon.
The event was organised by the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF. However, and this is a BIG howevuuur in my opinion… Not one of the 756 people actually used the toilet, which was a replica of the ‘dry latrines’ used by UNICEF in third world countries… So they cannot have had the intention to go to the toilet, which is my book does not make it a real queue, does it?
I just realised how mean that could be, to deny them their world record! Ok, so enough of that, why am I mentioning this today? Let me tell you…
When some great friends were staying with us this weekend, we took a walk in the beautiful sunshine down to a bar in a small bay that you can only get to by walking and had a couple of drinks and were catching up… We talked about the football and one of my friends mentioned he was playing in the evenings again…
Now I used to play a very high standard of football when I was young and I missed playing regularly. When I moved to the south coast, I set up a team from the health centre that I owned… We were all therapists, with some fading flair for the game, and we ranged in age from 30 to 45 or so…
It was an evening 5-a-side league and we won the first two divisions we played in with some ease and so were popped up a couple of leagues because of it… As soon as we got into the top league, playing against many teams of semi-professional 18-year old wannabe Manchester United stars, the fun eroded…
We kept having other teams wanting to do no more than puff their chests out, square up to us — bear in mind, we were hypnotherapists, homeopaths, accupuncturists and so on! — It seemed they were as interested in brawling, demonstrating their manhood and fighting than having fun and playing football… We eventually stopped participating, shame…
The reason I am quoting this today?
One of the best players in our team was losing his enthusiasm for the league and kept making excuses for not playing, and leaving in a strop because we had not been winning with as much frequency as when we started out…
One cold night, he showed up late for a game. He arrived 15 minutes after kickoff. The rules allowed rolling substituions, so we got to put him on as soon as he was ready.
It was very cold, I had steam coming off my head! “Think about stretching and warming up properly mate… You don’t want to pull anything.”
Within about another 5 minutes, he lunged for an interception and pulled up, had to leave the field becuase he had hurt his hamstring… As it happened, it was the last game he played for us… In the bar afterwards, he said to me, “You know that was your fault, you always talk about positive language, but you put a negative thought in my mind when you said that, and now I have pulled my hamstring.”
He blamed me!? Ha!
He needed to blame me. Not only did he have a valid excuse for not playing… He refused to take personal responsibility and refused to admit that he had not played for a couple of weeks, he didn’t show up in time for the pre-match kick about and warm-up, and just went on to the pitch with cold legs… His muscles were like elastic bands that had been in the freezer… They did not have their flexibility, they were ready to snap! They did!
This is my point today though… It is always nicer, easier and more convenient to say things are someone else’s fault, or something else’s fault, isn;t it?
That in turn transforms us into an innocent victim. I always recommend people stop being victims… Even if there really was nothing they could have done to avoid it… In therapy, people need to stop being a victim of what happened to them, however unpleasant or traumatic… If the therapist then empathises with that level of victim-hood, they could be making the problem much worse…
When people take personal responsibility for the unpleasant things that happened to them, then they simply cannot live life being a victim!You might even choose to be a victor instead?
Even if we are not in therapy, even if we are not therapists, it can be a real drag and a real drain when people are being utter victims around us… And that is what I told my football buddy, who is a dear friend today still and who no longer blames me for his pulled hamstring… Except maybe in jest in the pub…
