Dragging Mental Bricks - The Pity Sack

The majority of things we worry about never come to pass. The majority of bad things that have happened to us are in the past, so why worry about them? The majority of bad things that have happened to us seldom repeat themselves. Suffice it to say, most of our worries and anxieties come from the past and have no bearing on our current state of mind.

Yet, Im constantly amazed at the type of issues people carry with them day-to-day, month-to-month and year-to-year. Its common knowledge that we cant change the past, so why dwell on it? Its common knowledge that the past, once survived, cant hurt us; it can only help us become stronger.

Having stated the obvious, why do most of us continually drag our past with us every day? We take our past to work with us, bring it into our personal lives and we even tuck it into bed with us every night.
I want you to start thinking about these past incidents you carry with you as individual bricks. Everyday, you pile your bricks into a self pity sack and off you go. Yes, a sack of bricks. Every time I see negative people walking around I visualize them carrying a large sack of bricks. For everything thats gone wrong in their lives, they add another brick to the sack.

Although the bricks are not real, but imaginary, the weight of each one is undeniable and is directly proportional to the credence the person gives to it.
When things dont go your way, you get upset and add another brick labeled resentment, into the sack.

When you get rejected for a job or get terminated, due to no fault of your own, you add a brick called dejection to the sack. The level of importance you place on these setbacks determines the size of the brick. Over time, your self-pity sack weighs you down to the point of inertia; you cant move.

In real life if I asked you to carry a sack of bricks with you to work, in your car when youre in traffic, or when you go to bed, youd think I was crazy or a sadist. So why is it that most people choose to carry a sack of mental bricks of the past around with them every day? But more importantly, how is it that others seem to be free of the self-pity sack?

There are two categories of people in the world: 1) Brick Carriers and 2) Bricklayers. Brick carriers like to carry their bricks with them everywhere they go. They never seem to stop worrying about things in life. Theyre always worried about money, always resentful of something and always suspicious of everyone. Brick carriers always have great excuses for why they arent as successful as theyd hoped. They always blame their lack of success on things outside of their control. These carriers go through life weighted down by their own mental bricks, blaming everyone, but themselves for their misfortune.

Bricklayers, on the other hand, refuse to hold on to their bricks when things go wrong. Its difficult for any of us to immediately discard a mental brick when something in life goes wrong, but bricklayers know that holding on to their bricks will slow them down and prevent them from achieving success. Bricklayers are quick to remove bad experiences from their pity sack. They use their bricks to either build the foundation for a better future or to lay a new road toward success.

Brick carriers always see problems, even when an opportunity to move ahead presents itself. Brick carriers are so accustomed to seeing the bad in things, that theyve lost their ability to see opportunity. Theyve gone blind. You can usually identify brick carriers because they often whine about their situation, or complain about other people. They take every opportunity to pull out their mental bricks and show the world how life has cheated them in the past. Brick carriers love showing the world their bricks of discontent.

These brick carriers also have a perverse sense of pride in their bricks. They never miss an opportunity to tell others how life has done them wrong and the bricks are their proof. They are quick to pull bricks from their sack and hold them up, like a badge of honor.

Time has a way of distorting the past, often making situations seem much worse or much better than they really were. Brick carriers love feeling like victims and have a knack for remembering past incidents in their worst light. As a result, brick carriers tend to grow their bricks as time goes on. Each incident of injustice, in their mind, grows over time, as the mortar of resentment is glommed onto every brick in their sack. As time distorts their memory of a past incident, so too does the brick become larger and more distorted. Over time, as the mortar of discontent hardens, the bricks begin to resemble the large concrete mass of a defeated mind.

The reality is that we all carry a sack of bricks. Each brick represents something that went wrong or someone who we believe did us wrong. But time and maturity help us deal with the past and allow us to pull those bricks out of the sack and move on with our lives more freely.

So the question is, who do you choose to be, a brick carrier or a bricklayer?