The Invisible Prison

Part 18 in a series by Karen A. Stevenson, President, Studio K Salon

Have you ever placed yourself in an invisible prison?

Before you answer that question, you may need to identify what an invisible prison is. An invisible prison is when you hear the voice in the back of your head screaming “Help me I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!!”  They are when you feel you cannot accomplish something because you’ve set your own barriers, or own prison walls.  No one else sees them, no one else lives with them, and they are your prison bars, and yours only. 

I had a good friend reveal to me how she broke free from her invisible prison.  She said she had to realize that there were ‘goodies’ for her perceived ‘benefit’ that were coming from her prison walls.  Some people get extra attention as a ‘goodie’ if they imprison themselves with ‘fear’.  Some get sympathy as their ‘goodie’ if they act ‘poor me’ enough.  How about the ‘goodie’ of compassion for being depressed?  Or the ‘goodie’ of martyrdom? 

What is holding your fist so tightly that you refuse to let go of something that needs to be changed?  Let’s face it.  As the serenity prayer clearly states, there are things we CAN change, and things we simply CANNOT change.  How do you identify the things we CAN change so we can get out of our prison? 

We can change things about ourselves.  We can get out of boredom by finding new things to do.  We can get out of being unfit physically by hiring a personal trainer, beginning a discipline of walking on a regular basis, going to the gym.  We can get out of unhealthy eating by changing our diet.  We can change our looks by educating ourselves how to wear make up, get a more complimentary haircut, dressing more fashionable and with our right colors.  We can change our relationships by changing our own personalities.  We can build appropriate boundaries and not allow people to mistreat us.  We can separate ourselves from negative situations by not placing ourselves in them.  We can stop a circle of bad friendships, by gaining new friends.  We can change our overload of work by rearranging our schedules. 

There are many ways to change.

What we cannot change is how other people choose to perceive us, how others tend to judge us.  We cannot spend our whole lives wondering why certain unfortunate circumstances happen to us, there comes a time when we need to say ‘now what’ rather than ‘why’.  We can change how others treat us by communicating our desires, and if they don’t respect us enough to treat us in a manner that is acceptable, we can choose to not be around that acquaintance. 

Life is so wonderfully full of choices.  How sad it is to see people feel helpless with their lives in circumstances where they are not helpless at all.  Did you ever analyze how a baby step for yourself could be a confident glide for another?  Why is it ‘she’ can do ‘that’ so easily?  We all have to crawl before we can walk, then walking is imperative before we run.  We all must take the first step in the crawling process in order to move forward.  If you find yourself in the rut of life, any baby step is better than no step at all. 

There are many people that wish that life would ‘come to them’.  Sitting impatiently as they wonder why the phone isn’t ringing, why no one sent them an email.  Why other people aren’t home and have things going on in their life.  It is because those people have found that they have to go out and GET their life, not that life is going to swiftly fall from the sky and grab them up and give them self esteem, give them companions, give them energy for a walk.  We must find the life that is waiting for us. 

Our prison walls are not attached at the floor, nor are they attached at the ceiling.  There are no bars that come from the sides…..merely dust specks in our own minds, that appear to be iron bars. 

Boldly walk through your invisible wall, and see if you don’t feel better about yourself.  See if it isn’t a freeing experience.  Pretty soon, you will look behind your shoulder and laugh at that wall as it dissipates to ashes.  Then you will realize, that you alone ALLOWED that wall to have a mighty hold on you.  The empowerment that follows, will give you great joy.