Last night I was talking to a friend who happened to be in a funk. I kept trying to be funny to break him of this nasty mood he was in. Then it hit me. I felt like it was my responsibility to free him of this mood. Like it was my job. Once I had that realization, I was free from it. I realized my only responsibility is my mood. I shared this with my friend and he congratulated me on making such an insightful realization. I offered to take a bow and thank the academy.

What I had realized was a simple cognitive distortion of my own that has been well in place for many years. I have to make everything all better. If you want to dive deeper, I have to make everything all better in order to earn my worth as a person. If someone is sad, then I am compelled to make him happy. Scared? I am to calm him. But all that does is take the focus off of me. It makes my worth external, based on others rather than myself. It takes it out of my hands and thus uncontrollable.

I believe everyone has his or her own worth and that it doesn’t need to be earned. We just get it at birth, like toes. You didn’t have to earn your toes. But here I had a distortion directly contradicting that.

Needless to say, it was a fun night of introspection for me with some help from my friend.