“F**k you for not working on yourself!” This is a profound line in the final season of the show, “Ted Lasso,” that really resonated with me. Can you relate to this? Have you found yourself angry at someone for not waking up to their own dysfunction? Or have you found yourself angry because they have not realized how their lack of self awareness has harmed you?

Have you ever wished someone close to you would just work on themselves!?

Ted’s statement indicates he is on the path of self realization, which, as anyone who is on the path knows, is not an easy one. The experience is not the same for everyone and unfortunately it is not a path of continual progression. There can be many moments of great epiphanies resulting in another level of freedom as well as many painful crashes, feeling like you have regressed, leaving you wondering if you will ever free yourself of your own suffering.

What are the steps to discovering who you are? My experience has been that the steps go something like this:

Overwhelming pain: This can be physical pain, repeating painful thoughts or continual feelings of sadness or anxiousness. Since these parts of ourselves are all interconnected, most of us experience a combination of all of these things at once.

A Moment of Surrender: This is the moment we identify as our moment of awakening. For some of us it might be that moment we witness ourselves yelling in a fit of rage or that moment we find ourselves sobbing on the bathroom floor or that time we pull over on the side of the road in a state of panic wondering to ourselves how much longer we can live like this? However it looks, it is that moment when we scream some sort of version to ourselves:

Pain Becomes the Teacher: After surrendering, something shifts in us and suddenly things start happening that begin to offer answers to the questions to which we thought had no answer. Unusual things begin to happen like that book we soak up like a sponge that fell off the shelf at that bookstore, that moment we hear someone speaking at an event that moves us to tears, someone sends us a link to an incredible video clip or we find ourselves at a workshop, not knowing why we’re there and yet leave a changed person. There are so many ways our pain becomes our teacher. Somehow within our pain we come to realize, “this isn’t happening TO me, it is happening FOR me.” We can resist and fight our pain, fuelling its existence, or we can surrender ourselves to receiving the many lessons it has to offer.

Mental House Cleaning: This is when we start using all the amazing information we are hearing to begin our own inward house cleaning. We start noticing our beliefs, our words, our habits. We start noticing how they are creating our experiences and impacting our lives and those around us. We believe we have found the answer to our suffering! With excitement, we vow to make some serious changes. Now that we know what to do! With a therapist or mentor, or perhaps just a few good books and a new community of friends at our side, this shouldn’t be too hard, right?

The Blame Game: Challenging our beliefs is painful. Is this belief true? Is this belief THE truth or A truth? Is this even mine? Where did I learn this? Who taught me this? Where did I learn these judgments that have created so much suffering for me and others in my life? It doesn’t take us long to blame our parents or other well intended adults in our lives. We identify and label their dysfunction and blame them for our suffering. How dare they do this to us? How could they have? What were they thinking? How could they not know?

“It’s your fault I have experienced all this pain!”

This is where, I believe, Ted Lasso is on the path of awakening. Even though he is able to thank his mother for all the good things she did in his childhood, he is very angry at her for what she didn’t do. What didn’t she do? She didn’t heal her own wounds. As Ted suggests, she didn’t work on herself. Instead, she suppressed her pain and pretended she was doing ok after the loss of Ted’s father. In addition, she too is carrying her own childhood wounds that would have contributed to her beliefs and actions. Previous generations were taught that if we don’t talk about it, we won’t feel the pain. Sweep it under the carpet and carry on.

I imagine this mother didn’t know that if we don’t take the time to heal our pain and become aware of our beliefs such as, “I thought pretending to be ok would help you be ok,” we unknowingly pass our pain down to our children. And what we often do not realize until well into adulthood during our own self realization journey is that the childhood mind can be a very dangerous place. As children, when we do not understand the pain in our world, we create stories, self sabotaging stories such as “I am not loveable, I am not good enough, I need to change to please others…” which we carry into adulthood. These beliefs we created become a part of the lens through which we interpret and see the world. And so the cycle of generational wounds continues…

Ted is very fortunate that his mother is able to listen to him and acknowledge how he experienced her choices. Instead of fighting back, getting defensive, denying her son’s pain, or shaming him for not being grateful for all she did for him, she apologizes. Her apology allows him to release some of his anger. It also allows him to now hear what she needs to tell him. If she had not apologized, Ted would most likely stay stuck in this blame stage for an extended period of time, perhaps even his entire life. Unfortunately, many people remain here waiting for someone to be different, waiting for an apology or waiting for the past to somehow change.

What might be the next phase for Ted?

Forgiveness: This is can be a very difficult stage, mainly because I believe forgiveness is often misunderstood. Many people equate forgiveness with condonement. If I forgive them then am I saying it is ok what they did? No. Forgiveness is also challenging because it results in us losing our anger, the anger that many of us use as an emotional wall of protection to keep us safe, or so we think it does.

Forgiveness comes when we open our minds to seeing and interpreting our experience differently. Forgiveness comes when we truly know that someone, such as a mother, was doing the best she could given the knowledge, resources, support and self awareness she had at the time. In addition, when we realize that the adults in our lives are the products of their own parents and childhood experiences, we can begin to see their innocence. Does it make it ok what they did or didn’t do? No. Judging it is not the goal. The goal is to not take their words, actions and beliefs personally. Their pain is not about us, it is about them. The goal is to free ourselves from the generational cycle of pain so we do not pass down our wounds to the children in our lives.

*Healing my wounds for all the children in my life IS the most important reason I continue to work on myself.

The Roller Coaster: This is the phase when we realize how challenging it is to apply all that we are learning. There is continual “unlearning” of beliefs and behaviours that we have been submersed in for years. Just when we think we have arrived at a place of peace, another set back appears. Why did I get so upset by that? Why did I say that? Why did I do that? What’s wrong with me? I thought I dealt with all of that! There is more to heal? I need to let go of this too?

This constant learning and unlearning of old patterns creates a roller coaster of highs of celebrations and lows of frustration, feeling like we have somehow regressed.

Letting go of Agendas: Once we have done countless hours of learning, unlearning and have turned our world around, feeling like most days, we are in a good place, now comes the next challenge. For some there can be an undeniable desire for others to join us on this path. Suffering? I have the answer! I know just the book you need to read, the person you need to see, the website you need to check out. We want them, especially our family and close friends, to do the work. Many will not read that book or follow through with suggestions. Our next layer of suffering is to work through the pain we experience when we see a loved one not living or not being the way we want them to be. Could you please change so I can be happy? Or at least so I can at least enjoy family gatherings!

One way to free ourselves of agendas for others is to keep one little mantra in the back of our minds:

*“If they are not asking, they can’t hear us anyway.”*

Unsolicited advice or suggestions will not be heard or grossly misunderstood. Attempting to rescue another from their pain often creates more pain for them and yourself.

The next time you find yourself frustrated with another, you may want to take a deep breath and ask yourself. what is this about?

At the core of your suffering with another person is a deep desire that they be different from who they are.

Let it go. Let your agenda for them go and feel the weight lift off your chest. There is nothing to fix here. Unless they ask for your help… allow them to be exactly who they are, allow them to be where they are on their journey, just as you would want others to do the same for you. Let them be them.

So Ted Lasso, how are you doing now? How is the self realization path going? Ah alas, we will never know as this scene was the second last episode in the final season of a great show. However my guess is that Ted stays persistent and allows his pain to become his greatest teacher.

As many of the great teachers that have walked this planet have suggested, the path to self realization can be a very painful one. However, the journey inward is the only one that frees us of our suffering.

I wish you all well, wherever you are on your journey…

"F**k You For Not Working on Yourself!"; The Stages of Self Realization

Jill McPherson