Who Do You Think You Are?: Retaking Control of Our Life

By Robert Poindexter

How is your life working out so far? Is it what you wanted, or not? Have your experiences consisted of ongoing circumstances over which you had no control? Therefore, the only choices you could possibly have made were the ones you made because you had to; they were all that were available to you. We will even verbalize, "I had to do it, I had no choice." Our having no choice is just not true. Everything happening to us is the result of our choices.

If we choose to be victims of circumstances--it's our choice. You see, circumstances happen to all of us; it's what you do with them that makes all the difference. You see, it's within every one of our present abilities to choose different paths for our lives. Even Jesus said, "Open your minds." We must become aware, each of things working out in our life is the result of a decision to choose a different path.

So what will yours be? It's your choice to be victimized by your circumstance of life, or not. What will you do?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887931708

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Who Do You Think You Are?

Retaking Control of Our Life

Robert Poindexter

Copyright © 2023 Robert Poindexter

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88793-154-8 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88793-170-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Serenity Prayer

Accepting Things We Cannot Change

All the Things I Wish I Had Done

Everyone, Stop Focusing on the Past

Courage to Change the Things I Can

What Is Courage?

Developing Courage

What Motivates Us, Fear or Faith?

Is There a Payoff for Weak Behavior?

Living Courageously Earns Respect

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Conclusion

About the Author

This book is dedicated to Sandra Poindexter, my wife and best friend for over fifty-four years. In fact, it was she, who after having read it, came up with the title, having seen how I used it in my writing. Secondly, it is dedicated to my children, Tonia Levering and Robert Poindexter, who developed, out of necessity, their own coping mechanisms. These enabled them to live through so many of my problem machinations while I was in the process of recognizing and endeavoring to overcome them. In the beginning, I either didn't know these problems existed and they weren't right or I was simply in denial. I'm not really sure which. My suspicion would be denial.

My childhood was difficult. My father was a difficult individual to understand. I'm not sure I ever understood him. In fact, there are still times I describe him as a tyrant. You see, there really was terror in our household. Modern-day terrorism is nothing compared to having to live with it inside your own home. I'm not sure why he was so unreasonable, but nevertheless, he was a fact of life with which my siblings and I were required to deal on a daily basis. We developed survival techniques that, in all probability, would never have been required for children in other families to know. In fact, it shouldn't ever be necessary for anyone to have to learn these kinds of survival techniques. My siblings and I became victims, sometimes out of choice, but mostly choosing out of a determined necessity. We often victimized ourselves because we knew the required routine so well. Therefore, it became so easy to accomplish things as a victim in my family. Nobody ever had any expectations for us to be accountable, even though we were always being disciplined because we weren't. What a dilemma.

A further reality was none of my siblings and I ever developed close relationships with one another. I believe this was primarily due to the reason, if another of the siblings was in trouble with our father, then the remaining others weren't. Therefore, we all would sacrifice each other for self-preservation. At the time, it seemed the right thing, or perhaps the only thing, we could choose to do.

I began writing this approximately twenty-five years ago. It sat around collecting dust in my desk drawer for all this time until my sister-in-law, Sherry Morreira, read it, following her training to become a substance abuse counselor. She encouraged me not to leave it in the drawer but do something with it—so I am.

It is my sincere desire and prayer for others be enabled to see themselves and begin a process of healing and overcoming the negativity these kinds of family relationships cause. We can all change the behaviors we choose to acknowledge and allow to affect our daily existence. There is no requirement to continually relive our past in negative ways; in all probability, it was negative enough when it happened. We especially don't need to allow our past to control us. One of the most helpful tools I have used—I think pretty successfully—has been The Serenity Prayer. I hope and pray it will work as effectively for you as it has for me.

Preface

This is a book about reclaiming the control of our life following a lifetime of being a victim, either of society or some individual involved in our life. It could even represent being a victim of our own inadequacies, perhaps learned or unlearned. But primarily, it's about spending a lifetime of feeling subservient and unworthy of the good things in life. It's how to change or correct this into a new situation of self-worth and then begin to take control of our behavior from that new concept of worthiness. The question posed by the title has both the answers to misery and enlightenment. There are so many who will complete their life never having known how this could possibly work and remain in what I call an unconscious state of mind.

There are seemingly so many victims in life and life's circumstances. I will begin with an explanation of what victimization is. A victim is anyone who suffers from any destructive, injurious, or adverse action. To victimize is to make a victim of…to dupe, swindle, or cheat…to slay as or like a sacrificial victim (The American College Dictionary, 1963, Random House, C. L. Barnhart, editor-in-chief).

Acknowledgments

Following my formal training and experience as the hospital counselor, my independent studies have taken me into various writers' works, in alphabetical order, Mr. Richard Bach, Mr. C. L. Barnhart, Dr. John Bradshaw, Dr. Bruce Buckles, Dr. Leo Buscaglia, Dr. Deepak Chopra, The Reverend Ms. Terry Cole-Whittaker, Mr. Vexen Crabtree, Mr. Norman Cousins, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Mr. Henry Ford, Dr. Victor E. Frankl, The Reverend Mr. Robert Fulchum, Mr. Charles Garfield, Dr. William Glasser, Dr. Aubrey de Grey, Dr. Shad Helmstetter, Dr. Martin Kirshenbaum, Dr. Cornu-Labat, Ms. Shirley Luteman, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Dr. Phillip C. McGraw, Mr. Ricky Nelson, Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, Dr. Fredrich Nietzsche, The Reverend Mr. Norman Vincent Peale, Dr. M. Scott Peck, Dr. Frederick S. Perls, Mr. Eugene Peterson, Mr. Elvis Presley, Mr. Jim Rohn, Dr. Robert H Schuller, Mr. Ridley Scott, Ms. Carly Simon, Dr. Gary Smalley, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Dr. Paul Tillich, Time Magazine March 1993, Dr. John Trent, Dr. Dennis Waitley, Mr. Neale Donald Walsch, Mr. Hank Williams Jr., and finally, Mr. Flip Wilson. I owe a debt of gratitude to all those previously mentioned. I have even quoted freely from their writings, many of their seminars, and in some cases, their television appearances. I have endeavored to do them justice. There are many other influences that I have failed to name because perhaps they were only acquaintances and some of their ideas have come from simply having conversations. I have chosen to use some Scriptural references for help and comfort because I believe we can only complete ourselves when we recognize our spiritual self and learn how to develop that particular aspect of our life. These are all from the The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, 2002, by Eugene Peterson.

Earlier in my life, I simply accepted as fact the Serenity Prayer was an anonymous prayer and nobody really knew who the author was. This is one of our major problems in life. Often, we don't check sources; we just go with the flow or follow the masses. However, one day I heard someone on a television show give credit to Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, a German theologian and minister. I began looking for the source and located it on a Wikiquote. Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr once said, Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary (Wikiquote, 2007). If we were endeavoring to harmonize our desires along with our ideals and hopes and were to think it would be without friction, we would have denied both our dignity and our value. You see, minus community, we may remain unfulfilled and indiscrete perhaps forever. Not only that, we are still often not completely fulfilled by our community. Thus, if we find fulfillment, it will often equal the abandonment of ambitions and dreams. Sometimes, the individual quest for truly living requires the man to give up his very own life.

The preservation of civilization requires actions which are both moral and hazardous. We can never even imagine ourselves capable of being disinterested when it comes to the corruption of justice and power. If peace and justice are some of our goals, then we must realize these goals will be thwarted on the way to realization. In fact, it's entirely possible they will never be realized in our lifetime.

Our existence is always separate from other animal life by our impulse to become co-creators with God. So this realization allows new pictures of vitality to spring from within each of us. Today, our inability to comprehend our freedom of spirit goes beyond our concepts of reason and nature. In our imagination, we might even think we've been betrayed into an accidental corruption of history. Thus our hope, above all else, is for redemption or atonement (becoming equal with God).

The Serenity Prayer was originally written by Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr in the following full version:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.

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