Feeling Sorry for Yourself
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 May 2019
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What good does feeling sorry for yourself do? Fr. Mike points out a hard truth in saying—while you have the right to grieve when tragic things happen in your life—you never have the right, or permission, to feel sorry for yourself. All it does is shrink the universe down to the size of you. It blocks out the blessings God gave you that you should be thankful for, and paralyzes you from joyfully giving to others.
When you feel the temptation to feel sorry for yourself coming on, in the words of St. Paul, Fr. Mike recommends:
“Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful” (Colossians 3:15).
Quote from G.I. Jane:
“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself” (Viggo Mortensen as Master Chief John James Urgayle in G.I. Jane, original quote from D.H. Lawrence, 20th century English writer).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to be talking about the first chapter of the book called The Road Less Traveled |
| 0:21.1 | by M. Scott Peck and it opens up with this line. |
| 0:24.7 | Three words. |
| 0:25.7 | Life is difficult. |
| 0:26.7 | Remember reading it and going like, yeah, that's true. |
| 0:30.0 | I think the sooner we accept that, the easier things are for us. |
| 0:34.4 | But I want to look at what's our response to that reality, what's our response to that |
| 0:38.2 | truth, what's our response to life's difficulties. |
| 0:40.8 | Because I can't control how difficult life will be. |
| 0:43.6 | I can't control how difficult life will be for me. |
| 0:45.6 | I often can't control how difficult life will be for the other people. |
| 0:48.2 | We have a certain influence. |
| 0:50.0 | We can make smart decisions. |
| 0:51.0 | We can make unsmarked decisions. |
| 0:53.0 | Some people call that wise and foolish, but whatever. |
| 0:56.4 | Other people who use big words. |
| 0:59.4 | I'm not in complete control over life's difficulties or over life, but I can very much |
| 1:06.4 | control or at least I have a high degree of influence over how I respond to the difficulties |
| 1:11.3 | of life. |
| 1:12.3 | Because here's what we need to know. |
| 1:13.3 | Here's what I think I just want to say. |
| 1:15.3 | You've probably experienced things in your life that have been tragic. |
... |
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