Three wrongs make a right

We all know that two wrongs cannot make us right. Two wrongs make us doubly wrong. But as I've explored the many ways to heal our emotional baggage, it became clear to me how three wrongs can make a right. Yesterday's post where I explored a variety of valuable No-Can-Do's and troublesome Can-Do's helps set-up this approach of making a right from three wrongs. Here's the three wrongs for starters:

1. Back at the start of our tragic tale where we acquired a piece of emotional baggage, we got wronged for doing something that was right in our minds. We were not asking for trouble or making trouble. Getting wronged seemed uncalled for and a sign of our being in some real danger. Count that as the first wrong.
2. Next we made a snap decision to make sure this never happened again. We made the right thing we were thinking, feeling, doing and expecting --out to be wrong amidst this real danger. We took getting wronged to heart and made something really good in us into a bad thing to think, feel, do and expect. Count that as the second wrong.
3. Finally we came up with two ways to prevent the reoccurrence. We come up with a fight response that is a new can do. We also develop a flight response that's another can do. We get turned around where we cannot do the good thing about us and can do two things that goes against us. Count that as the third wrong.

When we keep wrong headed about all this, we join one of those proverbial "chains of pain". We treat others to the misery we're in and expect they will pass it on too. We cannot keep ourselves from mistreating others and ourselves because we've been so mistreated way back when. The way we dish it out and act it out keeps the danger at bay as far as we can tell.

We can turn all this around in our minds. We can make it right and begin to do right by others and ourselves. We simply need to make a right out of these three wrongs. Here's how to think that through all the way:

1. We were right in the first place to think, feel, do and expect what we were at the time we assumed we were safe.
2. We were wrong to make our "being right" into a wrong, but we can right that now. We can be right from now on to think, feel, do and expect that again.
3. We were wrong to make it right to do wrong by others and ourselves. We can right that wrong right now and do right by all of us from here on out.

Right on!