“As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.” ~James Allen
It was a beautiful day as we drove down the Desert Road two days after Christmas. The Desert Road is a stretch of highway in the North Island of New Zealand.
On one side of the highway, three magnificent volcanoes provide the only break to the bleak, stark landscape. Otherwise, the ground is covered in dry grasses, rocks, and a straight highway to the horizon.
During the drive, my husband and I were discussing the New Year and what would be the next adventure.
As Edith Piaf began to sing “Je ne regret rein” on the mp3, our conversation swung to my mother’s death the past year and how she and I could never see eye to eye.
My mother was a wonderful woman, but I was never the daughter she wanted and she was not the mother I wanted. As a child I wanted to be a nurse, but she convinced me that I was too smart to be just a nurse and needed to become a doctor.
I did try hard and when I failed out of medicine, my mother was disappointed.
She wanted me to marry someone well educated and from a good background. You can imagine her disappointment when I married someone raised in the Gorbals in Scotland who had failed to graduate an Honors BSC in Higher Mathematics.
And she wanted me to take care of her, be at her beck and call, as we lived two doors away from her. Imagine her total frustration when we moved with our sons half way around the world to New Zealand.
I pulled over as regret and guilt overwhelmed me. My eyes filled with tears and my head throbbed. I thought her death ended all the recriminations. I thought I was at peace with our differences, but at that moment there definitely was regret and grief.
And as Peter held me, he reminded me of the way to solve problems and a way to move beyond the immediate pain of guilt and regret.
Yes, guilt because I had failed to resolve the breach and the disappointment; guilt because I refused to choose my mother’s wishes over my personal desires and my immediate family. That guilt and remorse were thieves stealing my personal power.
As we drove back onto the highway, we discussed how to use ICE to deal with the feelings of guilt and regret. ICE is an acronym for a technique to solve problems.
First, you Identify your feeling, the problem, or the situation.
This stems from the belief that when you can name something, you then can deal with it. The naming needs to be precise and identify the “issue.” In this case, the “issue” was my feeling of regret and guilt.
Next, you Control or corral the “issue.”
To control or corral an issue, first you have to take the emotion out of it.
Start by taking several deep breaths to clear your mind. Then talk to someone, even yourself, about how the issue affects you, and if you want it to affect you in that way. Your choice: continued pain or more pleasure.
Peter and I discussed how my guilt and regret were still holding me back from being what I could be. I needed to make a choice to move on and accept the fact that it was impossible to undo what was done.
Then, you Execute or eliminate the “issue.”
By identifying it and corralling it, you can choose how you will move forward. You can choose how you will deal with the “issue” in the present and the future. You can choose how you will act the next time the “issue” arises.
When I accepted and acknowledged what had happened, I could even laugh at the fact that I no longer had to account to my mother for my present or my future. I could put my mother issues where they belonged, in the “what I learned” box, and move to live in today.
Using ICE to keep success thieves away is like keeping thieves out of your home. You identify where they can break in. You control the points of entry by using locks or security to keep them out.
You make it more difficult for the thieves and so eliminate or reduce the possibility that they will steal your treasures.
As we drove on, we looked for other emotions and situations that steal my ability to function.
And so my quest began—a quest to identify other reactions that steal my success or cause regret.
The journey has been exciting and extremely challenging.
The first step was getting clear that success was made up of hundreds of steps; identifying success and finding my own definitions, not my mother’s father’s or anyone else’s.
My personal success is just that, personal. I remember when my mother would scold me for failing to meet her standards and expectations. I remember my father shaking his head about the decisions I made, decisions that he was certain would lead to my demise.
I remember other key figures in my life expecting me to be one thing and their disappointment when I made a different choice than the one they wanted me to make.
Once Identified, I needed to learn how to corral the emotions and other issues. As I controlled or corralled the “issues,” I removed their power to make me doubt my success. I compartmentalized the issues so that I could decide when to deal with them.
Now I can eradicate those habits when I choose or decide not deal with the “issues,” but they no longer have any power to stop me from enjoying my success and magnificence.
Yes, there are still times when my self-doubt and personal recriminations about what I do and how I do it make me curl into a fetal position and pull the covers over my head.
On the Desert Road that morning, I realized that I could ICE any thief that threatens to steal my success.
Life is too short for grief, guilt, and regret. Yes, the tears still come when I think of my mother, but I no longer fall apart and pull off life’s highway overcome with the regret.
What problems or emotions can you overcome by ICE-ing them?
Photo by Wesley Nitsckie
About Roberta Budvietas
Roberta Budvietas is the author of Who Stole My Success. She is a Business Class Mentor helping others to start, grow or change their businesses.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Great system, Roberta. I’ve never had a framework for what I do but now I realize it’s very similar to ICE.
One of my biggest arguments against guilt is that those people cannot be held responsible for my life. When I end up miserable because I never followed my dreams, I won’t be able to blame it on them. I won’t be able to hold them accountable for my unhappiness. I’m the one who made the decisions – I’m the one who needs to carry the responsibility for my life.
So this should work both ways. Because when your parents are expecting something from you and end up disappointed when you don’t do what they expect you to do – they’re putting the burden for their happiness on you. And that’s not fair. They can be happy with their life, and you can be happy with yours. Their expectations are only a reflection of themselves, not of you – and you can’t be held responsible for their disappointment in you. How they choose to feel in response to your life choices is up to them.
It’s tough to give yourself permission to release your guilt – but it’s liberating in the end. Thank you for sharing this system!
Pleasure Laura. The system is one I use to solve problems in life and business. I believe that there is power in naming things or stating the problem because then you can take action to change the situation.
And you are so right about parents. One thing I always tried (and often failed at) was to remember that my children were not responsible for my happiness or to meet my needs. It was one lesson my mother, bless her, never seemed to understand.
Beautiful words Laura. I´m learning to deal with this kind of things too. It’s amazing how “frozen” you become when feelings like these invade your soul. It´s difficult but it can be done…
So timely, today I wrote an email that I thought was fairly straight forward and not accusatory. The person was extremely offended (I was questioning if she allowed water breaks during sports practice, my daughter had told me no). The coach was very offended and basically ripped my head off in a polite way. So I’m feeling very meek and like I should apologize. Then the other half of me says I shouldn’t feel that way. I have a right, as a mother, to ask questions. But this has sent me into a tailspin. You are right. I need to isolate my feelings and make a choice to move forward with myself intact. Thank you.
Thank you, Veronica! Absolutely. Like Roberta said, the first step is just to “identify”. Name them by their name. Look them in the eye. They only have power over you while you’re turned around and allow them to direct you like a puppet master. As soon as you become aware of them, they lose their power – and you hold the strings to them instead. Turn it into a game: what do you want to do with these feelings that take you over and paralyze you? How can you make them go away? I like to imagine that I shine my light so strong they melt into nothingness and disappear. How do you want to take charge of them?
Roberta, I hear you 100%. My mom always said they had me for myself, not for them. My purpose in this world wasn’t to make them happy or fulfill them, but to pursue my own dreams. Now, how much she actually respects that and doesn’t barge into my life telling me what I should and shouldn’t do every step of the way (and expressing profound disappointment when I don’t “listen”), that’s another story. But at least I know her heart is in the right place. It’s still somewhat tough to follow my dreams without feeling like a selfish b**** though. I guess those are feelings we all have. I just keep reminding myself that her happiness is not my responsibility. It’s hers.
A mother daughter relationship is a tricky one. Heated arguments usually over a difference in opinion or the choices that the daughter makes. Emotions are always bursting at the seams. For me the guilt and regret creeps in not because I made a different choice than what she wanted me to but the way I put across my points. Caught up in a self-righteousness mode I find it disrespectful having to justify my decision in the first place. However, using a technique like ICE in the heat of the moment seems like an effective technique no matter how charged up either one of us is during an argument. Doing what we one want is one thing but using ICE to avoid leaving a close one feeling hurt is more important.
Great technique, thank you for sharing your experience, and insight! 🙂
Veronica, remember that awareness is the key. Success thieves are just like real thieves, always lurking. But just as with real thieves there are lots of simple things we need to do each day to keep them from breaking in to our minds. And when they do, we need to keep moving on. I love Laura’s white light. I use white light often. LOL – so do the police when they want to break a suspect.
Always maintain your right to choose your actions, thoughts and emotions Veronica. Never ever give anyone power over you. You know what is best for YOU!
Shoulds are a thief. As I was told at 18, my parents were doing their best given what they know. And since doing your best is really all anyone can ever do, it’s easy to forgive and allow people to be who they are. As Ruiz says in the Four Agreements, “Take nothing personally”
You are so right Namrata. Mother-daughter, father-son, mother-son, father-daughter or right relationships all have challenges. Reading your response, I get the sense that how you use words and what they mean to you could be a success thief. Remember, you are responsible for you and if others feel hurt because of what you say or do, that is their choice unless it was your intention to hurt them. If you just stood up for yourself, then you are staying in control of yourself and that is the purpose of ICE.
You asked a simple question to get clarity. The challenge for everyone in any situation is to avoid taking things personally. I work on that one every single day. It is so hard to realize how much reaction is their stuff. It definitely was with my mother and I and as a result she missed out on so much. I moved half way around the world to find a way to be my own person.
Thank you for your kind advice Roberta. I´m getting better at this little by little every day. I can’t believe how I used to complicate my life som much. Now I feel calmer, and I don’t worry so much. My life improved a lot, and I’m trying to teach it to my 4 year old son. Thank you for sharing this. Loved your article!
I have a mother who is very demanding. I used to call her co-dependent because it seemed like she was only happy if other people were doing exactly what she wanted. Now I’ve learned that actually she is selfish. I say this with as much love as possible, I really do. But she doesn’t actually think about others, only herself. Even when she cloaks her desires in “love”, it still boils down to ignoring the wishes/needs of others, and trying to use guilt to get what she wants.
One day we were discussing how she wanted to see my son more. She went on and on about how much she loves him and wants to see him. I’m so glad for that. But her intrusion into our family time, especially when he was little and we were figuring out how to be our own family!, was creating a huge emotional burden for me. I tried to set up a boundary and got guilt. I then realized I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was taking care of myself. And she was making herself miserable. Instead of enjoying her time with my son, she’d mope about how she hadn’t seen him, how the time with him is short, how she was worried about how much time would go by between visits. I finally told her to stop saying those things to me because she was just making herself miserable. It seems to have helped. Maybe she is still thinking them, but now when she visits she just talks about her happiness in that moment. It is so much nicer for us both.
This relationship dynamic change was a huge shift for me. I grew up with the idea that if I wasn’t pleasing my mother, I was doing something wrong. If she was unhappy about something, I had to be unhappy too. If I didn’t get the grades she wanted, clean the kitchen how she liked, picked the career she thought I should have, I’d messed up. Regardless of how I felt about the path she was picking for me, I better do it because she wants it!
Now I see this isn’t at all true. It’s hard to overcome the feelings of being wrong if I choose to do something that someone else hasn’t chosen for me. It’s weird to do things like leave work early to enjoy a walk in the park as part of self-care. I immediately go to that place where I must be doing something wrong because I know other people would want me to stay (not that I *need* to stay, but I have a job where the work never ends – I could stay all day, every day, and have things to do – so choosing when to leave has to be up to me). It’s odd to pick something for dinner my husband doesn’t want. I’m supposed to please him, right?! But I’ve been working on saying what I want, and if we differ, not immediately feeling “wrong”, but coming to a compromise where we both get to be happy.
Other people are 100% responsible for their own happiness. If they cannot celebrate your choices with you (ones that aren’t blatantly harmful of course – like deciding to break the law wouldn’t be something to celebrate) it may be time to reassess your relationship with them, and set new boundaries to live the happiest life you can.
Of course one is responsible for his or her actions. That person is equally responsible for the words chosen to defend or stand up for himself or herself. Obviously nobody can control the feeling of others but it is way too convenient to disregard the feelings of others. I am sure when somebody close to us has a different opinion, it doesn’t mean that person doesn’t have the best intention for us. All I am saying is it’s going to be a better society if we learn to choose our words as carefully as we think through the decisions we make ourselves. In no way that’s a hindrance to our actions or a success thief.
Rebecca, your mother and mine should meet each other. I remember once when she lectured me on how irresponsible I was when my husband did not immediately jump up from playing with our sons and go and help my father do something trivial.
Your last paragraph says it all. We are not responsible for the happiness of others but it should never be our intention to hurt them either. We need to live our own lives and that can be a fine balance.
You are most welcome. Thanks you for commenting
Oh what a reminder of guilt and regret.
Thank you for taking the time to outline your message in this great story.
You are very welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed
This is exactly what I needed to read. I’m struggling with my father (which I haven’t really made any of this vocal to him, yet) who is overly critical, judgmental, and narrow-minded. I know he’s probably like this because of how his father treated him, but I don’t want to be like him, and I’m not. It seems whenever I have those doubtful thoughts, it’s just his voice trying to get in my head. Being the oldest child probably brought on all these expectations of his; he pressured me into going straight to university right after high school which just led me to drop out (multiple times), when truthfully I just needed a break.
I’m so exhausted from trying to impress him, so tired of the expectations. If only he knew how he affected me in this way, but I suppose I’m not obligated to explain myself to him. It would be nice, but I don’t expect him to change or understand (since he’s stubborn enough as it is). But I’m only 24 and I’m beginning to remind myself that what he thinks doesn’t matter anymore, and I won’t let him affect my happiness 🙂