We started out on Question 1, talking about values and integrity and how that translates into our rules, either by how we were raised or how we feel in the moment. Most of us do the right thing because we have been trained to be honest. Whether it is finding a credit card and returning it to the owner, or having a bank teller give us way more back than we withdrew in the first place. It's about being dishonest and when/if we feel it's ever OK to do.
We then moved on to right and wrong. We talked about the way many people act in an irresponsible manner, and how some people don't do what they said they would do, and how it's easy to judge their behavior as right/wrong. Are we being too righteous? We decided that lying can be a survival skill at times, and it seems that at certain times it does come in handy.
Then question 7 was brought up. We said that sometimes we get into a lack of motivation because the task at hand can seem too big/overwhelming/intimidating, and that makes us not even want to try. It can also be because the task at hand doesn't seem to offer any significant benefits in the first place, and that can look like laziness, but it's actually not.
Then we discussed the "It's your fault!" vs. "I'm obviously to blame" conundrum. Pam believes that she is in a much better space by blaming others, rather than believing, as she did in her twenties, that everything that went wrong was all her fault. By blaming herself, she had nowhere to go, except into a week-long depression, whereas by saying that something is someone else's fault, that means that she can think about the situation afterwards and realize that there were many different causes for the way things turned out. But at least she can think and not just get caught up in her feelings of low self esteem and be unable to escape them for a full week.
She believes there is a better place to be than either blame or self-abuse, but she's not there yet. But there is a balance to be had somewhere. The balance would certainly be a healthy alternative for both blame and self-abuse!
(This video was reviewed by Pam Chambers)
Feel free to come and share your own personal insights sometime; the Saturday Night Video and Discussions here in Austin, Texas are a lot of fun and fascinating. (They're free, too.) Here are the questions the group came up with, based on the personal growth themes in the movie: