Tag: Self

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My Three Fears

Transparency, vulnerability, and rejection

My fear mobilizes itself on those three words.

Yesterday on my birthday, I promised that I would write down what I feared. This morning, I wrote a list of fears down in a free writing session.

I led the session thinking: “What am I afraid of.”

Almost like a movie, the first idea came out like a piston:
“relationships.” “Truth” and “exposure” we’re not far behind.

As I kept writing (this list ended up being around forty things), three themes continued to pop up.

  • Transparency – I feel like people seeing my process will criticize it, and as a result, discard my work (read: ME).
  • Vulnerability – I feel like extending my hand will lead to it being chopped off.
  • Rejection – I feel like letting people know how much I care will come off, almost like a stalker.

Every single idea, from “failure” to “my art being ‘wiped away'” all the way to “not getting the benefit of the doubt” all circled those three ideas.

How many of my ideas find themselves prematurely squelched due to this fear?

How about you?

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Stop Beating Yourself Up

False modesty isn’t fooling anyone

Stop it.

Stop self-deprecating; you aren’t masking your feelings of fear by beating yourself up.

You may fool amateurs. Professionals see it as a way to hide and a way to distract you from what matters, the work.

You can’t think and know at the same time, and the art of false modesty claims to “know” you aren’t good enough.

How about you take a different path?

 

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The Ideal Self Delusion

The Ideal Self doesn’t have to “deal”

The initial shock of dropping something you like hurts.

It hurts like hell.

The reason: on the other side of something we like is our ideal selves.

We, in our heart of hearts, are that marathon runner that works in soup kitchens while building a national nonprofit and makes our “significant other” swoon with our romantic gestures.

However, we can’t do all these things at once. In the face of too many options, we freeze due to the consequences.

 

The “ideal self” doesn’t deal with consequences.

We do.

So:

  1. Forgive yourself for it.
  2. Pick one and knock it out the park.

 

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Don’t Generate a Shame Engine

The shame engine is out to get you

I’ve never felt proud of not “showing up,” and I doubt you have either. You create regret.  Regret is a “shame engine,” an act that generates shame. The thing about a shame engine is that while it feels like a terrible burden, secretly you love it.

It completes a narrative.

The thing is, there is no story to end.

The result of shame isn’t us “acting better,” it is us acting worse. There is nothing good that comes of it.

Since we are shameful, anyone else that hangs around us must be a disgrace as well. As a result, shame just damages all of our relationships.

Don’t succumb to making a shame engine;  destroying our relationships is a form of hiding.

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Service,Not Self

“No” isn’t a personal attack.

Language is very powerful.

When you hear “no,” you often perceive that someone doesn’t want you, when what he or she actually doesn’t want is your service or the service that you’re currently selling.

It is an example of the power of language. Switching one word out changes how you accept and deal with “no.”

Don’t make the mistake of taking it personally, but when you do, remind yourself of the switch perception.

Service. Not self.

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Should vs Could – How Do You See the world?

 

[bctt tweet=”Stupid ends the conversation and allows us to toss that person into the trash the metaphorical trash and move on without thought.”]

 

Let’s think about the words “should” and “could”. I think they are at war with each other, and internally, affects everything – especially how we see the world.

When I experience anguish, I used to think it was just putting my thoughts on someone elses actions. What I am realizing, slowly, is that anguish comes when you put anyones expectation on your actions.  That includes your own and it stops you from loving yourself.

Now, loving yourself is hard. One of tenants of loving yourself includes self-forgiveness.   It is hard to forgive anyone, including yourself, when you place expectation on anything.

Changing the way I think about any of this is difficult. When I think of the past, I use the word “should” often.

Why is this dangerous?

Let’s take a look at the word. When I say should, I dive right into expectation. “Should” exists as a bridge. “They should have known to take the stairs” means I expected they knew to take the stairs and didn’t. I take an action and make it a personal attack.

That personal attack turns into stupid quickly. Stupid ends the conversation. That label allows us to toss the idea and person into the trash the metaphorical trash and move on without thought.

[bctt tweet=”Anguish comes when you put anyones expectation on your actions. “]

What we think about others often transfers to ourselves, and it does so silently.  Toss enough people in that “trashcan” and eventually you end up in that same heap. Language doesn’t discriminate, it controls how we see the world and how we work through it, and that includes you.

The word “could” is different. “Could” opens up the world to some creativity and objectivity. It begins by starting off with curiosity, and leads right to the word “why” (Unless done sarcastically, which turns could into a veiled should). “Why” opens up the world for us to see.

When I sit with a “could”, I start asking questions. Questions lead to understanding.

Questions make self forgiveness easier.

So, each time you engage with someone and things don’t happen as expected, think about the words you are using and then think about communicating so that expectation turns into a promise ( Expectation turns into promise when both sides have agreement)

Examples:

“He should have known about that report being due” think “Could he have known how important that was, did I communicate the importance?”

“She should have been there” – “Could something have come up?”

 

This is going to take time, and the key is to not beat yourself up. We live in a world of should – we hear it all the time. By changing over to could, not only do you communicate better, you treat yourself better too.

 

No Cell Update:

I have had no cell phone during the day for 3 days in a row. The insight for the day is how ubiquitous the phone is – we are never too far away from it, and our heads are always down in it. This affects us daily – I noticed someone tweeting while skateboarding yesterday… 

 

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Ego and Self

Your ego isn’t good or bad – it is either under control or not.

Recently took a hit on my ego – and I realized that I wasn’t mad so much that it happened, but I began getting mad that it effected me so much.

Why should something small, make me feel like I am small?

It is on my to do’s to figure out – I want to self assured – putting myself out there creatively means I am putting up with this a lot more than if life was boring.

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Figuring Things Out

I didn’t arrive to work late this morning, however, I did get up late. I did better than Wednesday and Thursday. That is to say there is improvement. I feel pretty content in that part of it at least. The only bad part is I didn’t get a chance to knock out my post before I left work.

Its funny, before I took the time off, I would have thought that the office was the best place to write. It was where I am used to working, and I got a nice set up with two monitors and a pretty decent PC. With that said, after working at home, I got to enjoy the peace it offers.

There was some serious silence and I could do some serious thought with the posts. As I am in the office now, I have a coworker talking to me, a desk full of trinkets in front of me, and I know at any time I could be pulled away to do something that would take me away from getting this done.

So – while I am happy I have this all set up for me to work, I would prefer to get all my writing done before I get into the office. This makes my 2 hours before leaving work a little more important now, and I also know I should appreciate it a bit more.

With today’s improvement I am still sleepy. I have to crack open a red bull, and I am starting to consider that a failure. I really want my sleep to be effective. With great sleep comes great work.

I fell asleep at around 1 again last night, although I did it right, I got water and a CPAP, I would like to get that down to 11:30, so waking up at 7 gives me close to 8 hours of full rest. The CPAP helps me maximize my sleep while I am in bed, but I would love it if I can add the sleep plus the CPAP.

If I leave the house at 9:02 I catch the same 3 train. Although the ride is nicer than the 2 train, I end up at the PATH station 2 minutes too late to catch the train to get me to work right before 10 AM. I arrive at work around 10 05 – 10 10, but I would prefer to in before 10 to please anyone that is watching.

I feel like I will get better at this, because with each habit, I am getting better. I am noticing the flaws, and making small subtle improvements with them. So, with that said, I feel like next month I will be making better use of my time.

Well, at least when I get here at work it is causal Friday.

Simplifying my day is important to me. I am starting to become a real believer that if I get my pile of work down, and i can choose 2 or 3 things to work on per day, Ill be able to turn in and finish a lot of things that I have sitting here.

I want to do this, not because I love the company, but I see everything currently as temporary. I do think that all of my habits are currently going to carry on with me as I move on in life, so getting them perfected, especially my work habits, will ensure that I am never in too rough a place.

I want to be somewhere where I can relax mentally, without looking over my shoulder and worrying when the next bad thing is going to happen to me. These habits have helped me find some sort of peace.

I have left work everyday this week without fearing that it will all go wrong. That in turn makes me not hate this job so much. Even though I plan on leaving this place in a few years, I do want this to be as smooth sailing as I can possibly get.

I cleaned my desk last night 30 minutes before I left. I think I will try to end my day doing that, simplifying my work space as much as possible. My goal is to have the most simple, pure workplace, filled with fun, but as organized as I can get it.

This goes directly against everything I have ever done in life. I used to revel in disorganization. It gave me a sense of pride – look, I can just throw everything around and still get things done. Every time I would try to organize, it felt forced, like someone was making me do it, and in turn, i started to hate authority.

That hate for authority really slowed me down as a person, because I threw away many opportunity’s just to give a big fuck you to anyone who would “stand in my way”.

As I get older, I realize the mistakes in my ways. I realize that for the most part, the world doesn’t owe me anything or is out to get me. In fact, the world mostly doesn’t care.

Anything I do to hurt me just hurts me in the long run. What I am saying is, whenever I put that obstacle in my way, I only made myself worse. I hurt myself twice, one in disappointing the person who was – for the most part – just trying to look out for me, and two myself for fearing my own success and failure. Which, I am learning, is really the same thing.

There is no getting over the hump if the hump is just you. So around my 26th birthday I figured a lot of this out. Now my goal is to improve what I have and make sure I go into my 30th birthday with something I can build on.

There is no getting over the hump if the hump is just you.

Do: CPAP, Push ups,Night Wrap up,To-do, Water, 3 Things
Don’t: 16/8 , Vegetable Juice, Meditation, Thank you

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