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What are you waiting for?
What are you waiting for?
No, I mean REALLY. What are you waiting for?
TRUTHFULLY, what is in your way besides fear?
What happens when we live our lives making decisions that are run by our fears?
What happens when we “survive” life instead of living it, and experiencing it to the maximum?
I started asking myself these questions one day recently in connection with an examination of my own life.
My coach had me reflecting on ways that I “protect myself,” as well as the prices and payoffs that I pay and receive for living a relatively solitary life, which is how I had been living. These tasks were among the things I had declared I would accomplish during the week between our coaching calls. And of course the two sets of questions were completely intertwined. Because for me, the solitary, disconnected life I chose much of the time, was a way to protect myself. Protect myself from the judgments of others. Protect myself from the feelings of rejection that I might experience if I was authentic with them, or the feelings of “differentness” I would feel if I was NOT authentic, but just listened and absorbed.
So my work that Sunday went like this. I wrote first, and quite briefly, about the prices and payoffs I got for the solitary life. Loneliness being the biggest price, and the payoffs being principally safety and comfort.
I decided to move on to the ways I protect myself, and as I began writing those down. My sources of protection, in the order I wrote them, but not necessarily the order in which I might use them were:
Silence
Aloofness
Solitude
Focusing on the “defects” in others, instead of looking at myself
TV
Video games
“Busy” work
Smallness (Flying under people’s radar)
Serious demeanor
Invalidate others
Self justify, to me and others
Make others wrong
Computer work.
Now please understand I am not saying that all of these things are bad or wrong. Solitude can be a very beneficial thing when that is what the mind or body needs. And I am writing this piece on a computer. It is not the task or way of being itself that is the issue. It is when I use them as ways to protect myself from something, whether real or imagined.
Then I asked myself, what is it that I am protecting myself from? For me, it turned out to be the following:
Pain of being laughed at by others
Pain of rejection
Pain of self discovery.
Being laughed at when I wasn’t trying to be funny was something that was leftover from my childhood, when that happened to me a lot, at least in my eyes. And the feeling of being on the outside looking in that came from those childhood experiences was still very real for me.
For me, this fear of being laughed at is really a subset of the fear of rejection generally. I suspect that most all of us have had this feeling from time to time in our lives, and I suspect that this is a very common source of pain or fear for humans.
The pain of self discovery was sort of a surprise for me. I had always viewed myself as introspective, and in a constant state of questioning of myself. But as I did this work I came to realize that most of the self examination I had done had been done for the purpose of justifying my beliefs, ways of being, and actions. It had not been undertaken for the purpose of true self-discovery, but rather for the purpose of making me feel good about myself.
Now it was time to get in touch with the prices I was paying for these protective measures.
Here they are, again in the order in which they occurred to me;
Disconnection from others
Maintenance of the status quo, instead of growth
Loneliness
Not listening to others deeply, and so not learning
Invalidation of others, causing them pain, and withdrawal from me!
Wow. My fear of being rejected, and hence being lonely, caused me to be alone, and feel lonely!! How insane is THAT behavior?? And I did not even realize this was all going on until I did this work one Sunday morning.
And truth be told, even if some people might “reject” me, or not “get” me if I was interacting in a connected way with others, living the way I HAD been living guaranteed that NOBODY would get me, because I was not allowing myself to be known.
So I resolved to transform this behavior. No more solitude, except for healthy reflection, meditation, or general “battery recharge.” I decided to be in relationship with people, knowing that I might sometimes get hurt if I choose to take things personally, but knowing also that the payoffs for connected relationships greatly outweighed the prices.
How about you? How does Fear get in the way of what you really want?
Try this exercise for yourself:
My fears are:
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
The ways I protect myself are:
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
The Prices I pay for using these protections are:
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
______________________________
What have you discovered about your own insanity? J
What are you going to do differently from now on?
I have discovered that any time I am bored, it is because I am BEING boring!!
Imagine that!!!!
Expectations of others are simply premeditated resentments.
Why would I worry?
Does worry produce a valuable, tangible result?
I don't think so.
For example, I might worry about some event I foresee in the future, say 3 or 4 months down the road. But then I might not even be ALIVE then!! The future is COMPLETELY uncertain!!! So why pay the price now by worrying, over an event that may not occur, or one which I might not even be around to SEE???
Seems a little crazy to me.
I think worrying is like paying for something when I may never actually buy it.
Its like saying maybe I will want a new car in two years from now, so I'm going to go ahead and pay for it right now. Not SAVE for it. PAY for it. Give the dealer my money now when I might never even buy the car.
No thanks. Worry if you want. But when I catch myself worrying I simply stop.
I have some friends who say they hate having Drama in their lives, yet they always have Drama in their lives.
So quite obviously they want it in their lives, even though they complain.
We create our own realities.
And this applies to everything. Not just drama. If I am always sad, it is because that’s what I want. Even if I deny that truth.
Because I can always create a new way of looking at anything, to create my life experiences.
I have learned two things about Forgiveness. First, forgiving someone is a gift I give myself, not a gift I give them. If I hold onto a resentment, I only punish myself.
As someone once told me, holding on to a resentment is like drinking poison, expecting the other person to die.
So no more resentments for me.
Second, I have learned that I never have to forgive, if I never blame. After all, they were doing what THEY thought was best, given what they knew at the time.
Even if they deliberately tried to hurt me, I only satisfy their ambitions if I allow myself to be hurt. Why would I give someone that power over me?
So there is simply no need to blame.
But if I find myself slipping into blame, I can end my agony by remembering these two lessons.
PS This goes for myself to. No good comes from blaming myself for things, I can learn from the past and move on to better things without blaming myself for what I did not know.
If I give you a gift, but have some expectation of you in return, it’s not really a gift, it’s Commerce.
And I rob myself of the joy of completely unfettered giving.
When I give without expectations, I can experience the joy of knowing I made a difference in your life, no matter how small, and I will never be disappointed about what you do or don't do as a result, because I gave with no expectations.
This did not come naturally to me, but once I learned it, I began a whole new chapter in my life.
I have come to believe that guilt is a useless feeling, for a thinking and self-aware adult.
It seems to me that Guilt is a button installed by our families and others, in order to regulate our behavior. And while MAYBE it had value to those who cared about me for civilizing me as a child, or keeping me safe, it seems useless to me to carry it around as an adult.
Surely whatever payoff I get from feeling guilt, I can obtain in some other way.
And aren't the prices I pay for feeling guilty rather high?
