Hi and welcome/welcome back to this blog !
What is this blog about?
In past blog posts I have often described a feeling of being short changed by the world.
What does it say about me that I use a lot of financial analogies? Anyway...
I watched a Tik Tok where a woman was asked "Where is your confidence?"
I thought about it for a minute, where actually is it? It's not with me.
She spoke about how people can steal your confidence and can end up "walking around in your authority."
Very strong words. I don't know if people stealing my confidence is accurate, but I can definitely say I have given it away, and left it with other people. A lot of it has to do with the qualities I project onto others, I do genuinely see the best in people.
But what is then left for me? How did this un helpful way of thinking even come about in the first place?
Is it my fault for it feeling like my confidence was stolen, (but not quite stolen), because I was transactional about things and expected a certain outcome?
"You're giving an advance on affection, hoping to get a return. You may have to forgive that debt."
Each day for a week I will work on calling my power back, and affirming that I am not someone who is awaiting reimbursement from the world.
Thinking this way is unhelpful, it's related to what I describe as living in reference. In reference to other people and the world.
"If you live your life in reference, that's all you'll ever be.. something that lives in reference. ."
Day 1 - You had to do it to survive !!
I wrote down in my notes app that insisting that the world owes you something, giving an advance on kindness, kind of playing the victim is not free. You gave an advance of kindness, but you incurred a cost whilst doing this.
Choosing to be on the back foot also involves a type of manipulation.
Deliberately trying to come across as non-threatening, transacting away your power hoping that makes you entitled to mercy, is manipulative.
If you have it you don't have to manipulate your way to it.
But it also relies on an assumption about people, that once you transaction away your power this transaction is accepted? It involves idealising people, seeing them in a high place.
Day 1 I realised that for a long time I felt like I had to see the best in people to survive, to live in a version of the world that allowed me to survive.
Day 2 - You had to do it to survive (**and it was the most obvious choice)
On day 2 I realised, I don't blame myself for making the choice to operate in this way. It was the logical choice. Things were up and down, so you chose to see the best in people to make life more manageable.
I did it out of fear, but I wonder do I still need to be scared?
Maybe it isn't a question of whether or not I need to be scared, but whether the 'being scared' should have such a big impact on the choices I make.
Let's think about it, fear is the way our body prevents or avoids undesired events.
What are the undesired events according to me...?
That's a question for tomorrow.
Day 3 - I don't fucking know
There's always an I don't fucking know day when I write this blog.
I've been thinking a lot about the perceived consequences & rewards of our choices.
What is the trade off, what am I afraid of?
I'm so tired.
So what I have done is make a habit of giving away my power, as a matter of urgency. I give it away, I give it to anyone.
I don't want it.
The power I give away to other people, I don't want it for myself? That doesn't make sense, or maybe it does.
What do I think will happen if I claim back this power? Something catastrophic?
Day 4 - Telling new stories
There is something going viral on the internet RE whether or not you should forgive your childhood bullies.
I said no.
I thought about why I said no for a bit and realised:
"wow, those people still hold so much power over me."
Is this what is meant by "other people walking in my authority"?
In my mind they've got a one up on me, I'm in a deficit. Does repeatedly telling myself this story help me? Is it helping me?
Why am I so committed to recreating this narrative?
Maintaining the victim story arc has its advantages, in a twisted way.. but at what cost?
I am owed a charge back by the world, I wear it like a badge of honour. I was victimised by the world despite being innocent.
I want to persist in being at the mercy of the world. I guess if I was using this as a survival mechanism, it must be something that comes easily to me. I did it because I felt it was the most convenient thing for me to do.
But sometimes you have to avoid choosing convenience, when you want to become more.
Why am I so committed to being this way? Why am I reluctant to want more for myself?
Day 5 - I Don't Want Nice Things For Myself
You know what's probably a waste of time? Letting people take up so much real estate in my mind.
I know I can do better, but I'm not going to blame myself too much for it because like I've said before, this was a survival mechanism. When I was younger I appropriately weighed up the pros and cons of doing this, but I haven't reviewed them since.
There is a cost to being this way (as well as benefits).
Where is my confidence, where is my power, what is holding it away from me, what agreements have I signed up to that are keeping it away from me?
I did some art therapy. Here's what I got out of it:
Where did my confidence go? I've told myself that outsourcing my agency to the world provides myself with some cushioning. It's comfort, it's convenience.
But being sheltered has two meanings, being protected and losing your sense of agency.
Outsourcing my sense of agency to the world simplifies things, but at what cost? Complexity isn't always bad, complexity can mean more opportunities, and more *types* of opportunity.
loading my agency onto the world, because I feel like it "owes me one", is a type of cushioning. I feel like I don't have the legs to carry the weight of what I want out of life, and that's why I need this cushioning.
But I realised I sold myself a lie in this regard. I told myself that there is reward with leaning into this cushioning, this isn't true.
I think there's something about my strength being 'diluted out' when other people are brought into the picture so much and so frequently
I am legless when I describe and interpret my inner world on everyone else's terms.
It can be linked to what I said about living your life in reference.
Why live in reference when you could be the original?
I feel like there was a time where I was able to do this more easily. When I was younger.
What happened and when? I don't think it happened at a specific point or for a specific reason now that I think about it. I think it was just a consequence of growing older.
Where I currently am, I realised that living in reference actually yields no benefits. So I might as well live life as an original.
It's like a reference image vs an original, we intuitively know which one holds the most essence of the object.
I'm curious why I even thought living in reference was an optimal choice? I suppose it let's you know what to expect, it makes things more predictable, but you're not really satisfied.
You're not hungry, but you aren't satisfied either. Perhaps I was coming from the angle of someone who was just very hungry or deficient, so no longer being hungry took priority over actually being satisfied.
So to summarise day 5, I need to work on being original. Not deliberately trying be different, but more so leaning into the uniqueness I already have. Allowing it to flourish.
Day 6 - Picking the Right Battles
What to practically do now?
I watched this video
https://youtu.be/BosdwPrh9uU?si=-nPCWfXmVkkyij2O
He said a lot of useful things.
One thing that resonated was where he said All you have to do is be you.
That's the only challenge. It's not trying to win people over, it's not trying to anticipate what people want, it's not ruminating about how unfair the world is, waiting for the day it reimburses me for my unfair treatment.
I described how giving away my power as a default makes things simpler. But only having to win myself over is also simple, no?
Not easy, but simple.
Win myself over... There's still a challenge, there's still friction, there's still risk, there's still potentially having to do things I'm not used to doing.
But you pick your struggles, and this is what I see as a worthwhile one. Winning myself over.
The guy in the video talked about how we only feel bad about ourselves when we look at ourselves in reference.
You can limit your life to something beautiful. - I said this
Not living in reference means you aren't living in your own shadow, you are the light source.
This work will require me being curious about myself. Things about myself will be slowly revealed. I will learn new things about myself. Learn more about what happens when I step out of my comfort zone. Learn more about what is required for me to grow and develop.
I spoke about being original. This is also about individuality, this made me think.. who said that limiting my life to something beautiful is:
- Delusional
- Crazy
- Pathetic
- Wrong
- a Myth
- Fake
Where was this thought planted?
Limiting my life to something beautiful might be the realest and truest thing I could ever do.. maybe.
I watched another YouTube video (ugh, the blog is work).
https://youtu.be/veEQQ-N9xWU?si=0SL-DdxTLwcOlvrF
Here are some gems I picked up:
Being self conscious means you have less ability to be yourself. Less ability to be self aware, have a bit agency over the whole process.
The speaker described something she called "Interiority"; not seeing yourself as inferior or superior but rather being somewhere where there's no competition. It's a way of seeing the world.
She described how "I" can mean 4 different things:
1. How people see us, perception
2. How we would like to be or appear, our persona.
3. How we see ourselves, ego
4.Constant, never changing awareness, Self
I quite like how she described the Persona. It made me realise that wanting to cut up the world in a way that suits us, isn't delusion or fantasy but a key component of who we are, and unique to each person. - it's our ability to constantly adapt. It's fluid, always moving. It's all of our potential.
Ego - she described it as a type of humility. Humility by thinking about yourself less, rather than thinking less about yourself.
I did some more art therapy. Here are the themes that emerged.
Who are you?
A strong aggressor, "You Will Not Pass".
Where did you come from?
A state of constant gestation, never quite having the means or capacity to go out into the world and actively participate in it.
What do you need?
To be trusted, trusted to figure things out on the fly. Trust that I have the capacity to deal with whatever comes my way, that I won't be bowled over. That I won't attach myself to actual and projected outcomes. That I will lean into compassionate self correction, patience, grace. I feel like this is my main weakness, my Achilles heel. That I won't be able to deal with what comes afterwards when I live life as the original and not the reference. I've built these consequences up as such a goliath that it has prevented me from participating fully in the world the way I would want to.
What have you come to tell me?
Maybe participating in the world the way you want will have challenges, but you're allowed to choose your challenges. It's clear you feel like you have the capacity to start taking on some of these challenges. Start is the key word, because it's a process. It's iterative, it builds on itself, there will be things that work and things that don't work. But don't discount yourself early, don't pull out of the race before it's even begun.
The more I think about it the more I understand why I'm this way, something in me is trying to protect me from myself. Basically like an overbearing mother, possibly like my own mother. I don't blame her or me, given the context I grew up in. It's safer to push the narrative that I don't have the means or capacity to live out of reference, to fully participate in the world with agency. To assume that if things do go wrong it will knock the wind out of me.
To assume I am weak.
So what's different now on day 6?
I am willing to accept everything that comes along with trying to live life on my terms, fully participate in life the way want instead of living in my own shadow.
I accept the challenge.
Day 7 - Conclusion (You Can't Hurt Me More Than I Hurt Myself)
To conclude... All of our interactions with the world involves addressing the question "how will this make me feel about myself?" Even when we say to ourselves "but people will say/think X Y Z about me" the real threat is how that will make us feel about ourselves.
So even when we tell ourselves we're living in relative terms (relative to how he she they will feel about the things we choose to do), the threat is really absolute. It's really only to do with how we feel about ourselves.
So what is the mix up and where is it happening?
We're using everyone else's tolerance for living in absolute as a guide for how we're meant to do it. We're not interested in how much of this "absolute living" we have capacity for. We're letting everyone else do this work, hoping and praying that their absolute living doesn't have negative implications for ours.
When I say absoluteness/absolute living I mean what we think of ourselves and our place in the world when no one else is around, and no one else is involved.
What I think of myself and my place in the world when no one else is involved or around, it's extremely harsh. Speaking in absolute terms, I have only ever been afraid of myself and my own feelings.
Maybe we don’t have to call back our power, we just have to not lose sight of it.
I still think I should give myself feedback, so to speak, but it doesn't need to always be so cutting. What will help is just being better at applying nuance and context. My feedback for myself has to fit the context. I would even say that this is a skill. Right idea, wrong intensity. Make it match the context.
Sometimes it's not that you're doing the wrong thing, it could be that the intensity of it doesn't match your current context. I suppose when you're used to a certain level of intensity it's hard to switch it off, especially if there are emotions attached to it.
To summarise...You don't have to live in your own or other people's shadows, you can be the light source.
But it involves challenging some old beliefs:
- You can be the light source, because it is something that can be practiced and learned. You can learn what works, what doesn't work, where to course correct, things that make it easier, things that make it harder. It takes time to learn all of this about yourself.
- You're probably hesitant to be light source because of the implications this has for how you feel about yourself, so try and work on your relationship with yourself. Maybe you're too hard on yourself... it is important to remember you can give yourself useful feedback without being overly harsh and cruel.
