Hi welcome/welcome back to the blog!!
I have to start taking my most feared type of risk. I also have to consider what I even want.
I need to start taking the kind of risk that could take me backwards. The type of risk that could put me through everything all over again. I just have to take it and manage whatever the consequences are
Insisting on keeping yourself away from something means it's always on your mind. You can't keep running.
Trusting myself with whatever the consequences are. Just like vision requires believing that a positive outcome will almost certainly arise, it requires believing that certain negative outcomes will either never arise or never be a problem; we have control over the second option. The second option requires having faith in oneself.
It requires slaying some dragons. Walking through the flames
(Not catastrophising also helps)
Day 1 14/10/2024, What Do I Want?
I'm actually writing this at 7 am on Day 2...
I have a blog post about figuring out what you really want. I think it's important to be more firm on what you want in order to make a stronger case for being brave, stepping out of your comfort zone etc.
I talked about things we feel strongly about, I talked about using areas of resistance as a kind of signal.
Where are the opportunities to be brave at home in bed? No idea.
What do I want to achieve by the end of this week? I think I want to conquer something.
Like this is the plot of land, or this is the monster I slayed. Something I can actually point to and use as a measure of who I am and what I can do.
I wonder if a lot of the work is figuring out what that something is?
I've been brave, I've conquered things, but it hasn't been things that have allowed me to shine in the way I want.
There's been something missing from these things, and therefore something missing from the end result.
Where we focus our attention is what shows up in our lives.
The last blog I wrote was where I was noticing things about myself. One thing I noticed is that the trauma of my life is the authority on my life, I measure everything else in relation to it. All the hiding and shrinking I do is because of it.
I'm watching a video on YouTube by (True Self Alchemy with) Danielle Lynne,
https://youtu.be/ddv-zO_NbjI?si=Ij0-aorUrbLc-BR1
One question she asks is:
Up until this very moment, what have I been telling myself is the most important thing in my life, and what have I been directing my attention towards?
Harm reduction, staying safe, self preservation.
She describes life as a "game" and explains that how you proceed through the game depends on where you place your attention and energy, and what you believe the rules are.
Whilst playing the game we pretend we are limited, and then forget we are pretending.
When we say to ourselves "this thing is more powerful than me", we abdicate our power and choose to play by rules. We can reclaim our power by taking off the gaming headset. This is what it means to be presently aware; buying out of the idea that we have to do any particular thing if it isn't in alignment.
She encourages us to think about the stories we tell ourselves; they make a case for staying on one path over another.
"I wonder what I felt mattered to me, what I would need to believe about myself, my life, and the world around me in order for me to proceed with this path the way it is."
Many times an ingrained belief about the way reality works, means we don't question the current path we're on.
She goes on to say that our experience of reality, does not require a story to function
(This made me think of a note I made to myself yesterday, that I should be more wiling to be wrong about certain things, to accept my ignorance).
She invites us to be aware of when certain choices feel like they require us abandoning inner parts of ourselves, or require subscribing to a story of reality that is out of alignment with who we truly are. This is typically an invitation to be more curious and loving with ourselves. Curious, means we think to ourselves "I must have subscribed to this belief for a reason."
We are not relegated to our current way of living. It might seem like a lot of effort to change, but consider this; it also takes a lot of effort to be insincere, to not be who we really are, to push against our inner selves.
We're ignorant and we don't know where to begin changing, we don't know any better.
She says that awareness means being aware that everything we do is choice. This means we can compassionately, without resistance, become aware of other choices we cab make.
Day 2, What is the Most Important Thing in Your Life?
The new land I would like to conquer, is being more patient and emotionally resilient.
I'm more likely to cling to negative thoughts as opposed to positive ones when I am looking for more secure footing.
I've mastered avoiding and hiding from negative emotions, but not genuine resilience.
I thought today about the question that Danielle Lynne posed, what is the most important thing in my life right now?
This thing that is moulding and shaping my life...
For me it's harm reduction, and I'd say a lot of aspects of my life reflect this.
So on this day I thought "let me choose something else, to be the most important thing in my life."
Something more solid, something more stable. With more integrity.
So that the structure of my life is more solid, stable, and has more integrity.
The most important thing at the moment, the thing that has authority and is shaping things, is harm reduction, pain avoidance, and hiding. Is that what I want?
The life of someone who needs to be constantly soothed?
There are different narratives which justify this behaviour and it's my job to dismantle them... What have I told myself the rules of the game are? These rules are what sustain the behaviour.
I know I need to be "strong" but there's something about the way I need to demonstrate strength.
I think we all demonstrate strength in different ways, but if you want a different outcome you have to demonstrate strength in a different way.
Could strength mean staying present? Resisting the urge to project into the future or past..
"If you're afraid when nothing is happening, you're afraid of the present. If you're afraid of the present you're most likely afraid to be present."
Slow down before rushing to the past, present, any sort of extreme.
Move slower, life moves slower than the slowest thing you've ever seen.
Day 3, Perfectionism and Imperfect Role Models
I wonder if the reason I can't take risks the way I want is perfectionism...
Does perfectionism mean I'm more likely to use negative thoughts and beliefs as a refuge? It's familiar, it allows me to fixate on harm reduction because God forbid something ever harms me like this again..
Maybe strength is needed to do things and not expect perfection. Being brave, taking risk, tolerating negative emotions. I've told myself a story that perfection will allow me to properly participate in the world and receive the social approval that I feel like I've been missing out on.
Day 3 I'm writing a lot of thigs that feel separate and I feel like I haven't figured out how they're all related.
If it is as simple as choosing different rules, this is what they might be:
1 new rule is that I shouldn't hold social approval in such high regard (I already tell myself this all the time)
"Good intentions are good enough" - I mean this in the way that, I would kindly correct a young child if they did something without knowing any better.
"Go slower." - resist the urge to project into the past or future, be present. Be actively present.
Some more...
I've decided I'm good enough for myself, by myself. Who's to say that's not enough? Quickly !!!
I try not to take things personally.
I'm in my own box, in my own lane.
I'm a work in progress and that's okay.
I am working on being emotionally strong.
I know there are no guarantees in life.
I prefer the uncertainty of being present to the certainty of thinking in extremes.
I am everything I need to be right now.
At this point I was feeling a bit stuck so I did some art therapy, my go to technique is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcGPc80f2VM
There was definitely a sense of feeling closed in, constrained. Having to traverse a narrow and perilous path to reach an ideal place/state/position at some undetermined point in time.
I think it represented the trade offs/justifications I make in my mind to live in this way (seeking certainty in negative thinking)
Perfection, seeking refuge and security in negative thoughts is the narrow and perilous path I've decided I need to be on to reach that warm and sunny ideal place/state/position (perfection and/or social approval).
Thinking in this way is practically, inefficient in terms of actually achieving things. When I say This Way, I'm talking about perfection.. So why do we choose it?
The narrow perilous path might be all we know, what we're used to. Narrow means less ground to cover, more certainty. A greater sense of control
I also wrote down that this thinking in extremes, seeking shelter and certainty in negative thinking leaves my life quite empty. Between one end of the spectrum and the other, there's so much space left over.
When I asked my art "What do you need?" the response I wrote down was this:
"To turn life the right way out. Have things in the correct place."
What did I mean by this? I don't wanna live in extremes and leave the important parts of my life empty. That empty space is probably where I should put all the amazing but *imperfect* parts of my life.
Finally I asked my art "What have you come to tell me?", and this is the response I wrote down:
Maybe the time horizon I need to look at is a single day. Maybe I just need to expect less from myself.
Don't try and reach that ideal state, the sunny horizon along the narrowest and most perilous path, constrain the parameters. Adjust them for horizons that are more within reach.
Lifted directly from my physical journal:
"I need to come down off the path where I could fall, why am I up there? Why have I told myself I need to be up there?
How are other people doing this?"
This is how I came onto the idea of role models, imperfect role models. I picked Nina Simone, and my own mother.
"Step out, allow yourself to fall short of perfection...If unsure where to start, look at role models. What do they do?"
You make history when you own your imperfections.
Day 4, Productive and Timely
I am super tired as I'm writing this. Gonna refer back to what I said prior about how perfectionism leaves you with a lot of empty space and essentially, an emptier life.
There's something in adjusting the parameters of success; it isn't a cop out. I believe that this actually makes you more productive in the short term and in the long term.
Adjusting the parameters might mean imagining that I live in a world where I'm already where I need to be or at least very close, and then using this as a platform for future goals. I think the main way of doing this is to define success on a day by day basis. This makes a small and honest attempts hold more weight.
I feel like there isn't as much empty space this way.
I took a screenshot from a Tik Tok I saw which said:
"Your goals should always focus on actions you can take, not the outcomes you want!!!"
-David Alexander
If I am gonna adjust the parameters of success, I need to affirm it as a truthful, meaningful, and useful thing to do, rather than something that is just nice to do or something I would like to do... It needs to be the way I operate going forward.
Day 5, Grounded in Action, Grounded in Reality
I want to talk about actions, outcomes, and control.
The definition of success should be based on things you can do now, things where you have some control over the outcome.
Maybe my issue is that so much of my definition of success relies on the whims, feelings and decisions of other people.
Maybe this idea of being brave, ironically, involves other people less and less.
Adjusting parameters of success, is the brave part.
I think it’s less about some huge achievement, or overcoming something big and scary, and more about the choices that we make moment to moment, day to day.
Are you brave enough to honour what is accessible to you?
What can be done right in front of you without dragging yourself to the future or the past and in turn, dragging through any opportunity to make progress that is individually meaningful to you right now?
Brave means; I am okay with imperfection, I’m okay with it only being meaningful to me, I’m okay looking a bit shit in other peoples eyes... I know what it means for me personally.
I think adoption of this type of bravery actually allows you to do things in a more timely way and a more meaningful way.
If you can’t climb a mountain, climb a hill.
I’m gonna take a little bit of a tangent from the normal content of the blog to just vent my feelings...
Sometimes I feel like the world is communicating to me that it doesn't think I deserve nice things. It's like the nice things were looking for something of mine to latch onto, but I am too smooth so there is nothing. They just keep missing me and I can’t pinpoint why. It’s like a prank or something.
I guess my understanding of the world must be wrong.
It probably doesn’t necessarily make sense to interpret this as a good or a bad thing, it’s just reality I guess.
And what am I going to do about it?
I think I need to turning away from things that leave me empty, and towards things that actually give me something back when I put into them.
It's important to not being a snob about what they can give you back. Idk if this makes sense. It's like when a bird gives you something shiny. You respect it a lot.
Treat things as they treat you. If you know something is worthwhile but the process of doing it leaves you vulnerable/out of your comfort zone, that's the sincere and vulnerable effort of that thing to actualise, despite all of the associated risks. We should honour that.
It's like when you're encouraging a child taking their first steps. Planting and nurturing things one by one.
What am I doing for myself? In a sense I am poor, and in poverty. That’s what makes me desperate. That’s what makes me less inclined to be brave. That’s what makes me look around at other people instead of focusing on what’s within my own control. Need to be less needy and finally ask, what can I do for myself?
The bit about not treating small achievements with snobbery, the bit about turning away from things that don't work and towards things that do work, can both be summed up with the phrase treat things as they treat you.
What’s that got to do with being brave?
Responding appropriately to the circumstances in front of you, is that bravery? I would say it’s not something I normally do. It’s different. Being different requires being brave sometimes.
The bravery required to be more realistic and balanced.
There is evidence in my life of resistance to being more realistic. The fact that I catastrophise and end up not doing anything. The fact that doing something knowing it will be imperfection makes me cringe.
I have to shoulder the risk of things taking time, things not going in the direction I want, things not paying off in the way I want, people not understanding. I really want to try to commit to being okay with imperfection day to day.
Is it the fact that it’s predictable or the fact that is negative that allows us to resort to negative thinking? Is it just that it's familiar.
I have to be more okay with being a beginner I think.
Where I said if you can’t climb a mountain climb a hill, that hill might be winning over just yourself. You aspire to encounter all the wonders of the world, but you still haven’t impressed yourself and gotten your own approval.
Day 6, Practical Application
Looking ugly, social disapproval, setting boundaries. This is bravery
Between being very fatigued I haven't had much opportunity to think about I would apply all the things I've learned.
I'd say it's important not to strike yourself down before you've even had a chance at making an attempt at failing. It's important to honour those early attempts, those early intentions.
Thinking in extremes, perfectionism leaves your life empty. Whilst we seek comfort and shelter in familiar negative thinking patterns, or where we think we've achieved that best case scenario (which often means bending over backward or denying ourselves), so much of our life is left empty.
What I wrote about treating things as they treat you, is also a word. It invites us to think about what has worked in the past? What didn't work?
In these questions there's also something about being more honest with ourselves, being more balanced and grounded in reality.
What has this got to do with bravery?
It's about the bravery of embracing imperfection. It's about the courage to make space for vulnerability and uncertainty.
I don't think my issue is not being brave enough to ever do XYZ, rather not being brave enough to stick it though perhaps? Do it consistently...
Day 6, what am I going to do with all of this? I've been writing but what will I actually do differently?
I need to assess what I think the rules of game are, swap some out and see.
Day 7, Where are you right now?
Day 7 was going to be something else, but I stripped it out. It felt like a dead end, and giving all of my attention to something that wasn't helpful.
Here is the the video I watched, if anyone is curious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5tZXPnSyEw I will not be talking about it so much here.
He did give 3 pieces of solid advice: Normalise Vulnerability, Lower Your Expectations, Battle Childhood Beliefs, but I think I'm looking for 1 level of abstraction above this advice. What can I do to prevent unhelpful thinking loops in the first place?
A lot of the work done over the last 7 days does address this question.
Let's start here The new land I would like to conquer, is being more patient and emotionally resilient.
To me emotional resilience (and more patience) means not being dragged about by:
- Unrealistic expectations.
- The desire to see results instantly.
- The desire to sooth when points 1 and 2 emerge.
- Projecting into the past or future.
For point 4, I realised today that a good question to ask is Where are You Right Now? Is your thinking actually in line with what's happening in front of you? Or are you projecting into some worst case scenario? It's important to try and catch yourself in these moments.
Moving from a perfectionist mindset to something more balanced, requires what I would describe as compassionately leaving gaps. Saying to yourself that I am deliberately leaving pockets where I don't give a fuck what happens.
Finally, I think it's worth repeating some of the new "rules" I came up with earlier in the week because they were quite good.
The most important thing in my life right now is not harm reduction.
It's not even trying to "fix" myself and my reactions so that I can be more free and expressive and take more risks.
What is my northern star that's not going to move despite everything else moving?
I'm not going to spend my life hiding from phantoms anymore. I want to know all that I can be once I start living my life out in front of it rather than at the mercy of it.
Not being a product of my trauma, making decisions from a more balanced place.
So to summarise, what I think this blog was about was becoming more okay with revealing more of myself or potentially putting more of myself at risk of scrutiny. What it took me 7 days to realise, is that ironically this behaviour doesn't require something bold and daring, but rather the opposite. (A lot of important lessons in life are paradoxes).
Expect less, be okay with question marks scattered throughout your life; in fact I encourage you to drop some in on purpose, ask yourself where your head is really at when you feel like you're getting torn up about something, honour your tiny and often time-consuming attempts at bringing your desired reality to life; this is your process of self actualising and perfectionism can really get in the way of it.
Thanks for reading !!!
