I have been dealing with the revelation that the rules and ideals guiding me to this point in my life have led me to the middle of a forest and I am now, lost. I have a clear vision of where I want to go next, but I have no idea how to maneuver from here to this new place. I received some advice the other day and I am going to give it a try. The advice was to make peace with the prospect of outgrowing rules, strategies and approaches that have worked well until now but have outlived their usefulness. It seemed simple enough. If you want something different, you must do something different. My first thought was what rules, strategies and approaches have been guiding me? Until I can clearly identify these things, I cannot figure out how to remove them from my life. Here are a few I have come up with so far.
1. I can keep everyone happy. – I cannot. I have noticed I tend to make decisions based on not wanting to make others around me unhappy or uncomfortable. Constantly putting others before myself has led to a crisis of identify for me. I am unable to make decisions without thinking about the consequences to the people around me. You cannot live in your truth if you are always worried about how other people feel about it. I thought this was selfish but now it feels more like self-preservation.
2. I am too old to do “X”. – I do not feel this belief is a complete throwaway, but it needs more reflection, a makeover of sorts. I do believe you are too old to do things in a certain manner. For example, you are never too old to learn to play an instrument, however you may be too old to join a band and tour around the world. I am limited by situations in my life. The wear-n-tear of time on my body has put parameters around what I am able to accomplish. Also, with age comes wisdom and from experience I know better than to do certain things. These changes to my mind and body are the natural order of things and I have to make sure I am not kidding myself and instead take interest in the things I can do at this current stage of my life. Age itself is not necessarily a defining characteristic. If you are physically and mentally able to do something, then you can do it no matter your age.
3. I must be successful, or I am wasting my life. – I honestly do not have the first clue where I derived this deep-rooted belief. The main issue with this belief is I have never been able to clearly define success. Success is such a vague term. It has always been too broad of a concept for me to ever find a path to achieving it. How will I know if I am successful? Who or what determines I have reached said success? Does life just end after I become successful like when you reach the end of a video game? I am not obligated to be great at anything. It is okay for me to do things for the sake of simply having the experience or gaining new knowledge. I started this blog because I simply love to write. I continue to enjoy it because I made the decision I do not want or need to become a celebrity blogger or even a paid blogger to continue doing it. It is okay for me to just do something because I enjoy it. You know, like a hobby. (Sidebar, why do I always feel like having a hobby is a bad thing? I feel another post coming on.)
4. I am a bad person if I choose not to help someone. – I have a real savior complex. I would even go as far as to say I am co-dependent on helping other people. My self-worth has been measured by how helpful I feel I am to the people in my life, to the people at my job, random strangers on the street. What purpose do I have if I am not useful to someone else? This was an incredible pill to swallow. I want to stop. I still want to help people who really need it, but I want to stop placing my worth on how much I do for others. I want to stop needing to help people to feel good about myself. What makes me think I can solve everyone else’s problems when I have not effectively solved my own problems? It does not make me a bad person to focus on my helping myself for a while.
5. I must make the right decision. – This is the most destructive thought I have held on to since I became a self-aware person. For me, not trying to do the right thing can feel, well, wrong. If I am not constantly striving to be a better person, then I must be a trash person, right? Wrong! These are just choices followed by a decision which leads to a different set of choices and so on. I did not make the “wrong” decision. It was just a decision. That decision then came with a set of consequences I now live with and eventually I will come to another point in which I will have to make another choice. I am the star of my own “Choose Your Own Adventure” story. It has been paralyzing to feel I always have to make the “right” decision. Whatever decision I make is the right decision, when done for the right reasons. Here is where I should place more faith in my own intentions. If my intentions are always to do good in the world then my actions will follow suit.
So, what have learned here today? As I have been editing and rereading this post, I realized I can summarize all these issue with one statement.
I just found 5 different ways to say it. Whew, I have some work to do. To be continued….
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