I’m involved in a study at our church called the “Search for Significance”. It’s an interesting way to reexamine life, especially from the perspective of all of the lies that we tell ourselves. Tonight’s lie was “When I do something wrong, I blame myself and am not worthy of love.” Some friends and I discussed this at the table at which we were sitting, and we came to the conclusion that no matter how well I may do something, if it isn’t perfect, or if it doesn’t make other people happy, I feel bad and start to beat myself up about it. This leads to several things:
1. I am afraid to take on new challenges and responsibilities because with them brings the possibility of failure.
2. I am afraid of succeeding at current things, because success brings more responsibility and the possibility again of failure.
3. I can spend the rest of my life trying to please other people and never come close to finding personal happiness, because I’m trying to find it in the approval of other people.
4. I’m not particularly happy with finding this out.
The sense of failure pervades my life, or at least as how I perceive it. Now, I’m the first to admit that this is a twisted viewpoint, but it’s what I see. I see what I want to be: out of debt, doing something I enjoy, not worrying about mundanities– and it’s not achievable, at least not right now. And since it’s a challenge, let’s visit points 1 and 2 for how I wind up feeling. It leads to feeling trapped by my own mind.
And, as Dr. Phil would crack, “how’s that working for me?” Not well at all.
The other major issue that I’m dealing with is the sense of feeling a need to belong to a group, no matter how individual I may be. This need has been there since childhood; it’s a need to be liked/respected by my peers, but the problem is, the circle of peers keeps expanding. So in order to get people to like me, I start going into the “make other people happy” portion of the above neurosis. It’d be easy if I didn’t care about what other people think of me, but I do.
What that boils down to is that I have a very hard time liking myself, and I can’t see how other people like me. Again, it’s a completely irrational, not-right way of thinking, but it’s where I am right now, and I’m trying desperately hard to change it.
Anyhow, I’ll stop thinking for a while and go to sleep.
Try Mark 10:27, I will send you more when I find what I want. Mom
Wow. I gave up trying to please others long ago. Except for a very few people, I really do not care what others think of me and my wierd ways. I used to try to be a people pleaser Kev. I found that it is impossible to do because some people will not be happy with what you do no matter what. That , my friend, is their problem. If you want to talk to me further, you have my number. Maybe we could do an overnight or something.