Today I was reminded about two important parts of my life that I always need to be mindful of and manage.
Self-sabotage.
and
My expectations.
It all began today when I made a simple error. I stalled because I made it and then I let it slow me down, and I did this because that's what I tend to do in these situations. It's a habit. I've grown used to slowing down and halting when this happens.
But then I kept on making that same error! Again and again! :-) Gah. Lol.
And this is another habit of mine. I could compare it to picking a scab (yuk!). I know that I shouldn't do it - I know that it will do me harm. But it's quite interesting actually. And the feel of it is quite addictive. And before I know it I'm picking at it over and over, sometimes quite compulsively. And then the scab is off. It even bleeds sometimes. I knew this would happen. But I still did it. Why?
Curiously, I always regard people who self-harm as different to me somehow. Because they cut themselves or do something similar that I don't, I label them as different and tell myself that I am not a self-harmer. It's nice to accord myself that feeling of relief - well, at least i'm not THAT bad, eh?
But there's not much difference between a scab-picker and a self-harmer.
And so back to what I actually did today - I kept doing something even though it was making me feel worse, and I kept on doing it because it was a habit, and on some level I think that by choosing to keep doing this habituated thing that I knew would harm me - well, that's self-harm, albeit not to the degree of harm that usually gets associated with that label.
I think I kept doing it because it felt like I was in control when I choose to keep doing it.
I wrote about it in The Daily for today just gone, where I routinely summarise how things are going for me:
The error was to slow down and wait for others to react to my actions.
It was partly ego. I was pleased with something that I had written, and I posted it to a forum where I had posted before > and received comments in response quite quickly. I refreshed several times - who am I kidding? dozens of times! - over > the course of the next 24 hours but nobody made a comment. Don't ask me why it bothered me - why I felt the need
for validation. But that's what I wasted a portion of my day waiting for. it wasn't a complete waste - I have learned not > to hang around waiting for others to fit in with my expectations. I have also learned that I don't need to wait for the
approval of others before I shine my light or blaze my trail or whatever it is that I am doing. And I have definitely
learned that I don't have to hide my light in case others might be offended or have an opinion. I hope that I have
learned these lessons deep and well.
But the thing is - why would I choose to do that to myself? Choose an outcome that will make things worse for me, when I could have chosen a better outcome? I create my own reality and I choose to create a non-optimal one?!? What the heck? :-)
I guess the answer is 'FEAR' - and I will address this in an upcoming post. But essentially if my fear of a bad outcome is strong enough, I may choose to create the bad outcome myself so that I am in control of what is happening, rather than leave it as an unknown and risk the emotional drama (because I am so attached to the outcome!) of not knowing if this will go well or badly. Aggh! lol.
So I could obviously ditch my attachments to outcomes and just get on and do things without overthinking them.
Having expectations can be the worst thing that I can do in any given situation.
Having expectations is different to having goals or targets, ambitions or hopes.
Expectations are where I am behaving now based on what I believe will happen in the future.
Examples of expectations:
I think someone will call me.
I think I have done something worthy of praise, and I wait for someone to praise it and me.
I think I have done something wrong, and I loiter until I find out if that's what other people think.
etc.
In all of these cases and more, my expectations lead me into having attachments.
Attachments to outcomes; attachments to people, situations, etc.
So today I was attached to my writing. So much so that I kept refreshing where I had posted it on a forum to see what feedback it would get. I was expecting feedback, and hoping for positive feedback (I was attached to an outcome where somebody praised my writing).
When nobody commented for 24 hours, I went through phases of expectation that in my head always turned out to be negative. I began waiting for people to post comments that were critical of my writing. I began to expect that people would react badly to it. I began to doubt my writing.
I began to create my counter-arguments. "It is only a first draft." "I was rushing to get it written so that I could go to bed and sleep." "I deliberately didn't go into detailed descriptions in this draft, I just wanted to get the dialogue down." etc.
Note that all of this is/was going on in my head. None of this was actually taking place in real life. :-)
So I learned that having an active imagination is great when I am writing, and I could work on turning it off when I am trying to engage with real life and work with what is actually happening for real.
I could work on turning off my apparent craving for validation, my need to be liked, whatever you are to call it. And ultimately I could manage my expectations by ditching my attachments to outcomes and just taking whatever I get from life.
