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| trust yourself a little more by Andrew J Cosgriff |
Trusting myself to care for myself, to grow and transform
without force, control, oppression, and shame as the motivators, is so hard.
Without negative motivators, will I continue to change in positive ways? Will
it happen, but much more slowly? I fear that perhaps I will revert to an older,
weaker, sicker, less “evolved” version of myself. As I change my methods and
strategies of self-healing towards compassionate, patient, loving care, all of
the repressed self-hatred bubbles up. The voices (in their high-pitched Australian accents and adorable
onesies) are screaming at me to toughen up, straighten out, and force myself to
be “good” through willpower and control. These are the strategies I used as a
perfectionist over-achiever, characteristics I’ve been shedding for several
years now. The vestiges of these traits still roam my subconscious, looking for
ways to scare me into compliance, to trigger the survival-mode, panicked
desperation that will cause me to revert to striving, to forcing, to pushing,
to contorting myself into new and “better” shapes. I am slowly learning to
trust myself instead. For instance, over my two-week winter break I made no
plans to do any work and no lists of all the work I could be doing. This did
not extend to my personal life, however, where I had several major projects
listed as goals, including digitizing my entire filing system of the past ten
years and revamping my financial tracking systems. Not that I did either of
these, but the fact that I was hoping to do so is indicative of my general
approach to “free” time. So yeah, I’m taking baby steps here, but the lack of
work related goals on the list was a major change, and turned out really well.
I spent the last two days of break camped out in the living room reading,
journaling, and… doing some work related things. I was internally motivated to
do them because I was feeling a bit restless, had a good solid break, and
wanted to start thinking about teaching my upcoming classes. I really like my
job and enjoy most of the things I have to do for it. When I was able to trust
myself to choose when and how to do work, I felt naturally motivated to do so.
I learned that I can trust myself to be consistent with my job, without forcing
myself to do work through willpower. This month I am experimenting with
extending that method into the school week, not deciding ahead of time when I
will plan my lessons and do various work related paperwork, but just letting
the week flow. So far this method is working out just fine. I am definitely
going more slowly than I typically do, but still getting everything done on
time. I am much more relaxed overall, and discovering for myself what pace of
life I am most inclined toward.
Accepting this new pace is incredibly challenging for me.
This blog, for instance, is one example of this shift. I initially wrote a blog
post every single day for three months straight. Then I was attempting to write
once a week. Then my life got super busy with moving to a new city, starting a
new job, etc. When I started writing again, I decided not to have a structure
to how frequently I would write. At first it was several times a week and that
felt good. I felt that being consistent was an accomplishment, and I felt proud
of myself. Conversely, the fact that I haven’t written a post in weeks felt
shameful, like a failure. I almost wrote a post after New Years. I even have a
half-finished post about New Year’s Resolutions that I never felt like
finishing.
Allowing and accepting that I might not feel motivated to write
for an unpredictable length of time is a form of trusting myself – trusting
that I will know what is best for me, trusting that I am still an okay person
even if I don’t blog consistently, trusting that my life will not fall apart if
I’m not constantly “in control”. This is a long slow process, but so worth it!
When I am able to release my grip on myself I can approach each moment, each
activity, each task with ease and relaxed engagement. I don’t have to bribe
myself with caffeine or sugar in order to force myself to do something
unpleasant. I hope I can continue to inch in this direction. There is a long
road to travel from constant controlling behavior and outlook to fully trusting
my intuitive sense of timing and priorities. The road itself is quite scenic,
though, so maybe it doesn’t even matter how long it takes or where I end up.
These ideas are truly radical for me. Maybe they are for you too?
