Time to think

Questions to ask myself

http://www.purposefairy.com/66920/5-important-questions-to-help-you-figure-out-what-you-really-want/


What do you want? My counselor posed this question to me several times through the years. At first, I looked at him blankly. My mind racing trying to figure out his angle. He asked again. I didn't recognize my reaction of fear. I brought him an Almond Joy candy bar with a giant fishhook piercing the word Joy. The possibility that I might have what I want seemed ludicrous or a baited hook.  He obviously ran in far different circles than I did.  What do I want?  I am struggling with figuring that out.

The above article was posted last Fall.  I put it in my line up of future posts and left it there for months.  I am discovering there is a huge difference between someone else asking me what I want and me asking me what I want.  I have no hidden agenda.  I have no hook.  I have no reason to be afraid of asking myself this question.  But I am afraid.  Too many times in my life, expressing what I wanted almost guaranteed I wouldn't get it.  No point deciding what you want if you can't have it any way.  I watched dreams crumble.  Darkness engulf hopes.  Fear over take dreams.  If you never dream a dream, then you are never disappointed.  That thinking is being buried before you die.  Victims give up their dreams and focus on getting through one more day.  Survivors struggle with believing that the terror has ended.  Thriving is where dreams exist.  So by definition if I want to thrive, I need to dream of what I want to do.

So, I am going to ask myself the questions:

1. If no one else had any opinion about this, how would I feel?

I followed orders to survive.  If I had a choice different then what was expected, I was told to change my thinking and I did.  I was the perfect chameleon blending in whatever environment that I was in.  The very essence of functioning as a multiple personality was so that I could be which ever personality that the other person required.  In extreme measures, it meant survival.  However, I know from experience, it is a lousy way to live.  I am in the position of always waiting on someone else to tell me what to think, feel and do.  First thing, I have to do is decide what I feel....do you have any idea how freaking hard that is when you are conditioned to absolute obedience at all cost?  I spent years of counseling sessions trying to understand that I have feelings, I own them, and they are based on my opinions.  I have opinions.  LOTS OF THEM.  I learned that sometimes that is beneficial to my relationship with someone else to not voice that opinion.  But it is important for me to know that I have one.  Yup.  Step one accomplished, I have an opinion!  It is mine, based on my experience and my understanding and if I don't want to....I don't have to explain it to anyone.  How cool is that?  

2. Is the fear of failure, or of success, standing in my way?

I always thought my fear of failure kept me immobilized. I was terrified of the slightest mistake.  My counselor groused about having to walk on egg shells to keep me from believing I made a mistake and shut down completely.  He groused nicely but kept pointing out the struggle I had with apologizing and blaming myself for anything that went wrong with anything. To help myself overcome my fear of making a mistake, I did Sudoku puzzles.  If I made a mistake, I couldn't erase it and do it over.  I put a big X across it and turn the page.  I can now make a mistake with out a complete melt down. It never occurred to me that fear of success was even more debilitating. My sister and I discussed this many times.  We both remembered specific examples of times we were praised in front of mother and in private mother would make our lives miserable.  She could rain on our parades like nobody else.  I dreaded compliments because it increased the resentment I felt from her and my life would get much harder.  Or she would find some way to verbally cut me down to size.  Some how in her thinking, it seemed to me, that if people thought well of me then they must not like her.  I call this "Queen Bee Syndrome."  There can only be one "Queen Bee"  All other females must be destroyed.  Many narcissistic people have this syndrome.  So I am challenged with both fear of failure and fear of success.  What I am learning is small success and small failures are the learning ground for figuring out that failure is not the end of the world and success doesn't last forever.  I am discovering that I enjoy success and I can cope with failures.  The fear of both is diminishing.      

I have tackled the first two questions.  There are 3 more to go.  Enough for one post.  I don't need to solve all my problems tonight, I can save some for tomorrow.  (Too bad you can't see my cheeky grin when I type this.) 

Worker bees survive.