Whenever I feel uncomfortable or bothered I do a write up session where I write whatever comes to mind. It has the same effect for me as watching my thoughts – I write whatever comes to mind with absolutely no judgement or filtering. This usually leads to very interesting discoveries.
Today I uncovered an important belief but I am now at a standstill. Any advice or discussion from you guys would be appreciated. I am trying to find a different perspective beyond myself.
My apologies for the long ass post. I tried to include the relevant parts of the writing session so you can see where the discovery came from.
“Feeling shitty because I have been in bed all day doing nothing; 13:40 – 15:00. I am avoiding something. I am avoiding packing, just letting my mum do all the work. If I wasn’t older and she wasn’t scared of my reaction then she would be belittling me for this right now. She’s probably thinking how useless I am, how I am lazy and good for nothing. That’s what she used to tell me when I was younger. She used to say I am just like my father: lying around all day doing nothing, with no motivation or drive. If I told her what I was doing this morning – reading subjects that are of interest & meditating – she would probably say I am selfish and don’t care about her; that I have no empathy for others.
Isn’t she right though? Am I not just like my father right now? I spent 2 hours in bed reading articles, looking at artwork, browsing facebook, responding to messages and lost in thought.
(Now I have observed that. So I can simply let it go. I don’t label or judge myself because I realise that the above behaviour is a result of years of programming. This is what I did today; it doesn’t need to become my description of “me”. I am dynamic. I change every day.)
Even if I wakeup tomorrow and everyday for the rest of my life I do exactly what I did this morning, I will still love myself. I will not punish, dislike or get angry at myself. My love is unconditional. My love for myself is unconditional. I don’t have to DO something/anything before I like myself. I love myself because I am.
Belief Revelation:
I have to meet a certain criteria before I am allowed to like myself.
This is pure social programming: “You have to be hardworking, successful, good looking, earn so and so before you can be happy” Isn’t that feeling of happiness purely the feeling of self-love and acceptance. Then this belief works by making you a good slave – to your parents and society in general. This has a strong hold, the reason people keep working, aiming for promotions, more money, better gear/possessions, and more people who “like” us, it is all so that one day we can say “oh hey I can like myself now that I have all this stuff” and all of sudden we're happy.
All society’s standards can work from this belief “to like yourself you should look like so and so”
All my life I have been working under the assumption that I need to do and be certain things before I can like myself. That is why I have been working on “improving” myself. Becoming more confident, social, healthier, having more friends, being better looking and getting in better shape. I do all these things to like myself – not out of already liking myself.
The question that popped up
“Why should I just like myself? What have I done/who am I to deserve to like myself”
I can see this belief forming as a result of my parents’ “liking” of me being conditional. If I was behaving well, achieving good grades, doing things to please them etc then I would be treated neutrally/well. But if I didn’t meet the standard then the dislike would be shown very clearly.
Why should I like myself? Because I am myself, I am me. How is it possible to dislike what you are? I have to split myself in to two parts to be able to dislike myself.
I should love myself simply because I am myself. It is my simplest right to like myself.
But what about ego, jealousy, negativity and bad habits such as laziness or over eating. Surely I can’t like or accept myself if the above are a part of me. Why not? Because these are traits of a bad person, if I am a bad person then I can’t like myself.
Vs.
My gut tells me that I should like myself unconditionally. What I feel with conviction is that placing criteria/standards on liking myself is bizarre and unnatural.”
The two paragraphs above show the conflict that I am experiencing. My apologies if the post is hard to follow or understand. It is a pure stream of consciousness and I’ve never before attempted to explain this to someone else. Thank you for taking the time to read