15May
At one point in my life I was afraid to as for what I wanted, fearing that those held or possessed my desire would abandon me if I revealed what I wanted. This only applied to the things I wanted. So I found myself in a habit of going for the “Next Best Thing” instead of viewing myself as “worthy & deserving” of the things I really wanted. I found myself in my early 20s still living with this pattern and way of being.and it all stemmed from a few incidents in my childhood that taught me the incorrect lesson of “If I express myself, they won’t like me anymore”. Like many others this turned me into a people pleaser. It wasn’t until I was 21 working at a gas station on the bad side of a break up that someone gave me me not so much advice more of a rule for evaluating life, “anything can be a lesson if you allow it to be”. The reason I say it wasn’t a lesson is because it came as response to the hurt I caused the person who told me this. This simple message literally reshaped and reframed my entire world, I began to pay much more attention to the underlying messages of the situations I found myself in a really drilling down on the wisdom I could glean from them. Some call it “reading between the lines” in other words, really understanding the message that hasn’t been spoken but HAS been communicated. When I began to really look at the situation where I was not expressing what I wanted to the people who could give it to me I found that the issue was me. The fact is whether someone chooses to be in my life or not is irrelevant to fulfilling my own needs. By me not communicating my desires I was attempting to control them and the rest of the world around me. And once I understood that it was only me standing in my own way I began to regret so many of my life choices up to that point and beat myself up with the constant question of “what if” It took me years to shake this habit and even still there are times when it paralyzes me but now that I know what it is, I can fight it. I fight it by just saying what I want, as clearly and concisely as I can muster. Often this leads to me getting what I want it because I deserve and have worked for it. Just as often it leads to me not getting what I want. This doesn’t take away the desire to have what I want or the hurt of not getting it but it does take away the regret and the pain of not knowing what could’ve been.
