Sunday, August 3, 2014

More navel gazing...

I'd like to say that previous crisis averted I've been writing up a storm, but I haven't. I've written, and I'm happy with what I've written. I've got the form and structure of the book on the shelter roughed out and I'm happy with that. But the last few days I've done nothing but editing. I thought I was stuck and I couldn't work out why. I've been sleeping poorly, lying awake at 3am but with no clue as to why. I didn't fall into the deep black hole, but I was skirting around the edges.

The night before last as I lay there worrying about the past - pointless - and worrying about the future - also pointless - I felt a small tug of a thought. This sometimes happens when I'm writing, a small tug on my train of thought that leads me to an unplanned and unexpected development. So when I felt that tug I followed it. It's hard to explain how it works. It's like my mind is full of thoughts hidden behind the spinning words so that I don't know I'm thinking them. I feel this tug of recognition and I focus on it and as I do a thought or an idea makes itself known. Sometimes I think there are two of me inside my mind and the smart, sane one sometimes has to sort out the crazy one. But I digress.

So this thought was more of an emotion and it was telling me that I don't deserve success in any part of my life. This has been a lifelong struggle for me, this feeling of unworthiness. I know I'm not alone in it, I know many people - probably many of you - also feel this lack of self love. This is not the same as feeling I am not good enough at my craft to succeed. This is saying I'm not a good enough person to succeed. I've listened to this insidious voice inside me for most of my life. I've sabotaged things in my life so that I fail - not consciously of course, but I've realised what I've done after the fact.

So what I realised was I am at war with myself. The me who has come to believe I do deserve success is fighting with the me who still believes I don't. And that is an absurd reason for lying awake at 3am. So the tired and grumpy me decided enough is enough. As you know, I have learned that positive thinking does work and negative thinking also works. What you send out you get back. So it's beyond time to stop thinking I don't deserve success or happiness. It's not so easy to convince myself of this of course. Those of us who have a poor self image usually have a reason for it, something that happened in the past that has convinced us that we are not worth anything. It's hard to overcome that, it seems to become part of our mental wiring and we have to try to rewire ourselves.

This takes time and patience - it took time for this deep seated belief to become so established and it's not going to be reversed quickly. I'm making progress or I would not be at war with myself (I think) but I'm tired of engineering my own failures. It's time instead to engineer success. So every day now I'm going to remind myself that I do deserve success and I am going to have success. I'm going to remind myself that I need to focus on changing how I think and how I act so that I am always working on success. Whenever I feel myself doing something to make sure I fail I have to stop myself. Enough is enough, it's time to shine :)





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