Fortunately, when you were a toddler, you hadn’t yet become completely aware of yourself. You weren’t self-conscious about the fact that others were able to do things you couldn’t do. You didn’t have a concept that you might not immediately succeed at something. You simply saw something you wanted, and went for it.
These facts about you came in particularly handy while you were learning to walk. ;-)
Imagine if, by some developmental anomaly, you were self-aware, self-conscious, and self-critical at that tender young age:
“Oh my! There are people out there who can walk on two legs! They’re not crawling like I am. They’re walking and I’m not…but I *should* be. What if they’re thinking poorly of me because I’m unable to walk yet? How embarrassing. I’d better not let them see me try to walk, because I’m likely to fall at least a few times. I never see *them* fall… Falling must not be normal. I can’t do it as well as they can. There must be something wrong with me. I’d better just stay put where I am – that’s way safer. I know-- I’ll make it look intentional! Yes, that’s it! I enjoy crawling. No -- I prefer crawling! Then I won’t have to deal with the discomfort in knowing where I’m at and the great divide between this place and where I really want to be, and how painful it is to feel like I’m not good enough to get there. It’s so much easier to stay small and manage this discomfort of my own making rather than the potential pain of rejection from others in not appearing to be on their level.”
Poor baby. There's always someone out there who can do something differently or "better" than us -- especially when we're learning and growing, and that's totally okay. I hope you’ll forgive the completely hypothetical dramatization in that example. It’s interesting to note how our empathy and compassion is stirred at the thought of someone so innocent being so unreasonably self-critical. We’re quick to note the inherent injustice in the situation when it involves someone else, yet we commit these injustices against ourselves all the time, holding ourselves to unrealistic and unhealthy standards… Why would such self-mistreatment be considered acceptable for anyone, regardless of age?
Thankfully, we didn’t have the ability to be so self-critical while learning such an important task (otherwise a number of things so crucial to access in the adult world would clearly be out of our reach…like independence, for one!).
But now we’ve grown up, and become keenly aware of what others might think. We’ve even internalized it, and it’s grown into the unreasonable, unrealistic voice inside that keeps us from living to our full potential. That’s a different kind of lack of independence -- one that’s much more subtle, yet can infiltrate every aspect of our existence until our movement through life is essentially paralyzed and we become anxious and empty inside.
We’re painfully familiar with where we’re at, what we want, and the ways in which we perceive ourselves as falling short of our ideal; these thoughts can become disproportionate shadows cast upon our dreams if we’re not able to keep them in perspective, or can be exiled into the background where they can exert a quiet but powerful and limiting influence on our daily life.
If we’re not intentional about pushing past the resistance to imagined future failure and what others may think of us along the way...if we’re not intentional in the way that we push past the voices that are so quick to judge ourselves and compare our uniqueness with the one-dimensional view of The Others...the life we live belongs to someone else and is no longer our own. As a result, we’re left with a deep sense of unhappiness and lack of fulfillment that’s hard to pinpoint.
Although in those instances we're living our life through the lens of others, we are the only ones who must endure the consequences of living a life that isn’t self-directed. When this happens, the life we dreamed of becomes intangibly somewhere “out there” and continues to elude us…all the while we’re plagued by “shoulds,” “woulds,” and “coulds” that gnaw at our soul, eroding our self-esteem, self-worth, and sense of self-efficacy (our belief in our own ability to "make things happen" in the external world). These demons can fester, resurfacing when it’s least convenient for us. But we do have the ability to choose, and instead, we can use that initial discomfort -- that feeling that something isn't quite right -- to propel us forward and beyond that sense of “smallness” that comes from living a life that isn’t of our own design.
Plainly put, opinions of others – whether real or imagined – can hold us back if we’re not aware of the process. The interesting thing is, the “others” whose opinions we may be concerned with – the “others” whose lives we’re living instead of our own – are often also just as busy living lives concerned with and dictated by the opinions of “others” -- so much so that it all becomes an absurd “nesting doll” of layers upon layers of people out of touch with what they truly want for their own authentic life, with none of them aware of what really brings them joy, let alone how to freely pursue it.
There was a time when all of us were blissfully unaware of and unaffected by the opinions of real or imagined others. We boldly forged ahead toward what we were capable of becoming, whatever that happened to be, in all its natural, initial fumbling glory. We fell down; loved ones cheered us up and on; we pulled ourselves up and started again…and this process repeated itself until we had mastered that particular challenge and were ready to conquer the next.
Let’s get back to the time in our lives when we weren’t afraid to try to be…When discovering and reaching toward our potential was the main focus and we didn't care who was watching. …The time when the discomfort of holding back and not growing lingered and was more intolerable than the temporary sting of falling down on the way to getting back up again.
Now that the frontal lobes of our brains have caught up with the growth of rest of our body, let’s bring honest, objective self-awareness to this process, and hold ourselves compassionately accountable for going after what we want, and bravely enduring the discomfort of delayed gratification as we grow into this new and positively rebellious mode of being…whatever that may happen to be, in all of its uncharted and unrestrained glory.
Need help getting out of your own way and reclaiming your future?
Call me! 530-455-0077.
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