Living My Life - Back After A Long Break
Posted by Moses on Jun 9, 2007
I want to apologize to my readers. I have been away for a while. It’s been a busy time for me. I’ve been out living what I write about. Unlike other writers who have already transformed their lives, I am in the process of transforming mine so anyone reading is on this great journey with me.
I have spent the last month addressing some of the attitudes and emotions that have crippled my life. Yes, I know crippled is a strong word, but when I think of all that I have missed out on because I have held myself back with the wrong mindset, crippled becomes an appropriate terma to describe the mark these attitudes and emotions have left on my life.
The first emotion I tackled was fear. I wrote about the the fears that I have carried throughout my life in my article Creating Your Life: Part 1 - Making Choices. In that article, I address my 3 major fears. They were
- Fear of making the wrong choice and being unhappy or unable to change it;
- Fear of making a choice and closing off the possibility of other options (closely related to the first);
- Fear of making a choice and losing the acceptance and approval for family, peers and even strangers.
Next, I tackled my negative attitude of expecting the worst in every situation. This attitude of mine serves as the foundation of my 3 major fears. It has kept me from taking advantage of many opportunities, being happy and living the life that I want to live. It is fundamentally an issue of trust. I did not grow up in a “safe” environment. I define safe as emotionally safe, where the emotions and actions of others are consistent and predictable allowing others to feel safe because they understand the unwritten rules that govern the relationship or situation. Unfortunately, because of my parent’s personal demons, their actions and emotions were neither predictable nor consistent. This left me and my siblings with a fundamental sense of distrust.
The third attitude or emotion that I have been working to overcome is pride. First, let me state that pride is not inherently a bad emotion. However, pride that exists outside of the grace of God and is centered on your own efforts while ignoring his divine intervention is dangerous, foolish and ultimately unsatisfying. In the past, I have been guilty of being prideful about my accomplishments. This has been particularly true when I have overcome some negative emotion or situation. Almost unconsciously, I will begin to believe that my efforts were responsible for my achievement and begin to see myself as being above my current situation and others. When I fail to correct this attitude, I am inevitably faced with a new challenge that lays me low and rips away my false sense of pride.
As far as I know there is not a quick and easy way to overcome these kinds of emotions and attitudes. However, I have developed as process for tackling my own. The first step that I took was to accept Jesus as my lord and savior and acknowledge that God is directing my life in all things. My second step was to find a good therapist and have the courage to tell her my deepest fears and insecurities. She has helped me to face them. Next, I decided to give my struggle to overcome my shortcomings meaning by sharing them with others via this blog. It gives me a sense of purpose when I do not want to do the hard work necessary to become a better person. Lastly, I decided to just live. By choosing to live my life and tackle these emotions as they come up, I make myself a little stronger and grow a little everyday. It allows me to eat the elephant one bite at a time.
With that approach you can easily surmise that I am still working through these attitudes and emotions. I will most likely be tackling them for the foreseeable future, but by using my process I have hope and path that I had been missing before.
As always, I hope this helps you in your own process. God Bless.
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