helloreminiscence

[helloreminiscence]

Running Away

When you run away from your problems, it does work. The rush that I experience from running has been truly addictive. That wonderful feeling that not every problem needs a solution.

There is a certain empowered feeling when I run away from all my issues. It feels like I am taking my life back by ignoring all the parts of it that do not particularly please me. Do not like the job? Not a problem at all; it pays so we can buy things with it and pretend that we like the stability. Fail at a meaningful relationship? No worries and let us believe that destiny will make things work. My problems don’t exist in my new place I have arrived at. It is almost like out of sight and out of mind.

I find new things I could pounce on and start thriving. Every new initiative that I ever took up, I always felt I was not fully into it. Something just lingers beneath the surface.

From the time I started running away from all my problems, I started slowly falling. I do not even know when it started. All I know is that there were these little things I could never explain. That job that you never get when you are trying to relocate. Your interviews that you just do not crack and no one explains why. Your multiple pseudo attempts to fix something that you never fully understand why did it not work.

It’s the hesitation deep in me that trembles with new opportunities. It is the sense of self-doubt that creeps in when I am challenged; so much that I have made my little circle where I am no longer challenged. I am trying to write a new chapter without finishing the old one. It is as if I am looking forward to grab at something new with full hands and yet I can't really figure out why I am even dropping it.

The problem is that I forget that I can never fly far enough away from myself to escape what it is that lies unresolved. The issues have always felt being embedded in the places I have been or the people I no longer see every day. My emotional clutter slowly enters into every facet of my life, stealthily enough that can remain eternally undetected.

For a very long time I have numbed the pain that comes with this clutter. This also works for a while but also makes it worse when I finally feel it. It has been in my experience that this can be avoided almost entirely. As I continue to run from the past, it wears away every experience of mine. I have become afraid to love anything fully, live anywhere completely, invest myself entirely in a person, for the underlying fear that eventually I will not stick around when things get tough. With my running away, all the sweet, unfinished memories, all the plans and everything I promised with my uncertain lips will fade away.

As I continue to run away from all of my problems, I eventually run from myself. I forget the person I could have possibly been if I just planted myself like a tree at one place, worked through my downfalls, accepted my shortcomings and then eventually overcame them. I missed that there is a version of me who is reliable. I lose the sense of happiness I used to have from working hard.

Because when I run away from all of my problems, I run right into infinitely more. I create an imaginary world within myself that must be tiptoed through and gets over-turned with ease. I am a land mine of unfinished wounds that bleed again at the slightest scratch. 

But that's just looking at one side of it. If it was so clear I would not have run away in the first place. Most of my queries had answers that were hard to hear. The truth is painful. It definitely takes huge patience and perspective to arrive at these complicated solutions. It feels so much better to take the short cut.

Being numb to my circumstances was probably the easiest way to deal with them. I didn’t have to think, feel or be aware of the reality I numbed myself through by locking myself in my room. When I became desperate to feel, I started hurting myself or watching excruciatingly painful films to experience the human sensations. I felt hungry for food, but it was more for my life and for the emotions that came normally with life - emotions which I had put on hold. I either feel numb or painfully sad, and there didn’t seem to be an opportunity for any new feelings to grow. If I wasn’t numb, then I’d start crying, getting anxious and tense.

Off late when I wake up in the morning there is a strange fire in my gut, an anger that is so overwhelming that the energy frightens me. I do not know what to do with it and the emotions feel too overpowering to try to numb them. My thoughts and feelings threaten to swallow me whole. With this constant feeling right now I find it really hard to find my way back home. I want to start fixing all my issues  as it scares me that time is now running out. The fixing feels compulsive but I am glad that the feeling at least somewhat comes to the surface and that may be not all hope is lost. Maybe this is my way of feeling that I want to get better. 

[helloreminiscence]

What I completely missed out on

How many times have you watched a personal growth Ted Talk, or listened to a spiritual master, or read a book, or viewed a blog online designed to change your life? I am sure you are already aware of the number of times you did get a high when you completed the program.

Personally, I have experienced that this high slowly starts to dissipate and leaving me exactly where I was before I started. What's even worse is that it leaves you at a place where it is reinforced that nothing can actually change in me. I am going to continue to be my miserable self.

So what is it about these techniques that do not work? How can something that connects the dots of human psychology and aspects of the laws of the universe not work for me? (Do not tell anyone but I have also imagined I may have been an alien for whom these things just don't work!)

Based on everything we know about change, they should work.

Every time I have started to rigorously follow my Goals list it has dwindled in the first few hours. My weight post watching hours of tutorials on YouTube should have dropped and I would have by now reached my summer body given my data consumption. My Six Sigma Green Belt Training would have by now changed all the processes at my work place and we would be working towards the next big concept. (Do not do the course trust me! It's just common sense written in Japanese lingo ssh....)

Let's take a simple example. I will take mine as who else to bash up better given the years of experience :) I am a pretty regular procrastinator; until sometime back I would have called myself a Perfectionist but we all know the truth by now so what are we even hiding :) I always leave things until the last minute. As a result, I am anxious most of the time and sometimes I turn things in late, which subjects me to the disapproval of the stakeholder. In fact, I have heard all these people tell me, "I would like to consider you for X and Y, but I can't as long as you keep delivering things late".

That is when you really feel bad and decide you must change and you really want to change. So what do you do?

You now come up with a step by step action plan (Bollywood tempo music playing in the background) 1) Let us start prioritizing our activities, assuming that it will help keep the focus on what's most important. 2) Create a reward system a.k.a. Food because let's face it I always need a reason to emotionally eat (We will talk about the justifications for this some other day). 3) Come up with a schedule so I can divide my time in an optimized fashion (Apologies for the corporate lingo, I am trying and I really want to get off it) 4) I now set up reminders - mostly on Outlook and on my phone. The ones on outlook still work but the phone ones are already in the middle of 40 other notifications. 5) I go ahead and prematurely announce this to those people who mean a lot to me!

So now I have gathered all the information and resources I need to get this done on time. And I have several strong reasons for doing it: the reward system and definitely this reassures me that my constant anxiety will be reduced.

But let's be honest! After I have done all this, plus all the other variations, has my attitude really changed? By that means, Intention and my Will Power should have been equal to the Desired Result. So this formula should necessarily enable me to achieve things right?

Let's say out of will power and the embarrassment of again not giving up, it does work for a few days, even weeks. So if it does today, does it continue to be easy month after month? For most of us, the answer is no.

My resistant mind kept saying that this is in no way a valid assumption. I can't let it chatter so let me give it some more data. Consider all the times I have committed to some change in my life, made tall claims and promises, but for some inexplicable reason I failed to follow through. This list was long and almost a hard hitting reality. Why?

I completely missed one component in my equation - My Belief System. My version of the truth. It's always easy to ignore this component because a lot of it depended on my emotions and attitude. Another quote from self help here - Give up your Emotions and stay committed. It does not work that way even a bit! It is this belief that is of my own unlike all the forcefully fed data. How can I disregard something of my own?

Here are some of the examples of what I really feel like deep down.

I am not worthy.

Nothing I do can ever be good enough.

If I do not do something perfectly, it makes me a horrible person.

Making mistakes and experiencing failure is bad.

I am not capable.

I should never be trusted.

With this kind of a belief system, I have noticed that it is far more easier to have people upset with me for not completing something than to make a mistake(it's wrong!). This is very easy to achieve because anyway nothing I do can ever be good enough, then people are bound to find out that I am really not capable and I will be my anxious mess because I have my entire self-esteem based on the fact that I need to do things perfectly.

I did have the facts and the will, but what I never even considered was my belief system. It is this current behavior that I want to change which is also because of what I feel about myself. I kept on fixing the symptoms without working on the root cause. Any change is meant to happen naturally and effortlessly; pressure is only needed during the morning routine :)