sunnuntai 27. lokakuuta 2013

Days 340-342: SF on Day 339: Balancing the social


25-27102013



A continuation to my previous post.


I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that when I stress about things I make myself so tired that it feels as if I cannot do my daily writing – the exact thing that would help me with the stress and the tiredness.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I am tired, to rather entertain myself than find the cause of the tiredness and as the result of repetition create a behavioral pattern out of this.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the pattern of entertaining myself when tired instead of challenging myself to for example write about the tiredness and thus try to resolve it instead of escaping it.



When and as I see myself reaching for entertainment (TV, games, food) when tired, I stop, I breathe and I realize I am trying to escape my tiredness into entertainment. I realize that the entertainment will not help me with the tiredness as it will only make me more disoriented and exhausted, and that what will actually help me recover is resting and dealing with the cause of the tiredness. I breathe and return myself into my body and I check my physical state to see how exactly I am tired. If the tiredness is of the kind where I would be ready to fall asleep, I make the necessary arrangements to get myself to sleep as soon as possible. If the tiredness is not the kind where I would be sleepy but where I am worn out, I ask myself what I have done during my day to cause such a weariness. If necessary, I will write about the points that arise from this self-dialogue. If I am still not sleepy but the weariness persists, I will find some activity that I am able to do within the weariness until I tire enough to sleep the rest of it off.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to stress about passing my exams and thus feel guilty every time I do something other than study, such as spend time with friends, hobbies, chores or writing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I don't need to pass my exams at one go, and that if I do not have enough time to study for the first exam, I'll have plenty to pass at the second or third attempt.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I study at the expense of my well-being I am in fact sabotaging myself, because when I neglect some facets of my life for the sake of others I am not supporting myself to live a balanced life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to set myself a standard of passing all exams at first attempt, wanting to be a “star student” that doesn't get stuck with single courses unfinished.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to judge students who get stuck with some courses that they cannot pass no matter how many times they try, not realizing that I am terrified of being in such a position myself because of the powerlessness of not knowing what else I could do to pass the fucking exam already.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that I will face a “wall” with my studies where who I am is “not enough” to understand the study material and that no amount of practice will be able to surpass this obstacle – not realizing that there is no such thing as “talent”, a magical quality that others inherently have and others don't, which is why some people succeed and others don't – and that if I do face an “obstacle” that feels “impossible” it is simply because I accept and allow myself to feel overwhelmed by material that other people just like me have created with their human brains and minds and hands, which is something I am capable of understanding (because it is something I might as well have created in the other people's shoes!) as long as I break it down enough and allow myself time to “take it in”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that passing an exam, no matter how difficult, is not impossible but a matter of steadfast practice.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear getting “left behind”, not realizing that no matter how many people I compare myself to I am still HERE as myself with the knowledge and skills that I have, and that who I am now as knowledge and skills can be rehearsed only from HERE one word at a time, one movement at a time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be impatient with myself and get frustrated when I study slower than what I expect of myself, not realizing that I cannot force myself to learn by pushing harder, but that I can assist myself to learn by slowing down, taking the information in one word at a time and allowing myself time to process and understand what I have read and place it into context.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel frustrated when my study technique where I actually try to understand things is “too slow” for the university schedules, and then try to adjust myself to the university schedule requirements, not realizing that the university schedules have not been designed to fit everyone and that if I study as fast as the schedules dictate, my learning will suffer and decline.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame the study schedules for being “impossible”, not realizing that they have been created with the assumption that I study nothing else than my main subject AND that I do not work while studying, and that they cannot thus work for me as they are, making it MY responsibility to make them work, which is perfectly possible and a matter of simple planning, organizing and letting go of my “star student” standards.



I commit myself to study the given material with the pace I require to actually learn, process and understand within and as the realization that passing an exam (gaining merit in imaginary realities) is secondary to my process of learning (expanding in the practical reality).

I commit myself to experiment with different study techniques to see what would work best for me.

I commit myself to investigate what time of the day I am most “responsive” to studying and to utilize that time of the day as well as possible.

I commit myself to support my well-being – which reflects directly to my ability to study – by taking care of my diet, exercising daily (if only a little), sleeping enough / not too much, sharing life with other people and reserving time for re-creation (creation, building and self-expression).

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into an energetic “high” from the joy, excitement and happiness I have felt within the social groups and environments I have entered recently, thus losing my stability now as the “high” is starting to wear off.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to slip from one polarity into the other, crashing from the “high” into the “low”, by feeling like there's something “missing” when I'm no longer spending as much time with these people because of practical reasons (we all work and study).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make my feeling of happiness, joy, enjoyment, fun, excitement and being relaxed and motivated dependent on the people I am with, thus feeling like all this is “missing” when I'm not with these specific people and filling the void with depression.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react with fear of abandonment to moments that remind me of past events where I have experienced myself to have been abandoned and excluded and where have felt like an “outsider”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to construct a fear of abandonment based on events where I have experienced loneliness and alienation, connecting memories of the past within my mind into a system that is triggered when my environment HERE resembles my past environments, within the moment of reaction believing and perceiving that my environment HERE is what I have interpreted my environments to be in the past (hostile, unwelcoming, estranged) and thus not actually looking at what is HERE but instantly “painting a picture” over the reality before my eyes, thus responding with depression and becoming withdrawn, making myself more difficult to approach and creating a situation where I alienate myself from others – looping around and fulfilling my own prophecy: “nobody wants to be with me”.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to react with fear to my environment being “unwelcoming” because I believed and perceived (unconsciously) that I need others to welcome me to this world and this life to have “permission” to be here.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to make myself dependent on the acceptance of others as I did not know (I had not been taught) that all Life has an absolute “right” to exist – that I do not need to get “permission” through anyone's acceptance because Life simply IS and exists – and that even though the acceptance of other people plays a part on the social field / the “social game”, this field/game is a conceptual, man-made reality that has no relevance unless I believe and participate in it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe and perceive that the acceptance of my peers in school had relevance because not being accepted on the social field had consequences in the actual reality (I was alone in class, during recess and after school; when I was not alone the company I had was not supportive).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to react to not being accepted by my peers with embarrassment, sadness and depression as I had not learned (I had not been taught) how to accept, support and assist myself in my living NOR how to seek for support from others (everyone outside my peer group).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that the reason I never trusted authorities (adults) with my childhood issues was because my parents were pretty unstable themselves and did not offer me the model of a “trustworthy adult”. *

* This point is pretty new to me, because I have always considered my parents to have been “good parents” - and they did do OK most of the time, which I am grateful of. But the more I have studied up on childhood development and psychology the more I have come to realize how I was fucked up from the start by my parents' unresolved issues (which there were aplenty) – one day I found myself thinking: “My parents should have never had kids.” This thought still feels really “bad” to me, as if I had no right to say such a thing, even though I know that I don't mean it in a bad way: to me most of the parents having children are way underqualified for parenting. It's no wonder my parents were a pair of those people.

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I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to seclude myself for many years by living alone and by not seeking company outside my activities.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, during my solitary years, to not seek for company by my own initiative even when I would have really wanted to be in the presence of people because I was afraid of being rejected by those I would approach.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress my desire to be with people because I did not know how to walk through the fear of rejection, thus accumulating the secret desire of having friends and being social.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty about getting carried away by the joy of now having company, not realizing that it is the outflow/eruption/discharge of the energy I have accumulated during my years of isolation, and that on some level this discharge was inevitable, although I am still responsible for directing myself within the discharge.



I commit myself to investigate how to integrate socializing into my life without having to sacrifice myself for it.

I commit myself to investigate the fear of others abandoning me if I do not “please” them.

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