The Original You

Here is something that I have often been challenged with. That is, the idea that failing is part of success. My perfectionist brain wants to tell me that if I am to be a success in this world I must be a success all the time. It also tells me that failure is somehow a setback of some kind. It also tells me that I have a limited number of times that I can fail before I will give up on myself. And, maybe the worst thing of all is that my brain will tell me that I should not have tried in the first place if I was to fail in the end. I am not alone in this thinking. I am absolutely not alone. There are so many people just like me that think that we need to do things right the first time. There are so many that think that we need to create a plan for success that will indeed have no failures at all in that process. What I can tell you is that this thinking is faulty. It's just not correct. First of all, nobody else is expecting perfection from you or me. Anybody who has been a...

The computer doesn't start fast enough. The red light doesn't change fast enough. The waiter doesn't bring the menu fast enough. The car in front of me isn't going fast enough. And, so on... Life just doesn't just move fast enough. I'm not healing fast enough. I'm not changing fast enough. And, so on... I could go on about the many frustrations that I encounter every single day. Every day is an opportunity for me to get angry, bewildered, and downright frustrated that life is not going fast enough. What is this energy of impatience about? Is it that I'm not getting what I want when I want it? Or, is it something deeper? For me, it seems to be about the fear that if things don't move faster I am going to miss out on the things that other people seem to be able to take advantage of. It really is a fear of deprivation. It is the fear that other people now have access to something that I don't, because I could not get there fast enough to get...

Have you ever said something like "All people need to be treated well", and then said something harsh to yourself? Why would we exclude ourselves from the list of "All people"? What is this desire to somehow deem ourselves as less valuable than others? I think there might be some societal issues at play here. Sometimes we hear, "Don't be arrogant or self centered", or "You should not think of yourself". I think that many of society's woes come from people not fully valuing themselves. When we don't value ourselves, we are not going to value others. Because, again if I'm not including myself in the "All people need to be treated well" category, I'm also not going to believe that other people belong in it. This may seem kind of twisted, but I think it works. How many terrible man-made events in history have occurred that stemmed from someone seeing someone else as less than human? Unfortunately, too many ...