I don't deserve to belong - Thoughts that hurt me

It is amazing just what a teacher life continues to be for me.  I am getting ready to take a trip visiting friends and family.  I have been hesitant to visit my sisters after my last visit resulted in a slump that lasted a few weeks even to the point people commented on my change in mood.  Yesterday I was debating whether to go or not.

I am not sure they really want me there and I feel that I am just another person to manage.  I have spent so much of my time off there and have been disappointed with how I felt when returned home.  Should I subject myself to another one of these visits?  With this thought I got really sad yesterday.  I was thinking they really don't want me there. Then I thought "just another place I don't fit in."  Where do I belong a life long quest that has taken up so much of my life that I have let me opportunities for connection to slip by.

What I realized yesterday it isn't the idea "I don't belong" that makes me sad it is that I don't think I deserve to belong.  I have spent my life trying to find a way out of my own pain and everyone has gone on without me.  Why should they want to include me in their lives I haven't been there for them.

I got to stop right there.  This is just another self absorbed thought that can siphon away my time and energy.  This is just the kind of ideas that hold me back from just living and being content with life the way it is now. 

Everybody is just trying to find there way through life.  I have been blessed with the ability to get past myself sometimes and see clearly just how my thoughts are hurting me. My ego would like to believe that everything is about me but the truth is no one is thinking that much about me. They are too busy getting through there own problem.

I my paralyzing fear of feeling I don't deserve to be wanted. I decided to stop and meditate. This is when I could see the truth and turned it over to a power greater than myself.  I said "you have to work this out - I am out of it."

I got in my car and drove to an art store twenty minutes away.  In that time my sister called and I told her of my plan to visit weekend after next. Everyone was in the car coming back from my nephews birthday brunch.  They were really happy that I was coming but my niece was staying with her boss's kids for the weekend and thought that this coming weekend would be better if I wanted to see her. 

I had already made plans to stop at my aunts and then my friends ending at my sisters. Just in case I decided not to go at all.  I said I would see what I could do.  When I reached the store I sat there in my car and with in minutes my friend called.  I told her about my sister's request she said "no problem we were just going to hang out anyway."   My aunt calls while we are still talking and I take the call.  She says she has been sick I tell her about the change and she says "great". All in about 30 minutes.

As a sometimes self absorbed neurotic I do take responsibility to for everything.  My analytical mind can only see my own part in anything that doesn't go my way.  Yes I haven't always been there for my sister and her family but she was living in a severely dysfunctional situation and didn't really want me to know what was going on.

We have suffered all these years alone with our problems and not feeling we wanted to let each other in on our secrets.  She is 4  years older and wanted to appear to have it all together. This is how we have survived without our mother. Just suck it up and move on. This doesn't work long term.

So I got over myself and thought so what if I haven't done everything right I have done my best.  It is my own self blame that hurts me and drags back to the past.  I am good person and have done my best even if some times it wasn't good enough. 

I am happy to have this blog to gather my thoughts.  It saved my life when I started it so long ago but now it just keeps me honest about my feelings.

Don't take anything personally - Family

It feels like I always begin my post with I have had a lot going on and it is always true.  Since my break over the holidays I have been working to try to balance my work and free time a little better but the universe has answered the challenge by amping up the volume at work.

This is never something I will complain about since I work 100 % commission - not something I recommend to the faint at heart.  In the red then in the black you can't take it personally and you can't let the anxiety show through to your customers.  I have been doing it so long I mostly remain unattached to the outcome of any transaction until they are signed.  This keeps my stress levels down.

In the book The Four Agreements one agreement is "don't take anything personally" - if you can do this you can really find happiness but it is really difficult.  It is especially hard because when we are stressed we are always looking for someone to blame.  If you are analytical like me you can really get stuck. I would always look for a solution to make sure next time the outcome would be different. 

This is a trick of the mind and feeds our controlling nature.  It also feeds our ego who wants to believe the world really does revolve around us at all times.  Even thoughts like "it is my fault" sounds very humble but really that just means you have given yourself a lot of power over the situation and you believe it is about you.

I went to visit my family two weekends ago taking my new happy self to celebrate the 1 year birthday of my great nephew.  I haven't seen him ever and when I got a last minute invite I scrambled around to make it work.  It rained and it was cold and everyone was stressed.  Not really that different than anytime I have visited before but I thought since I was different somehow they would be different.

We are a family of survivors wading through one problem after another.  Joy and happiness wasn't really a part of our upbringing and wasn't passed down generation to generation.  You love Jesus because he gets you through the tragedies of life so you can go on to a better place.  I do remember some happy times squeezed between chores and church and sometimes mixed with church in the form of after service homemade ice cream social.

When I visit I have learned when it is time to go and left a day early.  Ironically the sun was shining for the first time but I wanted a day at home to recover before going back to work.  It did take me four days to return to happiness and understand we are products of our upbringing. The survival spirit is deeply grooved in our childs mind and we don't really know any different.

I think this was why I always attracted the fun people in the room mostly those drinking too much.  They seemed happy but it was really the spirits that made them temporarily happy.  Those liquid spirits never worked for me they just made me sad.  While writing rccently about my childhood I realized I was a happy child.  I lived in my own world and managed around my family and used my great imagination to create a world I could live in anytime I wanted.

What does any of this have to do with "The Four Agreements" and "don't take anything personally" well for me it helps me to understand that everyone is experiencing life in their own way and it really isn't about you.  It is the timing and that timing is rarely right when it involves a lot of different people. Try to find what works for you and stick with it.

My nephew and his wife are super stressed about being new parents.  What is new about that? The rain and cold will go away eventually. My sister has lived in survival mode just like me since our mother died.  She doesn't know anything else but with a grandchild she wants things to be different and is making changes to feel more free.  I know she feels strange but she really wants to make the change.

My point is everyone is in a different place emotionally all the time.  It is a miracle we ever sinc up with anyone so relax and just be there in the moment and get out when you can't take anymore.

I have read a million books about life and finding answers -  The Four Agreements was one of the first and it really says it all.  Not taking things personally has changed my life and the expectations I have for others.  We have to know we have no control over where we are or other people and sometimes with relatioships you have to just accept what is and move on.

Humbled - Fake it until you make it.

Last nights model

What can make you really humble? Start a new job where you know nothing and everyone else knows everything. I ask myself "why do you do this every ten years?"

My ego is totally freaked out that I have to accept that I don't know anything. I want to just run away but of course no one but me expects me to know anything. It is so uncomfortable to be here again.

My inside critic is telling me I have made the wrong decision.  Luckily my spiritual mature side knows that it is really too soon to tell.  It says "just relax and see how it goes."

Why is it we expect to be instantly good at something and compare ourselves to people that have been doing it for much longer than us?  It takes courage to be a rookie at anything.

Last night at my drawing class everyone was telling the teacher that wished they were as good as he is at drawing. Like he woke up one morning an expert. He has a degree in art and has taught drawing at the college level for five years.

I don't like feeling so awkward but it is also really good for me. I have been feeling less than challenged at my job for awhile now. All the products are new and learning the products will be a challenge.

Fake it until you make it. That is my plan. Wish me luck.

Egos and Cheetos

It has been rough this past week. I had a customer blow of some steam at me and basically said some really mean personal things. I did make a mistake but it really didn't warrant the attack I received. I think it interesting that it comes a time when I am looking I my personal story of rejection.

The whole thing started a week ago so it has given me, yet again, the opportunity to face this dragon. I will say I wasn't able to just put a happy face on it and chock it up to people will be people. I took my usual dive and blamed myself because I made a mistake. I went directly to the idea that I am screwed up and maybe in the wrong business altogether. I started listing all the mistakes of the past especially when I was in the darkest part of my grief.

There is something else going on too that I don't feel I can talk about here. Lets just say the perfect storm gathered yesterday. Both issues relate to rejection. My mind takes the information that I am "a loser" and " nobody likes me" and systematically goes about proving that to be true. This then leads to uncontrollable fear that I am just not going to make it on my own so what is my options?

I left the office yesterday with my chest hurting. I called my sponsor an ask her if I could come over. She was napping and said she would need to get dressed. I told her I would just park in the driveway and wait. I didn't want to disrupt her husband and the dogs besides the car is more private since by that time I was in tears.

She comes out to the car with a bag of Jalapeno Cheetos and says she keeps them in the pantry for just this kind of emergency. She also brought almonds in case I wanted to be more sane and healthy. So we ate Cheetos and talked. Tears and Cheetos a lovely combination.

I have felt alone most of my life felt I never really had anyone to give me support and advice. Even when I was in a relationship the people I picked people who depended on me to be the rock. Sometimes I really just need someone to say your not crazy everyone feels the way you do sometimes. Someone to offer you some Cheetos when your going off the deep end.

I left her house feeling better and going over all the times when things did go right. I have done a lot of kitchens where not one thing went wrong. Lately I have been feeling like my old self and happy to have less drama and then this and my mind says I can't go down this road again. The truth is it is just life on life's terms.

The meeting this morning went well with the irate customer I took my ego out of it and apologized for my mistake and he did the same for his attack on me. So one issue down and one to go. Wish me luck.

Expectations - How low can they go?

I was riding to lunch with my partner the other day and we were talking about expectations. I told here she would be happier if she lowered her expectations. She thought that was the most ridiculous thing she had heard. Why should she lower her standards.

I didn't really get into all the reasons why but I remembered how miserable I was before the program taught me about the perils of expectations. I was so self-righteous and indignant about how people acted and treated me.

It was all about me and every time something didn't go my way I took it as a personal attack. I knew what was best and if they would listen they would be better off. I had to learn the hard way that nothing is really about me. What a blow to my ego.

It has taken me many years to see just how self-absorbed I am, still working on that. I hid it well behind my good deeds and martyrdom. It was part of my facade to be the victim in my life. The regular people help to keep this delusion going by agreeing with how badly you are being treated.

This doesn't work with people in the program. No one lets you be the victim anymore. Besides it is really time consuming and draining to talk about your woes all the time. I had a lot woes and luckily my sponsor was a patient woman and would regularly tell me to get off the pity potty.

I can admit it is still all about me. The difference is that now I know that it is like that for everyone. We are the center of our own universe and like it or not no one is really thinking that much about anyone but themselves. They got their own universe to manage and I will never be the center of theirs.

How did I get off the subject of expectations, I am not sure I really did. Life is nothing but one big expectation and this is what makes us unhappy not getting that expectation met.

Our expectation assumes that we have the best plan and other people just need to get on board. Because don't they want happy like I am. How do we know we have the best plan, we don't.

A different approach - Not seeing eye to eye.

It is the end of the week for me and I am still catching up today. On my way in this morning I was going over a discussion I had with my future partner yesterday.

I was stating that I felt bad because I didn't get a chance to present a bathroom design before my customer went on vacation. She said that I didn't know how to put my customers off without them knowing it. This did hit a nerve with me but luckily we got interrupted before the conversation continued.

What she said is the major difference between us and our work philosophy. She is still operating from the angle of what works best for her and not what works best for the customer. In our business it use to be the customer was a little fish in a big pond and now they are a big fish in a little pond.

Over the years we have made basically the same money. I usually have more average size jobs mixed with a couple of larger jobs each year. She usually has bigger jobs that can takes months and even years to close and with more demanding customers.

It was hard for me not to comment on this view and I did say that I felt that if you gave people too much time to look elsewhere then someone slick salesperson could convince them to go with a lower end product.

With the market changing I think that making the most of every customer contact is important. This is my ego talking and me wanting her to think the way I think.

I have kept us afloat this year with my small jobs but by the end of the year if one of her jobs closes she will catch up with me. So there isn't really any right or wrong here just a difference in the way we think.

Here is a side note. The customer I thought I missed out on called this morning and wants to come in today. Letting go of the outcome of everything and I mean everything is really working for me. Trusting that everything is exactly as it is suppose to be is hard and I want improve on God's plan with my own ideas.

I haven't done such a great job on my own in the past so this time I am letting it all go.