Pain isn’t always gain!

I used to be late A LOT!

Even though I usu­ally had plenty of time to get where I was going, and even though I knew it was dis­re­spect­ful to the per­son waiting…I reg­u­larly ran behind. I could only say, “sorry,” so many times, before it was time to take a look…

Sometimes uncon­sciously, some­times defi­antly I would get side-tracked instead of sim­ply walk­ing out the door to an appoint­ment. I see now that my body was so wired to oper­ate at a cer­tain level of stress — tight­ness in my stom­ach, worry, increased breath rate, walk­ing at an urgent pace — that absent of this dis­com­fort, I sim­ply wasn’t motivated!

Furthermore this unfolded into an awak­en­ing to what I call my “Underdog Complex.” Meaning, if it wasn’t dif­fi­cult on some level, it wasn’t worth it. My need to over­come dif­fi­culty con­trolled me so much, that I actu­ally needed to cre­ate dif­fi­culty to over­come, in order to func­tion at any level of accom­plish­ment. My self-worth was so low, hav­ing vic­tory over hard­ship was the only way I could feel bet­ter and more impor­tant. And, rush­ing accom­plished that. Rushing = Anxiety = Others Expectations = Importance.

Twisted per­haps. But, effec­tive, nonethe­less. Except for the part where I pissed peo­ple off, didn’t keep my time com­mit­ments and was being ruled by an appar­ent child­hood demon!

Today things are different.

For me the change began with the three “A”s. Awareness. Simply notic­ing, my need to rush. Then, Acceptance. Instead of beat­ing myself up for falling short — again — I made an effort to accept where I was. I don’t mean telling myself it was cor­rect or accept­able behav­ior, but that (kindly) – like it or not — it was the real­ity. No sugar-coating or blam­ing! And, thirdly, Action. For me I lit­er­ally prayed for the “need to be late” be removed.

Asking for the “need” to be removed has been inte­gral. Simply try­ing to not be late, or even ask­ing the heavens…please help me be more on time, never addressed the under­ly­ing causes….which, when left unad­dressed, would sim­ply pop up into other unwanted “habits.”

Do you cre­ate stress as a way to moti­vate your­self, or feel more accom­plished? You’re not alone! But, bet­ter than that, there is a way to have moti­va­tion and accom­plish­ment that isn’t fueled by who you aren’t, but by who you are!

Awareness. Acceptance and Action. Whatever that looks like, or what­ever that means to you…give it a go, and be sure to let me know what you find…I can’t wait to hear from you!

I’m in your cor­ner,
Thais

CLICK here to sub­scribe to The Joy Blog

P.S. If you like what you read, please be sure to share!