“What you run from you run into” ~ Nikita Tweet This!
It can be hard to acknowledge and accept that you’re not a ‘good’ person. I pride myself on being a ‘good’ person, thinking if I haven’t got what everyone else has (home of my own, regular income, relationship, family, confidence) at least I’m a ‘good’ person.
When you’ve been carrying such a heavy ‘failure’ story for so long, to be bluntly told by a good friend that you have many qualities of a ‘not good’ person it can pull the rug from beneath you in a big way.
When the only thing holding you up is a feeling you’re a person of value to discover maybe you’re not really, it can throw your entire sense of self into complete disarray.
I’ve had this rug pulled from under me recently.
My best friend Mike confirmed all my deepest darkest fears about myself as a ‘person’.
I’m lazy, unmotivated, self-absorbed and want everything my own way, especially in relationship to living with Mike.
I’ve been carrying a failure and shame story for a long time and a pattern of feeling deeply embarrassed about who I was in my life and my unconventional ways.
Mike, who I have lived with for the past 12 years, informed me that I do nothing. He cooks, cleans, does the shopping and he brings the money in. And I do nothing.
So I had to ask myself the question: “Is he right?”
YES!
I got myself stuck in a long rut and rested on my laurels. I live with a man who offered me support after I left my last job until I found my way and I abused that trust. It was easy to do so because he allowed me to get away with it for so long. There are no excuses for my behaviour, I was thoughtless and self-absorbed.
I’ve had a wake up call.
I’ve had my fair share of difficulties also with friendship, due to my high expectations, but also some of those friendships I had to let go of because the people involved were disrespectful and misjudged me in a way that takes the trust out of friendships altogether. But for those wonderful friends I have now, I need to relax more and not expect connections when people haven’t the time or are otherwise occupied.
Feeling Like A Fake – I Haven’t Got My Shit Together!
For some time I’ve felt locked in a vice when I sat at the computer and was seeking inspiration to write and I hit a wall. I now need to power through this wall.
I’m sure so many reading this may have had similar experiences of feeling like a fake in life, but now I acknowledge that I haven’t got my shit together, truly I haven’t. I’m not some super wise happy chappy on the inspirational highway. I’m human and sometimes I suck at being human.
I’ve been running a story of conditioning that I picked up in childhood from my mother and father, the story of victim and martyr and the story of aggressor also. Those stories protected me and from an ego standpoint kept me safe.
I have a lot of changes to make. To be more giving and to contribute more to my household and friendship with Mike. I need to stop blaming others for not valuing me when I haven’t valued me for a long time.
But most of all I need to not hate myself for being human. And I need to not add another layer of guilt and shame on the failure and worthless story because I made choices that were not kind and often mean, but this does not mean I turn this around towards myself and be unkind and mean to me. My inner child has been beaten up for a very long time by the critical parent within me and that needs to stop now.
Mean, lazy, manipulative, self-absorbed and controlling – all ways of being, but not who I really am.
Making change is never easy. Being honest about our flaws is damn hard especially if we are in the public eye as an inspirational writer and speaker.
I made a declaration to myself a little over a week ago that I want freedom, I want to know myself, to know who I really am beyond the body, beyond the emotions and beyond the human story, but first I need to accept and acknowledge my human story so that I can allow change to happen.
Until we accept this we are flapping about in the wind without a sense of grounding.
This is my grounding.
This is my way.
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Kelly Martin is the author of ‘When Everyone Shines But You’ , a passionate writer and blogger questioning life’s illusions. After what seemed like a decade of intense anxiety, feelings of failure and grief from the loss of her father she chose to take a mindfulness path and has not looked back since. Kelly encourages people to find the treasures that lie within the pain and suffering and to learn to see themselves as ‘enough’ exactly as they are, right now through her writing and You Tube channel .
