Building Self-Support: self-trust, thoughts, and expectations: conversation with my mom part 1 - Day 24

I went to see my mom today after work and had a good conversation with her about what comes up for me as I am facing the potentiality of quitting this new job, and actually possibly going back to my old job, which it has been determined might be an option. The conversation then went into a more general discussion of how I view and judge myself. I'm going to break this up some because the conversation was rather extensive as far as topics covered, but to start I want to bring up some of the initial points and apply SF, then will follow with more tomorrow.

One thing that came up was my preoccupation with what other people will think if I quit this job, specifically my new supervisors and coworkers and my friends and acquaintances who have been excited and supportive about my making this change.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to care about what others think of me and my decisions such that I try to gauge what their reactions might be in order to inform my decisions and make decisions based on what I think will make other people like me most. I realize that herein I am not trusting myself nor am I moving myself, but am accepting and allowing myself to be moved by my interpretations and assumptions about what other people want me to do. Here I see that it is okay to receive input and it is okay to engage in supportive conversation and it is okay to seek perspective, but that I am taking it even further than that and placing my decisions outside myself and attempting to create myself from the starting point of having others "like" me. When and as I see myself relying on others to help me make decisions such that I feel like they won't "like" me if I don't move the way I interpret them as wanting me to move, I stop and I breathe. I commit myself to continue to investigate how I can trust myself to move myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to value friendships and relationships where the person does not support me and my decisions to such a high degree that I would prefer to change myself to where they will support me, than to learn to support myself and to stay true to myself in self-honesty. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to resist learning to support myself and stand by myself for myself.

My mom asked me what I would say to a friend or person who was telling me about how their new job just wasn't a good fit and they were going to make a change. I saw within me that I thought I would be supportive of their self-directed decision, but that, upon seeing a person who is behaving as I am behaving, which is that I am being really indecisive, over and over again, and am regretting things, over and over again, I would become quite judgmental of that and think "here we go again, why can't this person just stick with something?"

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to treat myself and my patterns with an attitude of exhaustion and expectation, to where I see my patterns repeating and I have an attitude that there is nothing I can do about it other than hide it and try to deny it because it is embarrassing how much they continue. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to assume that other people feel this way about me and my patterns. When and as I see myself approaching my patterns from a starting-point of feeling defeated within and as my patterns, I stop and I breathe. I realize that my thought-reactions to myself are part of how I relate to myself, and this is an unsupportive relationship with myself. I commit myself to relating to myself from a starting point of believing in myself and my abilities to direct myself. I commit myself to empowering myself to change myself. I commit myself to being patient with myself, because learning to support myself is a process and will take time and multiple trials to build.

We also discussed how I judge myself within my recognition of problem patterns in my life, such that I think, "Well then I shouldn't participate in that problem!" and then believe the best course of action is to stop the pattern in its tracks, even if that means, as in this case, staying at a job that is not going to satisfy me simply because I am trying to end a pattern of indecision and regret about commitments made. We also discussed my belief that by ending my participation within the pattern it will somehow automatically end the consequence of the present stage of that pattern, to where I believe that I should be able to decide to stay at this job and therefore release myself of the ways that this job is not actually a good fit. Here I believe that by releasing myself from the pattern, I am expecting myself myself to also no longer be affected by the consequences of the pattern, or I am participating within and as the belief that I deserve to suffer those consequences because I participated in the pattern and to evade the consequences would be somehow betraying my commitment to not participate in the pattern. This is a little confusing and I don't feel like I'm finding quite the right words here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect myself to, upon recognizing a problematic pattern in my life, learn the lesson once and for all with that specific incident of recognition, such that I should be able to immediately release myself from the pattern and never face it again. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that by recognizing a pattern and its consequences, I should no longer be wrapped up in the energetic consequences, and I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself for still being wrapped up in the energetic consequences. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I deserve to suffer the consequences of my patterns, even when there is a supportive way out of those consequences. When and as I see myself having unrealistic, impractical, unsupportive expectations about myself and my participation in patterns and consequences, I stop and I breathe. I realize that what I am doing requires time, patience, diligence, and forgiveness. I commit myself to really forgive myself and to be gracious with and accepting of myself in my process. 

So here so far I have seen that:

1. I have a tendency to let my interpretations of what it seems others would prefer I do be a primary motivational factor in my decision-making from the starting-point of having others "like" me. Here I see a lack of self-trust to where I do not feel confident in my ability to trust myself and make my own decisions, and I see a "people-pleaser" personality to where I will deny and disown myself in favor of what I perceive as being what other people want from me. I commit myself here to support myself by investigating how I can learn to build trust in myself and how I can re-align myself with my Self such that I can make decisions for myself by myself. 
2. I see that I abuse myself through my thoughts toward and about myself such that I do not have patience or grace with myself and my process. I commit myself to build a supportive relationship with myself through and as my thoughts toward and about myself such that I do not degrade, deny, or disown myself but instead embrace myself as all as one as equal as stability & support for life as me. 
3. I have unrealistic, impractical, unsupportive expectations of myself in my process to where I expect myself to immediately and automatically change upon recognizing the areas where I need to change, not allowing myself the time and space to actually process myself. I see that I judge myself and have a desire to punish myself for my mistakes. Here I commit myself to continue to investigate and understand what it means to be a work in progress and how to set realistic, practical, supportive expectations and goals for changing myself. 

More to come tomorrow. Thank you.