Why do I try to boss others around, control outcomes and manage all variables when I feel like I am empty and have nothing to offer? This is not a one time thing, it appears as if this were an ongoing reflex to low self-esteem. I feel down and I have to look outward; fixating on external activities, situations and events. How can I DO THEM when I can’t do ME?
This is it started here. I had done some work. I thought it was good. I polished it and made it personal yet impersonal. I wrote. I didn’t want to be bossy, to suggest one way; I have seen many people find their own path and it was theirs. I work with feelings of codependency, so managing and monitoring others is a trigger to relapse. I want to offer but not to direct.
To reconnect with the “real ” me I look for my authentic voice and hear inside instead that who I am and what I do and how I grow are nothing special. People don’t walk up to me and say this; it is internal. I remind myself. Coming from this “not special” paradigm I have no advice to give; “Here is what I did!” I think instead that I offer the tools and then silently wish them well. I know that I have been fantastically lucky; fortunate beyond measure to have the life I live now. I do see my circumstance as fortune, as a grace of the universe. It is not of my making. It is only of my endurance and abilities to see the way and hold on tight.
Without taking responsibility and ownership I live my life without connection to my part in it. By not owning the outcome I have nothing to offer. Yet, I am writing a book. My book is filled with suggestions but no mandate. Without a mandate it is not compelling. If it isn’t compelling it isn’t marketable. By turning over my life to my higher power, letting go of ownership of the happy outcomes in my life I have nothing compelling to suggest to others. Or do I? Rather than a book, a small slip of paper that says just 2 things
JUST DO IT
LET IT GO
In the pain of this knowledge – that I have no compelling voice, I scrub the oven, I try to boss my husband around, I make plans for all my grandkids, and start re-working my schedule as moving classes around is a way of controlling my teaching.
I am so happy that none of my sponsees had called yesterday as I would have told them what to do, rather than listening to them, possibly making suggestions. However, if one of my sponsees had com
e to me with this complaint – I might have thought, if not suggested, that she believe in herself. Rather than comparing and down playing her accomplishments that she embrace them and hold them dear. Instead of discounting her own experience and choices that she celebrate them. Let your own truth and authenticity be your “compelling” story. “No matter how far down the scale we have gone…” I will think on that today.
And maybe it is a good idea to boss myself around once in a while.