#studiosonkind

Any fellow validation and approval-holics around here?

I have been noticing how codependent I have been, looking at the other person to nod in approval. To say that I’m doing okay, doing the right thing. To anticipate with baited breath for that next dopamine hit. They say we latch onto any pleasure seeking activity for dear life because we’re scared of uncomfy feelings. How else will we soothe our internal conflict? But there’s an interesting fact to be considered here.

Neuroscientists have said, “Feeling come and pass through us within 60-90 seconds. They stay, only when we dwell in them, overindulge in them. Especially the uncomfortable feelings.”

It’s a circuitous rigmarole path for us I think. All it takes is a sudden nudge from someone to tap into a certain insecurity, light the flame to a past wound and we are lit. We find ourselves acting in opposition to our values, losing track of who and what’s happening RIGHT NOW. In this moment.

It’s this falling flat on our face in a ditch,

and then crawling out with new lessons learned.

The ability to gather ourselves,

keep calm and get back up with a head held high is astonishing to me.

We are all capable of this, rather than fixating on what the other person did or didn’t, should or shouldn’t have done to us.

So why shouldn’t we create a metric of self-validation instead? I’m not trying to promote narcissism here, I promise. It’s a metric that doesn’t allow your internal architecture to run custom autonomy by external circumstances and people.

It’s a practice of self-discipline and commitment Rich Roll and David Goggins taught me. Creating non-negotiable activities you can’t fall short on doing, daily is crucial they said. “The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of questions we ask ourselves on a daily basis,” said Rich Roll. So each morning and night I started keeping a mental checklist by asking myself;

Did you meet or fall short on the standards you set for yourself?

How did you fare today?

Are your actions steering you forward or keeping you stationary?

Because after all, at the end of the day, you’ve got no-one but yourself to face.

If you’re anything like me, you’d know how repelling it is to be met with advice garbed as a command, an instruction manual. It’s hard to get people on your side by exercising an aggressive command & control dictum I think. To come at you with guns-blazing, wanting to force you into submission. That doesn’t seem to work on me.

I can never learn from lessons alone. Reading some warning and believe it? Nah, not a chance.

Don't date him? Watch me.

Don't buy that? Now I want it.

Don't touch that? Already did.

But here’s what I've learned. Advice doesn't have to be instructions for living. After all, every life is different. A warning from you might be limiting to me, and prove unneeded. But, but... good advice gives language to future feelings. When I do burn myself, I won't cry to the sky with confusion. I've already heard of this. My friend told me what it's called. I'm not alone in my pain and now I know. People have survived this and maybe now I should ask them how.

I’ve been reflecting on this Proust quote for quite some time now. What does it mean?

Looking at something with a new lens? Renewing our perception? Taking an alternate route to walk home? Knowing the history of your country and finding the good? Become an active member of the community rather than detesting it from afar? Maybe.

Prof. Huberman said it best.

“No country is perfect. No human being is perfect. Science certainly isn’t perfect, and like biology itself, freedom is a complex and ongoing process, not an event.”

It has started to make sense now. The radical conservatives and traditional societies limit the books you read and what you watch. Places you visit. Dispensing all inquiry of any kind. They try to shame it, shun it and cut it out of existence. It’s the basic principle that if you let the mind see what’s possible then it makes its own choice.

Freedom of speech and inquiry are an obvious antithesis to a tyrannical doctrine.

One of the luminaries of personal development named Mel Robbins said this on a podcast I was listening to recently. It was The School Of Greatness podcast with the extraordinary Lewis Howes. She emphatically stressed on this statement thereby explaining how we can get stuck in a repetitive destructive pattern if we punish people for sh*t we didn’t communicate. It lit all my synapses and receptors in the brain like a trail of fireworks.

This hit home for me. I had no idea I was engaging in a pattern throughout my life with numerous people by being upset over something with someone without them having a clue about what they might have done to cause me so much agony.

At least I wasn’t aware that they weren’t aware until this point of time. In my head, it always seemed like people were doing things on purpose or not paying attention to my needs and considering what I might have liked for them to have done at the time.

Not once did it occur to me that I could be causing this discomfort to myself because of my own insecurity and self-confidence that could be measured in teaspoons.

Looking back, I have always been the one acting out or putting on a theatrical demonstration of banging and clasping everything in my close quarters to communicate to everyone that something has upset me or my needs have not been met. In hindsight, this had become my instant reflex response for decades, mostly as a result of feeling invisible at times.

This way of communication via one’s body language doesn’t always bode well with people because;

98% of the time they have no clue what caused it. I know that now and hopefully won’t continue assuming everyone is a mind reader of sorts.

The disappointment from your own expectations not being met by ‘your’ loved ones’ is your problem to own up to, not theirs.

The story you attach to situations that take place around you seldom have any correlation with the ‘actual’ truth.

False assumptions almost always cloud your judgement thus creating a mammoth rift between what actually happened and what you made it mean. Ever so often I have been guilty of this. For the longest time, ‘Oh he/she didn’t text me back’ would translate as ‘oh! I must be a horrible, undeserving person.’ Well no, ‘that person might have their own reasons and those might have nothing to do with me’ has been a far more recent development in my psyche.

According to neuroscientists, patterns are stored in our parasympathetic nervous system. Our body is more susceptible to behave in the exact same manner when it is faced with familiar scenarios from the past. And yet, the mere thought of change seems so terrifying for so many people.

Is it because being in our comfort zone despite the awareness of a destructive pattern seems impossible and causes discomfort?

I would like to think that might be one of the possibilities amidst a myriad others.

Step 1. I am aware of this pattern that comes up. How do I change it?

Step 2. Try and avoid this pattern by communicating effectively to the other person if my feelings were hurt without diminishing the other person. I, personally have to be extra mindful about that last part because I turn into the worst kind of bully when emotions rise up to a level of overwhelm.

This might take a lot of practice and a lot of unlearning to get to the final destination. Let’s take it one experiment at a time, shall we?