Life lessons have taught her that not listening to what the world says she ought to be or ought to prefer, is what is needed to keep her soul alive.
New Year Musings
Making New Year's resolutions has never been high on her priority list - mostly because she has learned many lessons along her life journey and now understands herself well enough to know that she would not be disciplined enough to keep any resolutions for longer than a month or two. So - she now tackles her desire for personal success, wellness, fitness, weight control, and loving family and friendship relationships on an ongoing, day to day basis - not with a fixed by a certain time date, when, if she doesn't succeed she would consider herself a failure, but, instead, as a work in progress.
Part of this work in progress has been not only realizing, but now fully believing that she can be authentic to her own needs and desires - and that it is perfectly okay to spend her time creating, living and just being. That, whenever possible she can make decisions based on whether someone else's requests/actions would weigh her down and feel tiresome or draining or, more positively, would feel exciting, energizing and uplifting. This is not new knowledge that she has just gained, but she needs to remind herself - continually post a mental note to herself - that she will no longer allow herself to go emotionally broke being a people pleaser, trying to make everyone happy all the time. This is not an easy task for her as she has always naturally received satisfaction from giving and making others happy - a behaviour that has, unfortunately, more often than not, resulted in great personal loss.
As with most of what makes up our inner needs, this need to please started when she was very young. In elementary school she was a quiet, shy, fringe girl. She wasn't the pretty one or the popular one, but, thankfully by fourth grade she had landed on a solid group of friends. Or so she thought. They all recessed and lunched together for months until one day they stopped talking to her and started pointing fingers and laughing instead. It turned out that the ring-leader of the group of friends had bribed them to all stop being her friend, but only after also having bribed them to entrap her into gossiping - divulging information that was later used against her. This, combined with her continually trying to live up to the 'perfect' expectations of her parents, resulted in the low self-esteem she carried forward within her family/life dynamic.
Somewhere along the paths of her young journey she, perhaps subconsciously, decided to make it her mission to never give someone a reason to turn on her again - this, by attempting to impress, charm, please and befriend everyone she could so that she would never have to experience those dreaded feelings again, so that she'd never have to watch people turn their backs on her or feel the emotional pain of being stabbed in the back. Also, as her personality type thrived on helping, teaching and serving others she was ripe for major approval-seeking vulnerability!
This attempted solution did not always work to perfection, and betrayal, both in friendship and family, in her adult and now senior years, continued to feed her insecurities. This vulnerability showed up in the pettiest, most ridiculous of ways - leading her to much bigger fears. She spent her life worrying constantly. She worried that if she didn't say yes to all plans/requests or have a good reason for saying no, she would massively offend the person asking, even if she was unable to accommodate due to physical exhaustion or illness. She worried that if she didn't reply to every e-mail, blog comment, or 'facebook' message, people would never write her again or worse, that people would dislike her because they would interpret her non-responsiveness as arrogance or bitchiness. She worried that when she didn't hear back from someone it was because she had done something to anger or offend them, and would then over-analyze until she got some sort of sign that they didn't dislike her. She worried that she accepted less-than-ideal behaviour from people because she didn't want to rock the boat - even though she knew that when she did speak up, she always felt better for having done so. She worried, after social interactions, if she had met expectations or not, had she been cheerful/happy/engaged enough or had she disappointed the other person. She worried that she was way more lenient and understanding of others than she was with herself.
Along the paths through her life journey, she continually learns lessons and has made a great deal of progress over the years from childhood to her now senior stage in life, but she reminds herself often, as a safe-guard, that people-pleasing is inauthentic. It is exhausting. It means placing everyone else's needs above her own. She cannot make everyone happy all of the time and it is futile to try. And she has learned that she is no good to anyone if she runs herself ragged trying to please everyone. She has two choices and they are that she can spend all her time worrying about other people and what they think about her or she can bravely and unselfishly follow her own wants and needs.
Through the process of change, she has discovered that the universe rewards backbone. It has paid off to stick up for herself, to speak the hard truth, and to make the hard choices about where, and with whom, to spend her time and attention. It has paid off in sanity, ease, lightness, sense of self, confidence, and clarity. It has kept her soul alive. Her day now starts with herself, so that she can continue to give back - with enthusiasm - to those in her life who are truly worthy of her precious time, attention, and love.
