I am astounded. My self-discovery is taking me on voyages into the uncharted waters of my life.
I have read Deepak Chopra for years. He constantly asks me to strive for self-referral. Oprah’s lesson is the False Power of Ego. And Eckhart Tolle would also have much to say about ego: the need for the control, the need for approval, and the need to judge. (Some of that for another day.)
What do I have to say to myself? “How did it take you so long to figure this one out?”
When I have been forced to evaluate the difference in who I want to be and how I want to live in juxtaposition to how I have been living my life, it requires a hard look at why.
I have tried to blame it on everyone and everything. The truth is simply that I am constantly on the lookout for what others are thinking and feeling. If there are various groups and I can’t please everyone, I suppose I please the group most like my own tribe. After all, that’s where I have lived all these years.
When I write “pleaser”, another mini-shock ripples through my psyche. In all my years of calling myself a pleaser, I have never looked at it from the viewpoint of seeking approval. Rather, I have felt that pleasing was some sort of subjugation of my own needs in order to serve those of others. I may not have thought it was a good thing…but I didn’t get that it would never work.
Then, after all of that pleasing, I have vainly been trying to figure out how to “take care of myself”.
What a tedious waste of time!
I know that it’s all interrelated and I am gobsmacked by how the fact that I have hit on something big in my life is resonating intensely.
I have foundered on the shore of approval.
The Student
Originally posted at My Life Class, January 31, 2012
A Letter to my Children 