Are you someone who gives out great advice to others, while being all over the place in your own life? Are you helping others go places while you yourself seem to make little progress? This writing might be for you. But I cannot just jump into it. So bear with me on the following paragraphs.
[ The brain is a big pattern recognizing machine. It uses very minimal electricity to make all of the biggest and smallest decisions. So it makes sense for it to find shortcuts to quickly process and think about situations.
Having shortcuts to decide how to interpret situations, is just having frameworks in place. We all have these frameworks, in different paradigms- shaping our whole lives.
For example, some people have the framework of personal benefit, they interpret everything that happens by connecting to who benefits from it. They find selfish reasons behind altruism, and think even the soldiers dying in wars only did it in hopes of the loot and paycheck.
Some have the framework of competition, and they see everyone as competing with them for a piece of a pie they would rather have. They get sad to when others succeed, and become happy when others fail.
Scientific thinking is a framework of judging and deciding thins, Freud's psychoanalysis is also a framework of judging you by your early childhood. Saying G"does only what is best for us", is also a framework of thought that can sooth a troubled mind.
No one framework is right for all situations though, and it helps often to try and incorporate a brand new framework to think about your old situations. ]
So in 2018, I think I had stumbled upon a new framework of coping with personal failure that I did not have in my repertoire earlier.
This is, "Treat yourself like a friend."
This means whenever you are facing troubles, not being good enough, not going out there enough, instead of engaging in a negative self-talk, you should think of a copy of yourself, who is not you, but is your friend. If he or she were in this exact situation where you are now, with the same past and same skills, what would you tell him or her?
Turns out, for a lot of people, thinking in this way makes things a lot clearer, suddenly you seem to know exactly what needs to be done. You suddenly start telling yourself, "It's okay man. Stuff happens. You are great. You have always been really good. Let's work on these priority issues first, sort some of these, finish these chores and I am sure things will turn around."
This is especially true for people who are natural givers, who have been taught all throughout their lives to care about others, and they have become accustomed to sacrifice their personal desires for the happiness of others. And the fear of letting others down is a lot higher than letting their own-selves down for such people.
As these people- experience more pain in seeing others in trouble, than being in trouble themselves, they end up serving everyone else before focusing on themselves - in a kind of martyr complex. (Martyr complex is when a person gets pleasure out of suffering while trying to help others.)
Getting out of this martyr complex, and stopping continuously sacrificing yourself for others is not a one day change. But for the moment, you can take advantage of this nature of yours, and think of yourself as your friend, so that you engage all of your energy and care - for yourself - finally, and put your own needs first, for the VERY FIRST TIME.
You will be surprised to find that this will make you push yourself to eat healthier, read better, plan your priorities - which will "ultimately enable you to help others a lot more than ever before".
Go ahead and give it a try. Let me know if it works for you.
Radi
17 December 2019
Dhaka
p.s. I meant to write this down in January, finally got around to writing it, hence the title says 2018 not 19.
[ The brain is a big pattern recognizing machine. It uses very minimal electricity to make all of the biggest and smallest decisions. So it makes sense for it to find shortcuts to quickly process and think about situations.
Having shortcuts to decide how to interpret situations, is just having frameworks in place. We all have these frameworks, in different paradigms- shaping our whole lives.
For example, some people have the framework of personal benefit, they interpret everything that happens by connecting to who benefits from it. They find selfish reasons behind altruism, and think even the soldiers dying in wars only did it in hopes of the loot and paycheck.
Some have the framework of competition, and they see everyone as competing with them for a piece of a pie they would rather have. They get sad to when others succeed, and become happy when others fail.
Scientific thinking is a framework of judging and deciding thins, Freud's psychoanalysis is also a framework of judging you by your early childhood. Saying G"does only what is best for us", is also a framework of thought that can sooth a troubled mind.
No one framework is right for all situations though, and it helps often to try and incorporate a brand new framework to think about your old situations. ]
So in 2018, I think I had stumbled upon a new framework of coping with personal failure that I did not have in my repertoire earlier.
This is, "Treat yourself like a friend."
This means whenever you are facing troubles, not being good enough, not going out there enough, instead of engaging in a negative self-talk, you should think of a copy of yourself, who is not you, but is your friend. If he or she were in this exact situation where you are now, with the same past and same skills, what would you tell him or her?
Turns out, for a lot of people, thinking in this way makes things a lot clearer, suddenly you seem to know exactly what needs to be done. You suddenly start telling yourself, "It's okay man. Stuff happens. You are great. You have always been really good. Let's work on these priority issues first, sort some of these, finish these chores and I am sure things will turn around."
This is especially true for people who are natural givers, who have been taught all throughout their lives to care about others, and they have become accustomed to sacrifice their personal desires for the happiness of others. And the fear of letting others down is a lot higher than letting their own-selves down for such people.
As these people- experience more pain in seeing others in trouble, than being in trouble themselves, they end up serving everyone else before focusing on themselves - in a kind of martyr complex. (Martyr complex is when a person gets pleasure out of suffering while trying to help others.)
Getting out of this martyr complex, and stopping continuously sacrificing yourself for others is not a one day change. But for the moment, you can take advantage of this nature of yours, and think of yourself as your friend, so that you engage all of your energy and care - for yourself - finally, and put your own needs first, for the VERY FIRST TIME.
You will be surprised to find that this will make you push yourself to eat healthier, read better, plan your priorities - which will "ultimately enable you to help others a lot more than ever before".
Go ahead and give it a try. Let me know if it works for you.
Radi
17 December 2019
Dhaka
p.s. I meant to write this down in January, finally got around to writing it, hence the title says 2018 not 19.
