One of the hardest parts in moving forward is deciding what parts of the past to leave behind and which to carry with you. The difficulty arises because it requires honest self-evaluation.
Today’s Capricorn Full Moon invites a mid-year checkpoint for this honest self-evaluation, especially regarding the efficiency and suitability of long-term goals. My long-term goal, as I’ve mentioned here, is to become an author.
Since I have always wanted to be an author, I have taken a few courses on the subject. I spent my own money. This is important. I’ve met many people who wouldn’t spend their own money on their education or goals. Be conscious of your choices and the tradeoffs, and you will always make better ones.
In these courses, I learned about the necessity of a platform. Years ago, I bought Michael Hyatt’s book on the subject and read it cover to cover.
A platform is the soapbox on which you stand. On the internet, your soapbox is quantified by the number of views, the number of comments, and the number of shares. The more the merrier, for these numbers represent people who would buy your book simply because it has your name on it.
My platform is zero.
I should be so ashamed. “Nobody likes me, and I’m going to die alone in my bedroom looking at strangers on my telephone,” sings Muna in her song Number One Fan.
But she goes on to sing, “Wouldn’t you like if I believed those words? If I’m born to lose I’ll never try and I’ll never learn but I’ve been looking at myself in the mirror, saying “Don’t leave me now.”
A Foundation of Authenticity
Don’t leave me now, just when I’m coming back to myself. Just when I’ve realized that I spent my whole life performing for other people, other people who don’t care one iota about me. I know because I shared, and I’m still at zero.
I erased myself for people who can’t be bothered to read a word I write. How unfair is that balance? How ridiculous a thing to do, to self-sacrifice like I was worthless, and that’s exactly how it was taken.
After an honest self-evaluation, I am starting over, perfectly fine with my zero. For now. Clear what it revealed about previous attempts.
By starting with making myself happy rather than anyone else, I am grounded in an authenticity I previously lacked. Whereas in the past I craved external validation to feel like what I wrote mattered, today I am all about the writing and the act of processing my thoughts, opinions, and ongoing research. First and foremost, it’s for me, and I might be the most crucial and most critical reader I could find.
Satisfying myself without apology is definitely a new attitude I’ve adopted. Making room and space for what I want and find interesting isn’t what I used to do. Lovely new boundaries and amazing new priorities level up my life.
The added bonus is the imperviousness that comes with authenticity. Go ahead and laugh, or point fingers, and I might laugh too. But in the past, getting picked apart was frustrating and humiliating, for trying to satisfy other people is crazy-making. People are fickle, people pick on others just to feel better about themselves, and people lie.
Don’t do it for the audience and the hope that they get some benefit. Know what benefit you are seeking and measure only against that.
Optimizing Speed
When I was selling off my belongings, a buyer at my door wondered if it would fit in her trunk. “Do you have a tape measure?” she asked.
“Oh!” I whirled around, opened a drawer, reached in, pulled out one and gave it to her.
When she picked her jaw up off the floor, she said, “Now, I would know that I had a tape measure, and then I’d have to think about where it was. There’s no way I could have done it that fast,” she said.
Speed marvels. Speed is the key to seizing opportunity, like before she changed her mind and thought about the price. When you can act fast, it’s literally being able to act fast. An honest self-evaluation is the key to that speed.
In my dad’s house, all tape measures belong in the workshop, and you aren’t done a job until the tape measure you were using is back on the shelf where you got it. In my grandmother’s house, she was always packing a trunk full, and a tape measure was always close to where it was always needed. According to the industry, my grandmother’s philosophy wins when travel time is factored into the calculation, which fundamentally minimizes time.
To optimize means to find the best case, which isn’t always the smallest or the largest, but the best. You can only know when you do the measurement and evaluation.
How you do things is up to you; no one else’s rules but your own. Today, there seem to be two types of people: the 5 a.m. hustle, or the way of nonresistance. After years of teaching people to slow down to speed up, I am faithfully dedicated to the latter for the breakneck speed at which you can accomplish anything.
Setting Direction
“How’s that working for you?” Dr. Phil’s question would usually render his target into a state of ashamed defeat.
Usually, we are the last to know that our coping strategy isn’t working anymore. With a belief that “relationships are not fair,” I avoided heading into them. But no one is an island and relationships are necessities, so I kept score, decided in advance how much I could afford to lose, and WHEN that happened, I would take my exit.
A sad story, but over and over it went. Going into a relationship with the only question, “How much will I lose?”
There are Winners. Therefore, my belief that relationships are not fair isn’t real truth, just my truth. The real truth is that relationships are complex, but should be equal. Bad ones are not, and bad ones should be left behind. There’s no rule for all relationships, as I had believed, and they don’t have to be sacrificial.
There are good people out there. I believe good people are more likely to be rural because in the city, you can get away with anything, but in the country, everyone sees and everyone talks. I believe that the good people are self-employed or in small businesses, because in the corporate world, you can get away with anything, and will be tempted by raises, bonuses, and expense accounts.
Previously, I wrote that there aren’t good or bad people, just real people. In the honest self-evaluation, the effect we’ve had on others is the reality we need to accept. Are there people we’ve treated unfairly, taken advantage of, or otherwise attempted to outrank them?
Embracing the reality, and not our idealized version of events, is the only way to tell, and the only reliable way to navigate relationships.
Assimilating Change
In 1982, the bacterium H. Pylori was discovered to cause most ulcers, not stress or spices, as was previously thought. However, doctors continued to prescribe Tagamet and antacids. In 1997, the CDC launched a public health campaign to spread the word, and in 2005, the scientists who discovered the bacterial cause won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology.
It can take a long time to incorporate new knowledge into the system. You are such a system, and how long does it take you to change when you learn something new? An honest self-evaluation is not helpful if you don’t act on anything that you conclude.
Acting on it requires changing your behaviour. This is difficult, as I’ve noted. I wanted to quit smoking, and tried many times, before finally getting zapped by a laser. It worked, and made me believe in the meridian system used by Chinese acupuncturists. Whatever works has always been my belief.
Changing behaviour in a way that works starts not with the behaviour, but with the belief. No matter what we do, the intention goes from belief to thought to action. To try to intervene with change at the level of the action is far too late. What you want to do is trace the belief back and change its trajectory.
What do you believe? Oh, it’s unconscious, but it can be surmised by your actions. When you look at the really weird and wild things you do, you can bet that there are some unique and specific beliefs leading to them. Only you can know, and to know thyself, this is the point of life.
It’s only when life is over that you can no longer change. You can become enthusiastic about things you currently dread.
Creating as Spiritual Work
If you believe that you don’t need to change anything, then life might as well be over, because you are only consuming, not creating.
With honest self-evaluation, any creator knows the chasm between what they produce and what they imagined. The chasm keeps them growing. Creating is spiritual work, for it will always reveal where the shadow hides.
Creating my platform is my spiritual work for it requires me to grow. Healing, they call it, when you’ve learned to cope by hiding, and finally step out into the light and introduce yourself to the world. To heal the wound caused by not being seen, by not being accepted as myself, by not being heard as an individual.
The honest self-evaluation is the only way to move forward with clarity and confidence. You must trust your intuition, your assessment of your current state, and your aim for your future, and be truthful with yourself to do so.
Just like you, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthy, but make it worth the effort by acting on what you learn, what you suspect, and what you know to be true. Instead of bracing for the bad, get curious about what might go well.
Sure, mitigate the risks, but don’t dwell on them. Ask why not, and get open to the possibility. Sure, ask what if, and then address each and every one of those concerns with a real assessment and plan. Just like that, you can let go of the anxiety and embrace the excitement. Whooohoo! Where will we go from here?
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