Reflection & reassurance
Those who have known me in any working relationship, or simple friendship for that matter, would be well aware I’m ill-equipped in the ‘organisational skills’ department. Despite this, I continue to sign myself up to lead various events within the university setting. The lead-up causes me immense stress and I experience anxious flushes throughout; totally worth it, right? But afterwards I transcend into some sort of a proud yet overtly-critical mindset — one which I hope to explore and understand further. The following rambling is my way of evaluating my points of weakness in the hope that I can continue to grow as a human being (or bean), cliché as heck and I love it.
I find it difficult to reach out and ask favours of people. I’m not sure whether this is indicative of my measly communication skills, anxiety surrounding initiating contact for fear the other person won’t respond, or perhaps I’m just lazy and put things off to the point of absurdity. Regardless of how long I procrastinate such messages or calls, things always seem to work out. I wonder whether my luck (fluke?) thus far contributes to the continuation of this bad habit? Although I am slowly making progress and becoming more assertive and confident in my requests and demands I worry that it will take a planning disaster before I really get my shit together.
The major consequence of this behaviour is that I often would rather overload myself with tasks than reach out and ask my support team for help. This tendency most likely stems from concerns of abusing positions of power, appearing too demanding or bossy. An interesting consideration is whether men of a similar personality/disposition to me experience the same considerations in group situations. When I do ask for help, I don’t find I do it in a constructive nor meaningful way, where skills can be shared and more insightful approaches can be developed. Trying too hard to be self-sufficient in a group context is not good for maintaining positive working relationships as it makes partners feel undervalued, so this is something I look forward to working on. I’m sorry everyone! It’s me — not you!!
The final critique of my organisational capabilities is that when I act in such ways I become a major stressball and when stressed our brains don’t function as efficiently as usual. This occurs whenever I’m overwhelmed, an example being today in class when some fool told me that it’s “morally wrong to demand the rich to give up their wealth for the less fortunate”. Instead of tearing him to shreds like I would’ve liked, I just kind of sighed and gave in to the fuzziness of my angered mind. Again, assertiveness is something I’m working on! Fuck that dude and his shitty thoughts! I need to learn how to cope better with emotions rather than shutting down and also need to build my confidence so I feel prepared to battle people in an intellectual manner. In saying that, I’m not sure how much power for change there is considering the emotions tend to make basic sentence construction very difficult. Watch this space!
In the case that this seems overly-critical to the point of negativity, I’d like to finish with a really nice thing someone said to me whilst I was feeling pretty underwhelmed with my performance for an event I organised tonight. “I just wanted to say how much I appreciate how you always build people up. The world needs more of you,” was the quote and boy was it what I needed (or wanted) to hear. I’m fortunate to be able to absorb so much positive energy from the people who surround me and I’d like to think that I radiate some of that back, continuing the cycle. I’m so grateful for the support system that I have and that my friends continue to educate me and expand my mind in ways I didn’t think possible.
Self-reflection is something I definitely don’t do enough of. I’m a product of my society, whatever. I’m not sure whether any of this makes sense but it felt good writing it out and I hope to re-evaluate my situation and progress soon.
