Ask Yourself One Question: What Is The Point?
Have you ever done something just for the sake of being liked or praised by others?
I did and I think many of us had been there. I think, on the journey of trying to understand ourselves, the reasons behind our certain behaviors need a bit of digging. Even though it feels uncomfortable and it might make you want to run away from yourself, it is better than living with deeply hidden problems that are waiting to pop up at some inappropriate time.
I never liked to show my insecurities. I mean, who would like to talk about their vulnerable sides anyway. BUT, recently I am very much into turning the things that I once thought ‘traumatic’ into neutral or better memories by lifting the cover on top of them which made out of false beliefs and self-bias. Because I need to understand myself and to be able to do so, I try to pinpoint real issues under my uncomfortable feelings. And sometimes reading someone else’s story can help to understand your story in a better way.
I lately sent an essay for a competition. I really liked the subject of the competition and also really enjoyed the process of writing it. In fact, once I finished it, I truly was amazed by my writing skills which I didn’t know that I had. And of course, this felt so good. In a way, I discovered a part of myself that I didn’t know its existence before and I was pleasantly surprised and excited. I even sent it to a couple of friends and my boyfriend just to make sure if I am the one who exaggerates it or are we really talking about a good piece of text.
The feedback I got was even better than I expected which doubled the excitement and my self-confidence. I even started to imagine the day I will read my name on the list of winners of the competition. The prize for the first winner was some cash and a trip to the place where the competition was held. Inevitably I started thinking about what would I do with the cash and whether I would use the trip prize under these circumstances. As if I was even considered to be nominated!
Days were passing and sometimes out of the blue I was thinking about the results of the contest. When I felt down I was reminding myself of the possibility of winning the contest and it even helped to boost my mood up temporarily. The idea of being praised by a couple of people who are named under Juri and who most possibly have some respectful titles in the writing field, made me feel more excited and happy than the idea of genuinely being content with myself.
The day before the results were announced, I went to bed thinking wow, tomorrow my life can change on a very small scale! Cute.
I woke up on the day the results were announced and checked the official web site. As you can guess easily by now, my name wasn’t on the list. Was I destroyed? Not really. Surprised? Not that either but some kind of emotion was there for sure, disappointment? Maybe.
I read the winner’s essay and I really was touched by that piece of work. It had the power of evoking some positive emotions and I was happy for the winner. But when I looked at my essay, I had a completely different way of approaching the topic and maybe this wasn’t what the jury was looking for. So, just because my essay wasn’t selected as a winner, would that also make my essay worthless? It wouldn’t. The illusion of me thinking that ‘I have to win otherwise I don’t have anything to show’ made me feel worthless.
The ironic thing is, I had won some smaller scale essay competitions before and back than I thought winning them would make me feel better. In fact, they did make me feel good for a short time. But I needed a longer remedy so I started to apply for bigger competitions to gain my confidence that I lost somewhere between being too worried about how successful do I look from the outside and the list of other things to be won before I can tell myself that I am doing good in this life.
That feeling of worthlessness was so strong that I immediately started to search for some other kind of contest to make me feel better. I needed to win something! I needed to receive a piece of paper with my name on it to prove that I did something important and now I can rest. But wait a minute, will that restlessness certainly go away if I win ‘something’? Asking this question to myself stopped me from doing my research in a rush. Because I just realized how tired I was to try to find something external to fix a damn internal issue. I was stressed out, tired but still unable to rest because my mind was full of thoughts like I cannot rest till I feel enough! Then I asked myself: When will I feel enough?
Well, I still cannot find a solid answer to that question. But if there is one thing I know it is that I didn’t feel like I’m not enough when I was writing that essay. I was enjoying and feeling great about being able to put my thoughts into words about something seemingly hard to define. I definitely wasn’t feeling worthless when I effortlessly form a great rhyme that worked perfectly every time I read.
After making all this realization, whenever I get too lost in doing something stressful, I decided to ask myself one question:
What is the point?
Are you desperately trying to get a promotion, what’s the point? Well, if I get a promotion then I will feel good about my abilities? What’s the point of feeling good about your abilities? If I don’t feel good about my skills no one would trust my abilities either. What’s the point of everyone trusting your abilities? It would make me a respected person by everyone. What’s the point of being respected by everyone? If I feel respected I would feel powerful. What’s the point of being powerful? If I am powerful then no one can hurt me etc etc.
There can be millions of variations, I just put a test version there and I think it is quite interesting to ask yourself this question till you come to a point where you cannot continue. Then it means you have to truly answer that one question to be able to understand your true motives or the issue. Because otherwise, we will just keep running around relentlessly for the wrong reasons and constantly feel incomplete.
Now I know that creating something is what I enjoy and value the most and I like to share it with my loved ones. But does that mean that I will never forget my true motives again? I mean probably not. But as long as you discovered how to break a vicious cycle and you know how to apply it when it’s necessary, then it is already great progress.
^∆^
