(LighterLife Route to Management – Week12 Day3)
I hate having expectations. They seem to do little else but mess up my head.
An old friend told me recently how he’s been observing a lot of colleagues around him getting stuck in a vicious circle of having to make more money just to keep up the life they’ve built. What he meant was that as people get promoted or get better jobs and therefore more money, they obviously are able to afford more and better things like bigger houses, cars, holidays etc. But then, when they realise they would actually like to do something else with their lives, the maintenance costs of those bigger houses, cars, etc. are actually preventing them from moving on to other jobs and things that would really make them happy. And how he’s doing well now and really tempted to buy a car and all sorts of things material, but at the same time he’s really scared that he’ll become one of those people who wake up one day and feel TRAPPED in their lives.
How is this relevant to my Route to Management? It made me think about things. And you know that Thought Record I’ve been meaning to do?!? I’VE FINALLY DONE IT!!! And once again, it was all about expectations. Mine and what I think in my head other people expect of me. And how, if I don’t meet those expectations, I will have failed. Everyone. Myself and all those ‘other people’. Not unlike all those people my friend was referring to. In short, I am afraid I will be making the wrong decision and then feel TRAPPED in the life I’ve chosen. Last year I made so many choices that made my life difficult and miserable and stressful, and made me feel like I was really letting myself down. And not just around food. Around LIFE. And all those decisions have now come back to haunt me, in the run up to a rather simple job decision I will need to make. I feel that this time around the world needs me to me the right decision. How screwed is that!?!?!?!!!?!!
So what is preventing me from making a well-informed decision that would NOT leave me feeling trapped? Well. As I have learned during my Route to Management, I am extremely vulnerable to uncertainty. And there are MASSES of uncertainty floating about at the moment. So much so that I’m finding it difficult to separate the facts from the fears. And even with the Thought Record now done, I’m still not sure of what I really want.
I’m ANGRY at myself for how this is affecting how I eat already, making me avoid properly looking at how I feel at any one time, and just recording how I’m ‘frustrated’ and ‘tired’ and ‘nervous’ I am, but not able to go deeper. Why can’t life be SIMPLE?!?!?!?!? Why can’t I just go with the flow and deal with things as they come and EXPECT THINGS TO TURN OUT ALRIGHT? Why is the fear of failure, the fear of ‘getting it wrong’ so prominent? Am I really so messed up that I have to make EVERYTHING complicated?
Filed under: Route to Management, RtM - Week12 | Tagged: Future thoughts, Observations, Past life, Random thoughts
