// September 12th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // My Life
(Very Important!!! while the ideas in this post are probably very appealing to those that are struggling with similar problems I strongly urge you to consider the consequences of your actions if you choose to follow my footsteps. While I do believe that my choices have helped to form the person I am today, I also can say with full assurance that if it were not for the Grace of God, the person I am today would not be here! Many of the choices I made during my search for truth were out of desperation and brought me through some very dark times in my life. So proceed with caution… and if you get a wild hair to do something crazy… shoot me an email so we can talk about it
I was at one time a very compliant person… I went to great lengths to please others. It never really bothered me too much I guess except maybe deep inside. The problem was that I really never said the word “NO” to anyone. I thought I was being a good person, after all good people make others happy right? I was actually pretty good at making course corrections to accommodate everybody else’s wants and needs. This type of thing usually works great in a marriage if one person is dominant and the other is compliant. The problem is that compliant people usually let things go until they have gone too far, and the course correction back to “not too far” is a pretty rough one. Well things got pretty rough for me almost immediately after I got married to my first wife, I was suddenly having to make decisions about things I didn’t have the slightest idea about. Suddenly pleasing everyone was not so easy… My new wife was a handful to say the least… family problems cropped up with “he said- she said” arguments, my always sane parents seemed to be suddenly losing their minds! I struggled with the knowledge that my family had always been there for me but my new wife was convinced that their motives were not quite as honorable. It wasn’t long before I had a steaming pile of a mess on my hands, drama was rampant, and I was so busy putting out fires I couldn’t think straight. Well long story short the marriage ended in divorce, and not a nice one. I as my usual compliant self agreed to all the terms of the divorce, I lost everything, didn’t even have a car! Talk about back to square one.
After the divorce it took me a while to mentally process the past 5 years of my life… I basically had a crisis of identity. I had somehow lost “me” after all of those years of shaking my head at people talking about “trying to find myself” here I was… ironically “trying to find myself” I remember sitting at a Chile’s restaurant and thinking “I have no idea what I think about anything anymore” I bought my first alcoholic drink that night.
Not long after my epiphany that I was clueless, I realized I needed to make some decisions about my life to be able to move forward. I began to realize that many of the decisions I made were made out of fear that I would let someone down. Because of that fear I had a real problem with saying “no” to anyone. After a good deal of analysis I began to realize that most of my problems had begun because I never really said “no” to people. I realized I had become a shell of a person with no real substance. I also realized that realistically if I had hit the bottom… or was even close… then all of my fears had already been realized… This gave me a great deal of freedom in my mind… there was nothing left to lose… so I might as well live without fear anymore.
All of this came together about one year after my divorce when I finally pulled things together and decided to take action. I made a few rules that I absolutely had to live by until I had gotten things back together.
Rule #1 Just say “NO”
yep … and I did… and it ticked quite a few people off… I literally took joy in doing it… and before long I scaled back to a reasonable amount of “NOs” and suddenly saying “NO” was no big deal! that made life a whole lot better for me.
Rule #2 Do one thing each day that I am afraid to do.
This literally got out of hand… but the results were great! It didn’t take long and I no longer lived in fear of anything. Because if I was afraid of doing it… I did it! I have to admit that I did alot of things I am not proud of during that time… but that brings me to my next rule.
Rule #3 Whatever it takes be honest with yourself and with others.
Remember I had no idea what I thought about anything so I literally tossed all of my preconceptions about morality and decency aside. Not for the sheer sake of being immoral, but because I could not trust myself to be honest about what I believed. You can think I am crazy but I constantly had conversations with the “Moral Me” and the “Don’t give a Sh#%” Me and more often than not I found the “Moral Me” didn’t have much to stand on. I pushed further and further to find truth that I could depend on.
Rule #4 Become One Person!
I had a problem… being a compliant person required me to have multiple personalities… one for each person I was trying to please. I remember watching the movie “Fight Club” and realizing that I wasn’t far from that type of insanity! I became absolutely committed to becoming a single person… the same at home, at work, with friends, or anywhere. No more multiple personalities!
Because of all of those rules alot of things got alot worse… but slowly things got better… and my life became much more sane… But I was no longer the same person that I once was… I honestly had the desire to do the right thing, I no longer catered to the demands of others, My primary goal was not to meet unrealistic expectations.
These days… a little older… and a little wiser I am still a pretty obstinate guy… a bit confrontational, opinionated, and a little like my dad…when he said “If you have a problem with me… well that’s YOUR problem… not mine”
Hopefully that explains some things about this site… why I write, how I think… why I challenge you… why I talk about my faults openly…
jasonthebaldguy
Tags:
choice,
choices,
personality
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