Failing Before Even Trying - Day 396

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to self-sabotage through creating an idea around final exams, wherein I expect, anticipate and assume that just because it is a final exam it will mean that it is way harder and more difficult than normal exams - where I have consequentially allowed that idea to influence and effect my starting-point and so my experience within myself before walking through a final exam – in where I see and realize that I have accepted and allowed myself to let this idea that I have formed of final exams to control my internal experience and approach, where I, even before actually doing the final exams, will within me decide that it is going to be hard and almost impossible – not seeing or realizing how such idea will actually make it impossible for me to really see the reality and so walk the final exam within self-awareness and self-stability, since I have already taken a decision to see it as difficult and am thus preventing myself from simply walking through and seeing the exam for what it is.

• And within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make it harder and more complicated than what it has to be through forming an emotional attachment to final exams – in where I now see and realize that I am preventing myself from seeing reality in terms of walking through the exam moment by moment and thus read the questions, understand the questions and so answer them – due to instead having formed a reaction of fearing that I won’t be able to understand or answer a question even before I have given myself the opportunity to actually read the questions.

• In this I commit myself to assist and support myself in the continuation when walking through a final exam – to within that be aware of the tendency of self-sabotage wherein I go into the idea of it being more difficult and hard just because it is labeled as a ‘final exam’ and so, when I see that fear starts to emerge within me due to forming a perception of the final exam even before doing it I assist and support myself to stop my participation and breathe – where I no more accept and allow myself to go into, generate or feed this idea and starting-point but instead I move and direct myself out of such fear where I realize that I will merely prevent myself from focusing on real reality through creating layers of ideas and fears before walking through an exam.

• And so I furthermore commit myself to practice this point of preventing myself from generating this idea of it being more difficult and hard just because it is called a ‘final exam’ – where I instead re-instruct myself to approach the exam without making it seem sooo big and overwhelming – through within me being aware of the tendency of generating fear and anticipations and so in that instead take a stance within me to instruct myself to face the exam with ‘real eyes’ so to speak; meaning, really giving myself the opportunity to face reality through reminding myself of the fact that I cannot know how an exam will be until I walk it, and thus I commit myself to face the exams through making sure that I really read the questions slowly, in the sense of giving myself the opportunity to really understand what they are asking and so when having made sure that I understand the question I answer – to within that prevent myself from going into the tendency of rushing, as I realize that rushing has only resulted in misunderstandings/misinterpretations and so consequentially ineffectiveness as I’ll have to read the questions over and over again until understanding it – and so therefor I slow myself down, I remain here within breath and so make sure that I understand, which I can only do if I give myself the chance to focus on physical reality and so stop the point of rushing practically.   

Stepping Beyond The Fear Of Failure - Day 376

• I forgive myself that I have not accepted or allowed myself to decide who I am, how I am going to experience myself and so decide my self-worth, but have instead accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that who I am and my self-worth can only be assessed and determined by other people – not seeing or realizing that I can always decide for myself how I am going to see myself – and so, no matter if I perceive it as though another person sees me as totally and completely worthless, I still have the responsibility to decide whether that is something I want to define myself according to or not – and therefor I forgive myself that I have, within and throughout my life, just accepted whatever perception I form in relation to what other people seem to think of me – in where I never within that saw or realized that I was actually responsible for feeling like shit – that I am the only one responsible for how I react to and towards others opinions/my interpretation and perception of other people’s opinions – and so within this I see, realize and understand that I can, in every moment, decide who I am going to be in relation to and as a response towards the opinions I perceive others to form of me – so, why not give myself the opportunity to stand as that awareness in every moment, where I take a stance to stop the automatic pattern of just absorbing every interpretation I form in relation to what others thinks of me and within that instead decide to slow myself down in the sense of actually assessing other people’s opinions in where I within that decide whether that opinion is something I want to accept or not – and so make an actual decision where I see and realize that I can in fact let the opinion bounce back in the sense of not accepting and allowing myself to just automatically and instantaneously absorb it but to instead slow myself down and within me assess whether the opinion really in fact is who I am – or if I am instead going to decide, for myself, who I am, how I am going to experience myself and what my self-worth is. I mean, why would I want to make myself feel like crap when I can decide not to?

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear experiencing myself as I did in the past in relation to my school-situation and in relation to the response I received of not doing good enough – and within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed fear of experiencing it as though others sees me as a failure, as not good enough, to be and become what moves and motivates me within my current participation within school and studying. In this I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize and understand how I am currently attempting and trying to compensate for the failure I perceived myself to be – where I have accepted and allowed myself to think and believe that I have to prove myself good enough and make up for all the apparent failures I committed in the past – not seeing or realizing that through accepting and allowing myself to exist within this construct of ‘attempting to make up for my past’ I am in fact merely feeding a polarity-construct, where I am perpetuating the fear of failure through accepting and allowing that fear to be what guides, moves and directs me to work hard, where I am essentially generating fear as an attempt to obtain the positive side of the polarity of feeling good enough and worthy – not seeing or realizing that this has in fact lead me nowhere, because I see how the experience and belief of myself as being worthless, a failure and not good enough persists – so, the fact that I now have, for years, been an ‘A-student’ does obviously not change anything in relation to how I internally experience and see myself, so – I see, realize and understand that the grades I obtain now cannot make up for the past, it cannot make up for how I internally see and experience myself – and so the only thing that can actually make up for my past and thus release me from the self-beliefs I have created is me, that I can only develop persistent self-acceptance through re-instructing and re-creating myself from the within to the without.

• And so I commit myself to assist and support myself to step beyond the fear of the experience of not being good enough/failing – and within this see, realize and understand that I now have the tools with which to stabilize myself and so therefor I see and realize that I do not require to fear an experience – because I do have me, my breathing and the tools that I require to be able to direct myself out of an experience. Within this I furthermore commit myself to assist and support myself within situations in where I see that I am within the mind speculating about other people’s possible opinions of me – to within such moments no more accept and allow myself to continue my participation within the mind – but to instead immediately stop, where I within this commit myself to take self-responsibility through deciding who I am and how I am going to experience myself – and so I take the decision to stop making myself feel like crap but to instead support myself within my self-relationship through seeing and realizing that I actually do have the ability and the responsibility to decide how I am going to experience myself as a response to the perception I form of what others thinks of me.

How To Stop Feeling Like Crap - Day 375

When looking back at my experience within school I can see that it was as though it did not matter how hard I tried, it did not matter how much time I spent studying – I still just couldn’t make it, it wouldn’t ‘pay off’. After a while I started to see it as useless, I mean – why should I even try when it does not pay off. I realized that whether I would study really, really hard or wouldn’t study at all – I still got the same results. I was ashamed and disappointed at myself, because I worked so hard and put so much effort into studying but I was not good enough anyway. I drew the conclusion that if I wouldn’t study at all, if I just gave up and pretended as though I didn’t give a fuck – then at least it would be ‘my decision’ to get bad results, then it wouldn’t be an outflow of my inadequacies but rather just a conscious decision to not care.

And so now I see that this was what I actually decided to do. I had for many, many years worked so hard, pushed myself so extensively and I still got the same feedback; it’s not enough. I could not do more than what I did, I just couldn’t seem to mold myself, adjust myself and align myself with what was referred to as ‘a good student’. In the end it is not your effort, how much time you dedicate, or how hard you try that gets graded – but rather the scores you get on the exams.

We had these evaluations where you sat down with your parents and the teacher and got feedback on how you were doing. It always felt like an execution. Every semester I studied as much as one could possibly do but I still got negative feedback, it was still not enough – what was I supposed to do? I see how I would immediately and unquestionably just accept what the teachers said and in that trusted their evaluation to be what determined my self-worth. I never even considered looking inside of myself and question what others said about me, or realizing that it was not even about ME per se, I mean it was not my self-worth that was being evaluated – instead I would just absorb it and define myself accordingly, where I would form the belief that I am a failure no matter how hard I try. And so after a while I decided to become what I perceived others to think of me – where I deliberately stopped trying and pretended as though I did not care anymore. I mean, it just seemed easier to take the negative feedback if I had made a deliberate decision to not work hard.

• I forgive myself that I had accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to the feedback I got from the teachers as a child – where I immediately, instantaneously and unquestionably just accepted and absorbed the teachers opinions of me and my ‘performance’ – not seeing or realizing that they were merely just commenting on and pointing out how I did externally in relation to my ‘performance’ and in that assessing whether the knowledge I possessed were aligned with the instructions that they had in relation to what a student of my age should be able to pull off, that it was not an evaluation of who I was or my self-worth – and so I forgive myself that I have, within and throughout my life, accepted and allowed myself to automatically assume and take for granted that the opinions other people have of my external performances defines who I am, and so thinking and believing that I am not good enough as who I am if other people form negative opinions of my external performances – not seeing or realizing that opinions does not determine or define who I am – therefor I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to shape and mold myself according to my perception of others opinions of my external performances – instead of seeing, realizing and understanding that after all I am the one that ultimately determines who I am, how I experience myself and who I am going to be in relation/as a response to others opinions – and so I see, realize and understand that I have the ability, the capacity and the responsibility to decide who I am going to be and what I am going to accept and allow myself to define myself by and according to – and I am therefor responsible for who I am in relation to other people’s feedback, where I see and realize that when another person makes an assessment of my performance, it is not in any way an assessment of my self-worth or self-value.

• In this I commit myself to see, realize and understand that no matter what opinion I perceive another person to form of me – I am still capable of deciding who I am going to be in relation to that, where I see, realize and understand that I have the ability, the capacity and the responsibility to decide whether I am going to absorb or question – whether I am going to let perceptions I form in regards to what another person thinks of me/my performance to decide how I am going to experience myself or not. And so therefor I commit myself to, when and as I see or perceive it as though another person forms an opinion of who I am or my external performances, start question what comes up within the mind as a response to my external situation – and within that stop the automatic pattern of just absorbing and just taking it – to instead within me say ‘wait a minute, is this really something that I would want to experience myself as?’ – and so within that I direct and decide for myself who I am – where I no more accept and allow myself to just blindly and automatically ‘take it’ – but to instead question it and realize that I am ultimately the one that decides how I am going to experience myself – so why would I want to make myself feel like shit through taking other people’s opinions personally, when I could instead actually decide to stop, to not accept or allow myself to go there in the sense of taking it personally but to instead decide, in that moment that no, I don’t want to make myself feel like shit anymore – from now on I decide.

To be continued..