Tag Archives: ego

12.27.20
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Authenticity

Being vulnerable is not a sign of weakness or the enduring fear that there is something wrong with me. Allowing authenticity and vulnerability to surface is actually an indication of knowing who I am and making no apologies for who I am. In fact, by being authentic, I save myself that inner discomfort that someone outside of me can define me!

By working through some (childhood into adulthood) triggers in my life, I know I have often hidden who I am with defensive behavior by going on the attack before I am attacked. We live our life assuming that everyone but me has it all together. We see the weakness in someone else which feeds our ego and that sense of being superior bolsters our self esteem by searching and/or finding vulnerability in others…. manifesting unkind words/actions or irrational anger.

By healing the victim mentality within ourselves and by understanding that nothing outside of ourselves has anything to do with our divine nature allows us to be genuine and authentic in our relationships. One moment, one interaction at a time!

The bottom line for me is the quote from the pen of the Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better”

Namaste

01.17.20
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That’s not who you are now!

We all have those experiences with another human that have hurt our feelings, made us feel angry, royally pissed off, sad, knocked off center, unappreciated, embarrassed. For some of us, it fed our belief that we aren’t good enough, smart enough, skinny enough….We attached an emotion to that experience and added dislike, hate, anger, irritation to our list of how we feel about someone….or physical feelings of nausea, headache, stomach pain as a result of the emotional pain we felt.

We start when we are young…I remember being on an elementary school field trip to the Science Center in the 60’s. I was wearing a green and yellow cotton straight dress with a matching belt…a girl in my class told me she didn’t like the color and hated the belt. From that moment on I watched my reflection in the windows we passed and realized in my adolescent mind that she didn’t like the belt because in the window reflection, it made me “look fat”. I took the belt off and after that day refused to wear the dress again. It began a life long habit of body shaming myself and being judgmental of others because I had been emotionally injured in 5th grade.

At this point and age, I realize that I’ve accumulated a lot of emotional garbage and damage and each time I react by saying something hurtful, thinking judgmental thoughts or by being unkind, I’m only really just reliving the experience I had in elementary school when someone didn’t like the belt on my green and yellow dress. I’ve found that these judgmental thoughts, the jealous comments, the unkind words that come out of my mouth are just a result of a story I tell myself about something that happened in my past that I relive again and again….not the actual event but how that event made me feel. I know that by shutting down that non-stop voice narrating my life from behind the scenes, I am a nicer, kinder more loving person.

Namaste

01.01.20
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It’s taken me nearly 2 years to figure it out

The difference in the thought process and the decisions I make in my life are based solely on which brain I’m using. Oh….and I certainly don’t speak from a tone of arrogance here…I don’t share this because I always listen to the right brain…but I’m speaking from hours and hours of study….I eventually figure it out and know the difference in which brain I’m thinking WITH. Kind of comes down to my “knowing” brain just knows that I ended that last sentence with a preposition. As soon as I typed it, I knew it was going to be the last word in the sentence and I knew that grammatically there was “someone” out there who learned the old school rigid rules about prepositions and would think…she just ended that sentence in a preposition “tsk”.

….and then she/he might really examine my other sentences like…OMG she just started that sentence with and…then…same person might go back to a time in school when they learned about past participles or prepositions or to spelling tests and perhaps compare themselves to a sibling who could do difficult math in their head or remember when they used to get in trouble for day dreaming and by the time that whole thought process was over, this person felt like a total failure….all over a preposition trigger. This person who first noticed the idiot woman’s blog that ends her sentences in a preposition just triggered a lengthy egoic or “personal” mind process that left them feeling inferior or insecure and in all probability introduced a mindset of being snippy with someone..sent them to the kitchen to eat their insecurity away or had them ordering something on Amazon to make themselves feel better.

This is just one of the minds we think with. The mind of fear. After many years of driving accident free, one traffic accident-fender bender might have you afraid to drive on the interstate. Having a cancer diagnosis upon returning from a long trip out of the country might have you afraid to travel again, an early life of worry about not having money to feed the kids might have you fearing poverty even with a bank or mattress full of money. The egoic mind. The mind that you fear with, compare yourself to others with, feel insecure with…the mind that provides a free-of-charge little voice on your shoulder that chatters incessantly through out your day telling you that you are not ok.

There is another mind…

Later!

10.29.19
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Mansplaining. (not for the faint of heart)

For 6 decades I have endured conversations with men who were hell bent on explaining things to me about things I know more about than they do. Like woman things or let’s say folks on the other side of my profession aka the other side of the radio explaining my job or just things in general like explaining down to me as if I were just a potato? I always protected myself and them by just thinking to myself…ahhh, small dick.

Over the years, He has mansplained to me and quite frankly, I have also talked AT him the nuances of life. It’s just what couples do…at least we do. For the most part one of us will just glaze over…or if a nerve is hit, there could be some raised voices and hurt feelings.

Today, I received a phone call from a woman who was a manager at Orkin…she wanted to come out and review our appointment with them last May…mostly about how well they served by eliminating our insect problem. Sure…at least I don’t have to fill out a survey on line because quite, frankly, on a scale of 0 to 10 surveys has become a 2nd career for me. I told Him that the person coming out was a woman…he said, great…somebody who won’t mansplain. After that comment, I realized yes, I would marry him again.

We are doing a lot of ego work in the book studies we do at Unity. We are ripe with recognizing when our ego is controlling us. That’s not to say we are enlightened but it does mean, in this situation, that He…the man…helped me to understand what mansplaining really is…not to bash on men because we all have tremendous egos that need recognizing…but mansplaining may just be a symptom of insecurity and protection because they may be feeling unloveable, inadequate or not measuring up?!?

I hope I can recognize the beating drum of fear we all experience instead of judging someone as pompous or arrogant with small genitalia. I’m learning….

08.09.19
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Or I’m blinded by the steam escaping from my head

I started off my Morning Pages arguing the woulda, shoulda, coulda theory of my life. I think I’m still following “someone” else’s rules…rules that have a home in my ego….rules that I haven’t seen to fit to challenge with the board of directors in my brain!

Today is not the first day I’ve argued that I am very content sitting on the deck, drinking my coffee, plotting death to the cicadas having the intention that I will do nothing today other than read and make notes (bulletpoint notes) about How do I go about killing cicadas).

VS

OMG someday I will be 80 (insert number) and I won’t be able to get around as well and I will regret the decision I made on August 9 2019 at 0900 to just do nothing…what is wrong with me that I don’t want to do anything…everyone else is out there living productive lives and here I sit on my deck doing nothing!

There is a heepa lotta attachment here to shoulda! Then…I thought….I read a lot of books and attend classes each week on changing my thinking….quieting ego thinking and making decisions through the divine spirit in me….keeping my vibrations high, the value of meditating….and I can’t make peace with myself to be content right now…just being in the moment? Right here….right now!

I may just be overthinking…spending too much time outside my head and letting my ego cause me to be off center and causing the energy I’m using on something that doesn’t even deserve a conversation blind me by the steam this useless activity is creating.

Until next time….