Most people lead what Plato called ‘the unexamined life’, which to him was one of the greatest sins of all time. It’s natural for us to get deeply involved in the day-to-day of our lives, more so if what we are doing is highly relevant to our perceived survival such as buying a house, getting married/divorced, moving to a different country, starting a new job. We are compelled to put all of our energy, mental/physical/emotional, into those efforts and everything else goes by the wayside. If we’re lucky we remember that we do need to keep the stress level down and do self-care and even luckier if we do something about it instead of just beating ourselves up for not fitting that in.
But if we don’t examine our lives, take time out to think about ‘why?’ or ‘could that have been different?’ what we are doing could be heading us down the road to failure or disappointment. If we don’t understand ourselves, the perceptions we were taught as children that may or may not be true, the roles that we were given by our families, the circumstances of our childhood that formed our view of the world, we could be thinking ‘this is just the way I am’ when that’s not the case. So when you try to make things better, change things, get what you want, all of those perspectives and expectations are underneath your choices and they cause you to be in your own way.
One really glaring example of this is the person who just can’t find the right boyfriend/girlfriend. “I always pick losers and have the worst luck on the planet. They are always (insert brokeness and flaws here) and I deserve better. I guess there is just no one out there for me”. Well, not true. With literally billions of people on the planet it is not possible that there is no one that you would get along with or be happy with even with every single one being unique. However, it is amazing and statistically improbable that you have randomly met 30-50 people you are interested in dating all of whom have the same issue or the relationship would end the same way every time. Even if you only picked 5 of those people, the likelihood that every one would have similar problems or the relationships would go down in flames in the same direction, is probably not random chance. That’s like saying that I went shopping for jeans knowing what styles I liked, knowing what size I am and then when I came home I was shocked to find that all of them fit and all of them looked similar to each other. *gasp*
If you acknowledge that you are coming from a particular perspective, if you sit back from a moment and actually look at your perspective on things you will be able to stop being in your own way and start making the changes you want to be. If you are one of the .002% of people in the US who look good in skinny jeans, great. If not, stop buying them and then getting dressed in the morning and beating yourself up because you don’t look the way you want. Boot cut is far more flattering to women who have curves. 🙂
