“Perhaps the most tragic thing about building a self around competence is that it leads to empty disconnect. You are a complex and dynamic living being. Any attempt to build a one-dimensional, permanent sense of self blocks access to your aliveness. For you, there’s this emptiness that can’t be filled. For others around you, relating to you is like relating to a mirage. They have trouble finding you behind the false self you’ve built. A sense of disconnect is present on both sides.” –LaShelle Lowe-Chardé
There are times in conversation with others that I have opened my mouth to interject something about what I know, what I can do, how I am spending my time, what my related experience was, what my relationship to an important person is, and immediately after doing that, I feel a sense of “ick.” As my mindfulness practice has deepened, I started to notice it more and more, though I haven’t always been able to understand what it was about. I could sense a disconnect with the person I’m talking to, a shift in the energy.
I’ve learned more language recently around how “Impostor syndrome” can arise, and I can find myself in the judgement loop around wondering what I’m really worth.
Sometimes it seems that I have somehow come to fill every waking moment of my life with extracurricular activities; volunteering, working, planning, giving spending time with others.
When I actually get a moment where I’m doing nothing, it feels wrong. Like I should be doing more. If I don’t do something with every moment, I must be wasting time. I must be constantly working to improve myself–because god knows I have a long way to go.
I have identified as a “seeker” for a long time, and am often striving to work on myself. This reading from LaShelle shone the light of awareness on something which was below the line of before: this striving and seeking a better self can very much be a strategy of building a self around competence, rather than opening a door and resting in self-acceptance of the person who exists right now.
“I’ll just be happy if I can learn to calm my mind.”
“I’ll find what I’m looking for if I can learn more skills to help myself and others.”
I have noticed that I forgive myself my flaws much more when I can “prove” the many ways that I’m working on getting the kinks out. And I also notice, some of the scariest “inner jackal” I grapple with arises when I get a glimpse of how far I am from perfection. A misspoken word, someone not trusting my sincerity, someone reacting negatively to something I’ve said or done, especially when in a visible or leadership role, and I am buried under a wall of shame and fear. My competence has crumbled, and so, therefore, is my sense of self worth.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), the larger an experience of this kind of “failure” is, the more it shows me that my worth is not in fact tied up in my competency. I am not any less because I can’t meet someone else’s needs. I’m not any less because I don’t fit into the image of what my mother believes is the perfect daughter. I’m not any less because I don’t always know the best way to respond to a given situation.
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