Howdo guys.
Just a word of warning, there will be large sections of this that will sound suspiciously like a 4 year old child is talking to you. Sorry in advance.
So, I was thinking a little bit about some questions I was asked the other day.
“You and questions? How unlikely…” I hear you brazenly mock. Yes, it’s true, I like a good question, thank you, Meryl… Thank you, Captain Obvious.
Anyway…
The gist of the questions where about how to reach certain goals the questioner was asking.
Mostly about weight loss, but other, lifestyle, based stuff too.
What they didn’t realise was they were about to be ambushed by the lurking 4yearold within me.
Why do you want to lose weight?
Why 5 kilos?
Why is that that number important?
What does that number mean to you?
Why will it change how you feel?
Why is that how you want to feel?
Why don’t you feel that way already?
Why have you decided to do this now?
Why does 5 kilos matter about who you feel about yourself?
And so on… (you were warned)
Weirdly, this person wasn’t prepared for this line and volume of questioning, but took it like a champ and did their best to answer them as they came up. Honestly, it helped that they’d met me a few times before.
But the point of this barrage, and this blog topic generally, was NOT to annoy them. It was to establish their relationship to this goal they’ve brought to me. And how healthy it is for their sense of self and their meat popsicle.
Why do most people want anything? I’d argue that it’s because they believe they’d feel better for the having of it. Which is only normal for a material thing living in a material place of existence. (Consult the Madonna song “Material Girl” for more reference information on the subject)
Cool. But the point that I think is relevant there is HOW it makes them feel better. And so, onwards with the questions…
What does not having it say about how they feel when they don’t have it? Probably nothing good. There are exceptions, but… not often.
And what does THAT say about their opinions of themselves and the life they’re living?
Again, nothing good. Not necessarily shit things, but not good things.
Okay. So if we can say that those answers are at least SOMETIMES true, what’s driving us to choose the goals we pick?
Feeling state. Or lack thereof.
If we feel like life isn’t quite what it could be, and we start to look around us. At other people. Facey, I’m looking at you in particular here. When we feel shit, we tend to go a bit materialistic. The shortish but technical, biochemical side of things is: we go into the stressed sympathetic nervous system, which hunts for threats to blame the crappy feeling stress on, so we become more aware of our material world around us, so we focus on that. But when we can’t find a stress-inducing threat, and we stay stuck in that nervous system from being unable to locate the stressor, we go looking for reasons why we stay feeling crappy. And, we start looking at the material world around us, and what the neighbours have that we don’t, which seems to be making them happy…
So we start setting goals on very materialistic, measurable things with the idea that stuff and numbers and material things will make us feel better. Or we’ll at least look cooler and/or hotter so that THEY (you know, the chumps who have less awesome stuff than we do, or maybe more crap stuff, like fat or debt) can make us feel better.
Does that sound like a healthy way to live to you?
Stress causes inflammation. Which causes illness. On soooooo many levels. But that’s many, many other blog topics.
So, I ask again, why do we pick the goals we do?
Is it because the aiming for and achieving of that cool experience will genuinely contribute to you affirming yourself and your life TO yourself and the people you care about, making their lives better by improving yours?
Or…
Do those millions of squats that you’re doing to make your arse bigger so that booty pics likes on Insta can start to replace the cold dead fish that is your opinion of your own self?
I mean, having a great arse/epic arms/HUGE… bank account, is probably pretty awesome.
But is that all there is to us?
Is it a thing you’ve set a goal around so that other people can like you (pun intended) so you don’t have to?
Kind of begs the question, right?
“Are the things I’m aiming for actually for myself? Or for other people so that they like me more because I have… stuff they enjoy.”
I’m here to tell whoever needs to hear this, but doing things for almost any other reason than “because I love it/ its awesome/ I want to” tends to see us run out of steam at some point. Because no one, and I mean NO ONE, can ever give us enough esteem to make something hollow into something valuable for long without any eventual questions about why the hell we’re doing it and inevitable shits cracking. Sometimes with ourselves, sometimes with who we project our resentment and blame onto. Often both.
Why do we do what we do?
To align ever further to who we know we are, and the value that that version of us has to ourselves?
Or because maybe someone else can show us we’re valuable, and that’s going to have to be good enough because we don’t know how to do it for ourselves, and hopefully we don’t get exhausted running those loops before they finally tell us they’re proud of us/love us…
This is sort of the same reason why no one but us can give us closure at the end of a relationship.
Only WE can determine what’s valuable for us, what’s meaningful to us. At best, everything else is a template that’s still never quite an accurate representation of who we are and what we truly want. At worst, we become lost and buried under other peoples expectations and versions of how life is supposed to go, trying to achieve something for yourself based on someone else’s opinion on what you should want..
Why do you want what you want?
Think about it, because it matters when it comes to how fulfilling it will be. Be a shame to out all that effort in just to feel unfulfilled.
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No barfights.
“A purposeless and goalless life is meaningless” Sunday Adelaja
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