The Unfair Advantage of Creating Your Personal Space
The Clarity of Discovering Who ‘I’ Really Am
“Worthless bitch.”
“Just like your mother.”
“Never do anything to help.”
“Always nagging and complaining.”
As a child whose parents were constantly fighting, I learned quickly who I was. For it is a fact that, as children, we identify ourselves in what others say. And we unconsciously reflect back what we have heard and learned.
So, I became withdrawn and super sensitive. Morose and uncooperative. Shy and anti-social. For my personal space was filled with the shame of my painful persistent adolescent coaster-ride of emotions.
Emotions I didn’t understand. Emotions I didn’t dare express.
And my only escape was my being allowed to ride horse.
So, when I wasn’t in school, I often spent most of my time alone, riding the prairie on horseback. Feeling the sun caress my cheeks and the wind tossing my hair. And luxuriating in my freedom and the complete abandonment of my problems.
The Addiction of Freedom
I was so happy to be free. Free to do what I wanted to do, free to be who I really was. Free of the feeling of fear and confusion. Free of my inner turmoil.
Such freedom can be intoxicating. And addictive. And though I didn’t realize it, there was a cost. Just like there is with any addiction.
So, I grew up, and never learned the value of commitment. I never truly felt committed to anything. And despite my getting married and saying those words “until death do us part,” I sure didn’t see love as a commitment.
And when my husband got drunk, I went ballistic. I ran amok. And I blamed him for my irrational behavior. I didn’t see that I was reenacting my parents’ marriage. I didn’t even realize I was putting a wedge between myself and my husband.
Nor did I see that I was the one who was really in trouble.
Because even though I blamed my husband for his refusal to accept reality, I was the one who was seeking escape … from my anxieties and fears.
For escaping was my only thought in the heat of the moment. In fact, for decades, escape was my unconscious and thoughtless habit when anything troubling appeared on the horizon. Until …
Shifting Perceptions
I suddenly found myself alone and homeless — with nowhere to go, no place to run to.
I had no horse, no vehicle, and no one seemed to care what was happening to me. And that sober fact put me in a mental space where a shift in perception activated a conscious epiphany.
For my four children were almost full-grown. And I suddenly realized they seemed to have picked up my bad habit of running away. For all except my oldest son had quit school without graduating.
And I was ever-so-slowly coming to the realization that both my husband and I had a common trait. Though he was an alcoholic, we were both escape artists of the worst kind.
And I also came to the realization that when you have no place to run to, you can only do one of two things. You can face yourself, look yourself squarely in the eyes in your mirror, and see yourself for who you really are.
Or you can die.
Die a psychological death. And that happens when you pretend to be someone you’re not. When you choose to be a false self, become someone who continuously denies what she really feels. All because no one ever validated who you really are.
No one ever told you that it was okay to think, feel, and be the real you.
No one ever told you that it was okay to be scared. That it was okay to feel lost and alone.
For you were shamed into denying what you felt and thought, shamed into giving up who you really are. So, you pretended you were okay, just to feel safe, just to be accepted.
Fantastic Imagination
For, as John Bradshaw says in Creating Love, we often develop the misperception called “fantastic imagination.” Or “the split within ourselves that occurs when our life is governed by unrealistic fantasies of how we should be, rather than by a realistic acceptance of the way we really are.”
Bradshaw continues, saying these fantastic imaginings are the source of our grandiosity. They are delusions that produce unrealistic daydreams and cause our continued experiences of failure, shame, and disappointment.
My delusion was my decision to mirror the fights about my dad’s drinking. In my fantasies I imagined myself ‘saving’ my husband from his alcohol abuse. And I even imagined his failures to stop drinking were my fault.
I saw it as part of my shame. And I couldn’t face it. So, I had to escape.
For I had learned escape was the only relief from that sense of shame. Escape was the only way out of a mistake. The only way to handle human flaws and failures in myself or others.
A scenario far too many of us experience.
The Unfair Advantage
Many of us live our entire lives feeling shamed … and ashamed of … our human qualities. For we’ve never experienced what Brendon Burchard calls ”the unfair advantage of personal development.”
For the advantage of personal development happens when you create your own inner S.P.A.C.E. in life. When you Start Purposefully Accepting the Challenge to Evolve.
Because you specifically perceive and activate your choice to express who you really are.
Because your personal development begins when you start proclaiming and asserting your commitment to experience … by truly experiencing your own life.
For no one on earth was born to be a slave to their fear and anxiety. No one was meant to live their entire life in the constant struggle that is created when we are afraid to be our real self.
Even though the struggle to be who we really are was born when someone decided the risk to be human was too great. When someone decided that being human wasn’t worth the pain.
When someone decided that they simply didn’t want to take the chance that others wouldn’t like or accept them for who they really are.
And that someone was me.
The True Path
But, as Brendon Burchard posted on Facebook August 7th, 2021, “people on the true path of purpose don’t waste mental energy on drama, comparison, jealousy, posturing outrage, or any hurtful thinking towards others [or towards themselves].”
Burchard explains, “that mental energy instead goes to creativity, intention, passion, kindness, love, and leadership.”
For we were all born into a world where we are first, and foremost, helpless little children. Children who are easily hurt. Children who unconsciously react towards others in hurtful ways. Unless they are shamed into repression.
But, according to Burchard, we can each create an exciting, even ecstatic, life for ourselves when we grow and consciously evolve into having “soulful compassion” for ourselves, as well as for others.
Slowly, and surely, I have come to realize the value of Burchard’s advice in his book High Performance Habits. I have come to understand what a big difference it makes in your life to spend some time thinking about your ideal future self. And then actively pursuing that vision for yourself that you have created.
In other words, instead of using your imagination to conjure up all the old hurts, wounds, and pains of your past self, you become one of the high performers in the world. You use your imagination to create your ideal life.
Burchard explains that high performers use their imagination to think about who they really want to be and become. They imagine themselves being and doing things that make themselves feel happy, satisfied, and content.
Thus, they imagine themselves experiencing the life that they want instead of the life that they don’t want.
They create space in their life for significant people, places, and activities that contribute enjoyment in their life.
Developing Realistic Imagination
For as Bradshaw states, the only way to recover from our past shaming is to develop “realistic imagination” where we change our misperceptions and mistaken behaviors into “soulfulness.”
Because, says Bradshaw, when we experience our humanity, we experience our very soul.
When you develop realistic imagination. you enable an accurate vision of yourself. Instead of denying your flaws, and then making the same mistakes over and over again, you admit your mistakes. Even if only to yourself.
You accept your flaws as well as your goodness. And you can then accept, and even learn to handle, those human frailties with dignity and respect for human imperfection and limitations.
Thus, we develop realistic imagination. We free up our inner space by enabling the safety and protection of our ability to choose to evolve. And we we reclaim our emotions. Thereby, enabling ourselves to consciously experience who we are and what we think and feel.
Our Personal Space
And that is a personal space we all need to be in. That is the space that is most beneficial to us as well as to others. That is the space we must develop in ourselves so we can improve ourselves and our relationships.
We must create in ourselves the space of intentional growth and enable our ability to learn to be better human beings.
For when we are freely in our own space, this space fosters our desire to help others in our lives find their own freedom. Find their own unique space.
We do that by validating what others think and feel.
We affirm the truths of others. And we encourage others to be their best selves, while reassuring them that they are okay, even if they are feeling bad.
Consequently, we help others begin to understand themselves. We listen empathically and echo back to them what we heard them say. And we give them the assurance that it’s okay to correct us when we haven’t accurately interpreted what they’ve said.
The Shift to Clarity
That’s how you give others the space to shift their perceptions and acquire clarity. A clarity that is empowering. We create a community of people empowered by their own sense of personal space.
We create a safe and evolving community where each person can contribute their own unique gifts to the supply of world resources.
And, thereby, we each enrich our own lives, as well as the lives of others.
Simply because, instead of living out our wounded self, we are each filling up our own space with the best version of ourselves we are capable of in this moment.
So, onward we go, you and I, forever and always striving.
Always aiming in the direction of our best self. Intentionally choosing to move in the direction of being human.
Thus, we are each, individually, choosing to bask in the unfair advantage of our personal development. We each, consciously and compassionately, seek to understand and fill the space inside of us with the real me. With the essence of one’s very soul.