Finding My Self
How A Conversation With My Soulmate Helped Discover A Problem That’s Plagued Me For Over A Decade
I wanted to see if posting just once a week would be more my style… less stress and more time to make better quality blogs…
But I have a problem… I procrastinate… and I still don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to be massively productive like successful people are… at least not without doing things daily.
But I know that I’m not at my best daily. I know I can’t really be at my best when I’m literally pushing stuff out at the very last minute… before midnight… while on the bus… after a long day at work… half spent commuting…
I know I’m not like my inspiration…
Yann Girard and Jon Westenberg 🌈 and even Jordan Ebert make it seem so easy… they can just post everyday and have great content and get consistent attention and be massively productive… while I can barely figure out how to freaking blog consistently after 3 whole years of vascilating and wrestling with myself.
Why is it so hard?? Why do I keep hesitating and stumbling over myself??
I KNOW I shouldn’t compare myself to others or judge myself on what they’re doing… and yet I STILL keep looking over at Yann and thinking how better than me he is for blogging and tweeting and emailing every fckn day.. And he still gets to travel and speak and so on.
Even though I KNOW I am not actually seeking to live the life he is living and that I wouldn’t be happy doing exactly what he is doing.. Yet I compare myself nonetheless.
Even though I KNOW its unhealthy to compare Jordan’s first 3 months on Medium and how it’s better than my 3 years…
Even though I KNOW my own purpose for blogging is more to express my thoughts regardless of who does or doesn’t read them.
I still keep doing this to myself.
I could not figure out why I kept sabotaging myself…
Then I confided in my partner… my soulmate… and despite all my deprressed fears that she wouldn’t understand or be able to help my sorry ass… despite my initial hesitance to even confide in her due to my worrying that she’d be tired of hearing me complain and talk about how I failed for the nth time, especially so early in the morning… Despite all that, I communicated with her.
And heres what happened:
I started writing this very blog earlier that morning with the intent of having my own therapy session through these ever-so-raw blogs…
I’ve been studying Forex for the past 2 or 3 months. But I’ve been disappointed and frustrated with myself for how I’ve failed to push myself out there and Go Live.
My goal was to be at a point where I can use that money to finally move out on my own… and yet here I was virtually in the same spot as when I started.
She always knows how to show me in the best light… her words had me tearing up… I was so flattered with how she described me!!
But still, it didn’t stop the crippling anxiety and insecurity that kept swirling around in my mind…
That’s one reason why I started blogging and podcasting and trying to meet people online… to conquer my social fears and anxiety over sharing my thoughts and ideas; over my writing style and voice and so on…
Confidence has been my GOTdamn biggest handicap for so long… It’s why I don’t ever feel okay with DMing and reaching out to people to bother them about my content. It’s why almost never ask for help or advice. Its why I’ve never asked a girl out and am prodigously lucky that my soulmate practically found me and my mom set up the moment to get us together two years after high school….
At this point, I thought she was just going to say something I already know. A simple truth that makes sense and applies.. But won’t feel all that impactful at this moment. Due to the depth of my depression… what could she say to refute the ‘facts’ of my utter inferiority?
And yet she did… she used a simple truth to cut through my complex…
She even reiterated the Two Wolves story…
But she was right… so very right…
You see… my baby is all natural and does her hair like every week at least… she is constantly getting into new hair care products and skin cleansing masks and new outfits and all that.
At first I was worried she was just vane… but no. Its much deeper than mere vanity.
She knows the value of her image.
Her self-image.
Through caring for her looks, she cares for her how she sees her Self, and thus how others see her as well.
She is so meticulous with her self-care that I didn’t believe she really knew what it felt like to feel so bad about oneself like I do!
But she indeed knows how it feels.
We met in high school. She likes to remind me that though I’m smitten now, back then, when she had the biggest crush on me, I didn’t really give her much time of day (I was too depressed to think anyone could possibly like me… most of memories from grade school seems like a gray cloud).
I didn’t see her as anymore then a friendly freshman back then, two years my junior. Though mostly hazy, I do at least remember that she didn’t really come into her style like she is now. She always seemed so awkward back then, she even made me feel more self confident in comparison!
After nearly 3 years being together… of seeing her become more and more like a Goddess before my very eyes, all self assured and empowered and terribly charming… I forgot that it was only 7 years ago that she was this meek little freshman girl that couldn’t cut through my oblivious cloud of depression to tell me she like liked me…
And then we talked solutions…
But it was just one phrase that really brought this home for me.
One thing she said that what made everything else click into place.
Baby, just start caring about yourself.
So simple… so obvious… and yet So. Damn. Real.
I don’t care about myself… not really… not enough.
That’s why I keep doing stuff that I know is bad for me despite knowing how harmful it is… because I simply don’t care about myself enough to truly worry about how much it hurts me.
I think myself already at the lowest point; worse off or less talented or unimportant or just below most other people… thus I figured I couldn’t get much lower.
This isn’t even limited to my work… its on a more fundamental, basic level.
I don’t often eat but once a day because I never feel like its worth the trouble or cost to feed myself unless I’m starving.. And mostly because I don’t want anyone else to feel awkward hearing my stomach growl or see my lips super chapped.
I don’t really work out anymore because I figure I’m so skinny and short and my muscle type is so wiry that it would never show. I’ll never have nice showy biceps and will always have a bird chest, so figured it wouldn’t be worth the time or effort…
My face and hair type seem inherently unattractive to me, so there’s no point in wasting money on hair and skin care products…
I’m so naturally unappealing that I don’t see the value in buying good, size appropriate clothes for myself.
All this time I thought my biggest problem was self confidence.
But that was just the result. That was the symptom, not the actual diagnosis of my sickness.
I have chronic low self-esteem.
On the most basic levels.
It doesn’t matter how much I hype myself to have confidence about my thoughts and ideas and projects.
It doesn’t matter how often I put my work out there in efforts to not base my value on what other people say or don’t say about it… because I’ve never actually found the value in my own existence. In my life… my image… in me.
I know that probably sounds weird. Crazy even.. and it is.
Crazier even that I never really figured it out. I never articulated that to myself.
Even after writing a whole book about my life and discovering myself.. I still didn’t realize that truth in the book. Not like she did in one sentence. In one morning.
Instead, I attributed my problem to outsourcing my value to my ambition. To my future self… to the things I wanted to accomplish in life and how I wanted to make everyone’s lives better… 100 pages still didn’t help me to see this most basic of truths.
Baby, just start caring about yourself.
I need to care about myself.
Until I truly find value in my Self… I won’t have much of a self to put out there.
Won’t matter how much I study for Forex, or how long my daily blog streaks are, or how many ideas I come up with and podcast about…
None of that matters if I don’t value my Self!
This blog doesn’t come close to articulating how I feel right now… but it at least helps to record this momentous occasion.
I’ll still post everyday. Because I enjoy it. I like the challenge and the reward of posting something right before midnight and seeing that ever increasing number of published posts…
But my focus will be on my Self.
I finally have a real idea of what to do to continue my growth.
It only makes sense that I’ll have to know myself and value in order to stop tripping over myself to finally take the next steps…
Thank you baby! Soteria Thomas I love you so very much!!!
