How would I make everyday choices if I really believed that what constitutes authentic purpose for me was truly important?
An old Britney Spears song comes to mind this morning: “Oops!... I did it again.” Oops!– I donated much of my “free” time and energy this week to making things easier for others and am now acknowledging that yet again, this came at the cost of self-care and projects of real personal importance. “Oops!.... I did it again” because my default is often “helping” others first and then becoming frustrated that the leftovers are insufficient for enterprises that are important to my self-defined sense of purpose. And so today I’m reflecting on this tiresome pattern so that I can practice making some step-by-step changes.
Here's what I’ve discerned so far. At the heart of the issue, I’m struggling with seemingly conflicting values – kindness to others versus creativity (which is manifested in writing this blog post, for example). Living out my values associated with kindness towards others comes naturally to me. I’m highly attuned to what I perceive as others’ needs, which activate my reflex-response to begin occupying myself with how I might help. However, what looks gracious and generous from the outside might be a wee bit dysfunctional on the inside. And there are times when I simply must call myself out on my own crap.
How accurate are my presumptions about what others really need?
Where might I be an enabler in my “help” and in what situations might it actually be kinder to let others figure things out on their own?
To what extent have I unwittingly adopted the traditional feminine archetypes of the “nurturer” and “pleaser” to the detriment of a deeper calling?
And where am I defaulting to all of this other-tending to avoid my own creative but more difficult work? Where am I using others’ stuff to avoid what I am called to do?
In the following quote from Untamed, Glennon Doyle’s raw and soulful memoir about finding her own voice, she charges me to release my faux-self-less-ness in order to take my creative callings seriously. To have the courage to give them top billing now and again and to acknowledge the possibility that these callings may well be the truest things that “must be done”.
“ Selfless women make for an efficient society but not a beautiful, true, or just one. When women lose themselves, the world loses its way. We do not need more selfless women. What we need right now is more women who have detoxed themselves so completely from the world’s expectations that they are full of nothing but themselves. What we need are women who are full of themselves. A woman who is full of herself knows and trusts herself to say and do what must be done. She lets the rest burn.” p. 96
To answer my own rhetorical question, I know that I’d more often choose my creative enterprises over “helping” if I really truly believed my creative work mattered. Deep down, I know it does. Perhaps I can live closer to that truth by noticing these reflexive patterns in real time and pausing to consider choosing another way.
How about you? What long standing patterns interfere with your ability to make choices that align with your authentic sense of purpose? What fundamental assumptions might those patterns reflect and are they true?
Onward!
Sources:
Doyle, G. (2020). Untamed. New York: Penguin Random House.