If read in order, I think my past few blog posts have all carried a similar theme. I’ve begun to recognize how similar my personality is to my father. I do not believe that I have had a similar depression, at least not for a long time. I suppose my bout with depression did happen when I was in high school, but the lessons I learned back then helped me to find balance in difficult situations. My father’s passing reinforced my ability and truly enhanced my abilities to find this balance.
I think what I recognized is that even though I can find balance, there may come a time that I overexert myself and struggle to find it at that moment. I believe that I favor my mom’s personality in terms of patience and understanding and this is a crucial part of why I believe I will always find my way back to the light. However, I have recognized a possible destructive pattern that I do need to be careful of.
In the past two weeks, I have had so many fantastic conversations about life and philosophy from about five to seven different sources. I am so grateful for everyone that I get to talk to and share these realizations with. It is very meaningful and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. What astounds me looking back is that most of these conversations were very unplanned, but each of them served as a little nudge to get me to the understanding I have right now. It is such a beautiful feeling.
Through the Law of Attraction, I can bring like-minded people to me to connect. Then it is through connection to one another that we are able to understand our true selves. I was able to find a new connection to someone’s inner wisdom this past week and it really helped me figure myself out. This colleague of mine has always been a mentor and leader of mine. Our conversation started with anxiety and then it dove into all sorts of different areas.
We both talked about our desire to use the time we have right now to develop our careers because there is no better time. We chatted about how we have these polar opposites inside of us that cause us to feel torn when making decisions sometimes. Through our discussion, I remembered the importance of focusing on both sides of our opposites. Balance is recognizing that these two halves (let’s say yin and yang) make up the whole that is us. It is through focusing on yang that we can grow our yin and through yin that we can grow our yang. Both sides are important to the whole. Using a more tangible example, it is through enjoying to be social or deepening spirituality that my career grows. You learn valuable lessons from whatever you venture into that enhances the full picture of your life.
My coworker really helped me digest these lessons by pointing out that we need to take time to smell the roses. This is what led to my breakthrough. The source of my destruction is my own perception of what I feel I must do to achieve success. I force myself to work really hard in my career because I want to have this growth. At the same time, I understand the need to deepen other areas in my life. For instance, writing on this blog, reading new books, meeting with friends, etc. I put this pressure that I need to do all of it and when I feel like I am not doing enough in one area, I beat myself up. I know the answer is to do these other things to feel true balance and because of that I don’t want to give myself a break when I can’t do it all.
The problem arises because I don’t want to let go of pushing myself in one direction to push myself in the other. I tell myself this story that when I do start to have a family, I’ll be putting less energy into work because I’ll want to get the lessons I seek from having a family. But after further introspection, would I really let myself do that? I am the type of person that gets upset at myself because I have a backlog of five books that I need to read/listen to and two Audible credits still ready to use. Am I going to be okay that my work performance falters because I want to spend time with my family instead?
No, I wouldn’t. At least, not as the person I am today. I learned that I need to be okay with dropping something for a little while. It will always be there for me to pick back up if I need to, but I can’t force myself to try and hold it up in addition to everything else I want to accomplish. This is what my dad did. He held up too much, and when it was time for him to drop some things, he didn’t want to. I think he struggled because he thought he would no longer be the person he thought himself to be and that was equally scary. I need to realize that I am not defined by these investments I make into myself. I need to be comfortable to one day be seen as a less efficient worker because it means that I am spending more time with my family.
The universe didn’t slow down to give me a break after my realization and understanding. I was instantly asked to put this teaching into practice.
Yesterday, as I started writing my blog posts, I knew that this post was going to be what tied together everything. In my mind, I did not want to leave off with the last post. Especially since the last few posts were more on a darker tone. I wanted to leave off on this high I was on after coming to an understanding about myself. I was eager to write this post. However, Caitlyn also needed me to talk to. I could feel myself getting frustrated inward. I had this perception of what I wanted to do with my blog but I also needed to be with my wife.
As we drove to get out of the house and go get some dinner, I could feel myself not letting go of writing the blog post. My inner monologue was trying to zoom through all of the plans. “After dinner, I can try to set some time aside and finish up my blog thoughts”. Then I recognized I was doing exactly what I just told myself not to. I took a deep breath. I told myself that the blog would be there when I was ready to pick it back up. Drop it for now. Be with Caitlyn.
After I surrendered, my night turned out great! I was able to be present in the moment for a nice dinner and an impromptu date night. Not only that, we talked a lot about how we are learning the lessons that we inherited from our families (will likely be a blog post someday) and also about free will and predetermination (will likely be a blog post in the next few days).
I believe part of my soul lesson is to learn how to drop things when they do not serve me. There is no point in letting myself stress out about so many different areas in life when I can just focus on one thing at a time. I hope more than anything that I can remember this lesson forever. I am sure I will forget from time to time and continue struggling, but I hope that when I do forget, there will always be a way for me to remember these answers.
