See the first post in this series here.
I have a tendency to be outside myself. While I am being, enjoying, doing, there is generally some other part of me that is simply observing.
While this certainly grants me perspective, there is also the self-protective aspect of it. If I’m not fully present, I can’t fully internalize any conflicts. If I’m not in the moment, engaged with my whole heart and mind, failure doesn’t hurt so bad. If can withhold just a little of myself from the world, I will never get sucked into a maelstrom of misery and suffering.
On the other hand, there are many joys that I am too cerebral to appreciate fully. I am sometimes too cool to attract exciting possibilities. I am too distant from the process to engage in wild success.
I am working on that.
It seems so simple
I am an enthusiastic person, engaged in pushing my boundaries. But.
There seems to be a firewall. Some sort of failsafe.
Something that says, “Look here, dear one. I know you love to throw yourself into new challenges. I know you don’t always look before you leap, and sometimes stubborn pride and misplaced sense of responsibility digs you deeper than you ought to go. It’s great that you will still push those limits, even though it seems a little dumb. After all, some really cool things happen sometimes after all seems lost.”
I think the of the firewall of kind of a big sister. She’s the one who watches dispassionately and lets me screws up, but then also helps perform the debriefing.
“So, what went wrong?”
“What could you have done differently?”
“Did you learn something here?”
“Was there something you overlooked that was important?”
“What are some other ways you could interpret the data set?”
These are good skills. There’s no disputing that. Goodness knows people come to me to help them learn how to do exactly this. But ^those^ skills? I’ve got them nailed. Now I have to learn the skill of giving over completely.
How about you? Do you have a certain skill or set of skills that you know people would kill for, but you actually need to develop the opposite? Share in the comments!
Other posts in this series:
Engage Fully
[ssbp]
