Day 209: My 'I'm Missing Out' Character

I have been walking my Fear of Missing Out.  I have previously written two blogs on the point, Day 207: Fear of Missing Out and Day 208: No More Fear of Missing Out. If you are facing a similar point, I definitely suggest listening to Missing Out - Fears & Phobias on EQAFE.

In this blog, I am going deeper into understanding my Fear of Missing Out by dissecting the I Am Missing Out Character that I've created from and in support of this fear of missing out.  In the next blog, I will be writing self-forgiveness for what comes up in this self-investigation process.

THOUGHTS

• I never get to do what I want.  
• Others are holding me back from doing what I want.  
• Life is too short to be missing out on opportunities to experience certain things in life.  
• When I'm old, I will regret not doing everything that I had wanted to do in my life.  
• So many things to do and so many people to meet - and not enough time to do it in.  
• I just want to be able to do, see, and experience what others are.  
• I wonder what fun they are having with out me - what am I missing?
• I always miss everything.
• It's not fair that others can be there and doing those things while I can't.
• If I don't do this, someone else will get to experience it and I won't.

IMAGINATIONS

• Imagine myself stuck in the house doing nothing and being bored while my friends are laughing, talking, dancing, bonding, and having a good time.
• Imagine someone telling me that I cannot go and do something that I want to do.
• Imagine myself as an old person looking back at my life and experiencing deep regret and sadness for all of the things that I did not see, do, and/or experience for myself.
• Imagine my friends standing around together, looking for me, and asking each other, "Where's Carrie?" And then one answering, "Oh, she said she couldn't come." And then another rolling their eyes as if it was my choice to not be with them - like, I am happier without them than with them - which isn't true at all.  I imagine myself explaining this to them and them not believing me.
• Imagine myself as on the outside looking in.
• Imagine someone else enjoying what I saw was my experience that I was not able to experience myself.

BACKCHATS

• "I hate it that they are having fun without me. I bet they don't even notice that I'm not there."
• "It's THEIR fault that I cannot do what I want to be doing."
• "If it weren't for the fact that I have to work and support a family, I could do whatever I want."
• "My parents ruined any opportunities that I had as a child and teenager and now the responsibilities and commitments that I have had since then have been ruining my chance to have a fulfilling life."
• "My family holds me back from having fun and doing what I want."
• "My life has been wasted."
• "They think that I don't care."
• "They think that I'm making up excuses."
• "They don't understand that there's nothing I can do."
• "Well, if they don't believe me, then screw them."
• "That was MY experience.  I don't want them to have it if I can't. No fair."

REACTIONS
Boredom, disappointment, sadness, dissatisfaction, anger, annoyance, victimized, punished, stuck, sheltered, resigned, spiteful, worried, presumptuous, depressed, powerlessness, selfishness, jealousy.

PHYSICAL BEHAVIOR

• Slumped shoulders and sad face
• Frowning
• Clenched jaws

FEARS

• That I am going to die before I get to get the things that I want to do.
• That I am going to be left out and that I will feel sad and lonely.
• That people will stop asking me to do things with them and I will feel sad and lonely.
• That I will lose opportunities.
• That I will lose my friends.
• That I will die alone and no one will notice that I'm gone.
• That I will not be 'in the know' and/or missing out on information and experiences.
• That I will never know freedom like other people do.
• That I missed out on life and now it's almost too late for me.
• That someone else will have and enjoy something that should be mine but can't have.

CONSEQUENCES

• I have been in my mind worrying about the things that I want to do before I die instead of actually living and being satisfied with the things that I have done.
• I have been paranoid about being left out or not being asked to do things because the experience of being sad and lonely has been uncomfortable.
• I have often taken on too much, stayed out too long, put a lot of physical strain on my body and have made MANY decisions from a point of self-interest rather than considering everything and everyone equally.
• I have become a 'people pleaser' and have often said, "Yes," when the best answer would have been, "No", "I'm actually busy doing something else" or "We'll see."
• I have given in to peer pressure - been easily influenced by external sources.
• I have almost always experienced myself as a victim - and within this, focused on and accepted the problem instead of taking a step back and focusing on what's really important and going for it.
• I have had a negative relationship with time - as though it has power over me and is the enemy.
• I have seen others as competition and driven myself to 'get there' or get something before they do.
• I have not wanted to share.
• I have been focusing on my needs/wants/interests first instead of equally considering the needs/wants/interests of others and myself.

Seeing the character in-front of me, I realize that one of my main current issues I am dealing with and have not directed is me being married and having a family where I have connected 'being married' and 'having a family' to 'missing out'.   I see there are other points I have connected to 'missing out' that play-out in my daily life, though, for the moment, in the next blog, I will write self-forgiveness for the apparent points and see how things go from there.

Day 208: No More Fear of Missing Out

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the idea that I am missing out on certain things in my life to exist within and as me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the idea that I'm missing out on certain things in my life to continually influence me from when I was a young child to my current time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed the idea of missing out evolve into fear overtime - where, I have attached so many negative energetic memories, experiences, and emotions to the times when I have not been able to physically participate in the same activities of others, that I have become extremely uncomfortable and somewhat paranoid when I have thought about doing something that I am interested in doing and yet, for whatever reason, I can't or may not be able to do.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become anxious, frustrated, disappointed, and angry when and as I see something that others are doing that I want to be doing to but I am not able, for whatever reason.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see how when and as I want to do something that others are doing and in this wanting, imagine myself actually doing it, when I'm not able to live it out as I had planned, hoped, and/or imagined, I have become disappointed, frustrated, and angry.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to see, realize, and understand that my mind has been interpreting whatever I place into it as thoughts and imaginations as happening or already happened - so when I have not been able to actually physically live out what I have already lived out in my mind, I have produced a lot of conflict for myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed my history with my parents saying I could not do what other kids my age were doing, to mold me into an individual that is paranoid of not getting to do what others are doing.  And within this, I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have become angry and blame everyone and everything that I see as holding me back from doing what I believe I should be doing - all the while, not seeing, realizing, nor understanding that it was me that has been coming up with the ideas of the things that I should or could be doing based on my interest and my beliefs that I must live out my interests in order to be fulfilled.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I must live out my interests - what looks fun, exciting, fascinating, and/or compelling - for me to have a full life.  And I forgive myself that I have been accepting and allowing myself to tell myself that if I do not participate in certain activities or have certain things in this life, that I will regret it - that I will be missing out and/or a part of me will be incomplete.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to not hear myself when I say things to myself like 'I'm missing out ...' or 'I am incomplete' ... or 'I regret my life' ... because instead hearing the self-communication, I have been separating myself from it and projecting it onto my external environment and the people and things within and as it.  Had I not separated myself from what was going on with me, I would have heard something a bit differently in regards to my relationship with my mind as compared to the physical living.

To be continued.

Day 207: Fear of Missing Out

THERE IS ACTUALLY A CURE.
Understand the fear, take self-responsibility for accepting and allowing the fear in the first place, change your perspective, and re-direct your decisions and physical movements to align with your utmost potential.

Something that I've noticed coming up a lot for me lately is the idea that I'm missing out on certain things in my life.  I see where this mind-set has been a part of me for a very long time, though, I didn't really start paying attention to it until recently.  So, last night I went to EQAFE and typed 'Missing Out' in the search bar and came up with several interviews that could potentially be supportive.  Based on the descriptions that were in alignment with the points I've been looking at, I decided to listen to I Fear Missing Out - Life Review and Missing Out - Fears & Phobias.  Interestingly enough, I have also been sorting out some relationship issues and see that My Perfect Partner Lives in My Mind (Part 1) - Life Review is among the interviews that popped up and I see how that could be supportive so I'll listen later.  For the moment, I'll be focusing on looking at the points that came up while listening to the first two interviews.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this in any of my previous blogs but when I was kid, my parents didn't usually allow me to do the things that my friends were doing as I was restricted to my room for months (or years) at a time, my parents would flat-out say, "No," or they would say, "Yes," and then I would get in trouble somehow and they would then tell me that I couldn't go.  I would always be hopeful that things would be different with each new opportunity that came up to be out with friends - that my parents would say, "Yes," and stick to it or make an exception to my restriction and within this, imagine all of the fun I would have.  This RARELY ever happened though.  Further, when my friends would talk about all of the fun that they had - the fun that I was not allowed to participate in - I remember seeing myself as 'left out' and I experienced a great deal of frustration and anger at both my friends and my parents because I had not been able to live out the good times that I had imagined in my mind.  And further, I saw no way that I could fix the situation and as hard as I worked on 'being good' so that I could do the things that other kids were doing, I'd usually make a mistake somewhere and the opportunity would be 'taken away'.  I blamed my parents for being too strict and not being understanding of me - and I blamed myself for always finding a way to screw things up.

Even after I moved out and became independent from my parents, I have continued with this seeing myself as 'missing out' - whether it's been in personal relationships where things don't go as awesome as I imagined and/or as I had planned them being or as a young mother not being able to do the things that others my age were doing.  I see how this fear of missing out has influencing my relationship with time, my moment-to-moment decisions, work, socializing, and even how I eat and what foods I choose to eat.

At the end of it all - my reason, excuse, and justification for not changing is that I see myself as the victim in all of this - like, I'm stuck and forced into going along with whatever my mind, others, and the world decides for me.  Like, I'm being punished over-and-over again and have no control over that which obviously, is not true.

In the next blog, I will begin the self-forgiveness process and see what comes up as I get deeper into understanding the problem and releasing myself from the pattern.

Day 206: Preparing Myself To Be Forgiving and Understanding

Here are self-correction and self-commitment statements from realizations that I've had during the past month or so after having some brief communication with someone who claimed to be famous.  During the process, I found that I had not equipped and/or prepared myself with a way of dealing with what was coming up for me on a personal level, so the the purpose of these last few blogs were to do that for myself in the event that a similar opportunity comes up again.

For context, see Day 204: How I Became Hard and Uncaring and Day 205: How I Became Hard and Uncaring - Self-Forgiveness

I commit myself to stopping myself from processing new information in my mind by when and as I am taking in or taking on new information, I stop, I breath, and write the points that are being presented.  Within this, I direct myself to side-note any fears, thoughts, backchats, reactions, and points that I am attempting to separate myself from.

When and as I see that I am becoming uncomfortable with experiences, information, and/or others beliefs, I stop and I breath.  Instead of going into my mind on these these things and cross-referencing in my mind whether something I am hearing or seeing is 'right' or 'wrong', I write down or take note of what's coming up and what I have connected that information as both a point of support for me sorting it out later and so that I can get what's coming up 'off my plate' for the moment and focus on what's going on - and not go into my thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and judgments.

I commit myself to not suppress what's coming up for thoughts and reactions - as I will make notes and in-fact be sorting them later.  I commit myself to stop attempting to disregard or take these moments of seeing and becoming equal-to myself for granted.

I commit myself to no longer allowing myself to 'get lost' in denial by stopping the blame and projection - and by taking responsibility.

I commit myself to stop attempting to be an idea that I have of myself in my mind and allow myself to sort out and come to terms with who I actually have become - and from here, look at whether or not my ideal for myself is possible and practical then apply myself accordingly to either let go of the idea or realize it for myself.

I commit myself to be here, hearing, and seeing when and as I am in communication with others by when and as I see that I am going into my mind as the thoughts come up, I stop and breath.  I remind myself that I physically cannot hear when I am in my thoughts and that my ability to see what's being said is limited.  I continue breathing and remaining here - when the communication is written, I take a moment to make notes of what's coming up -- when it's one-on-one or in a group setting, I make a 'mental note' then I bring my attention and focus back to the people with me.

I commit myself to stop demanding and/or having expectations that others take responsibility for what they're doing or what they have done by when and as I become angry at what another is doing or has been doing, I stop and breath.  I realize that I am wanting them to take responsibility for something that I have yet faced and/or taken responsibility myself for.  Further, I realize that they probably aren't aware of what they are doing as they do not have the tools and support to sort these things out like I do.  So, instead of going into anger and blame, I forgive and within this, understand.  I realize that it doesn't make everything 'okay', however, I can better assist and support myself and others from a point of understanding rather than a point of reacting.

I commit myself to stop utilizing anger as a way to separate myself from others and instead utilize anger to bring these parts of myself back to myself.

I commit myself to stop the looooooooooong play-out patterns of taking things personal - and within this, stop going through the motions of coming up with words to justify my self-beliefs and self-definitions.  I allow myself to NOT speak if I am not yet able to communicate my own living words.

I commit myself to writing out a timeline of my childhood history and to walk myself through the points that are still triggering some reactions, self-conflict, and confusion that I have been facing recently.

I commit myself to stop attempting to shake things up and/or agitate people by when and as the urge comes up to start speaking or writing information and knowledge from the starting point of shocking people, trying to screw with them or get them to see things my way, I stop and breath.  I see that I have been the one that is shaken up and agitated - and that I have been attempting to make others be the same as to abdicate my responsibility.  I realize that if I am reacting in any way, that whatever I say or do isn't going to change anything or anyone's perspective on things. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum and trying to stir things up, I will focus on stabilizing myself, becoming equal-to these things that have gotten me all wound up, changing how I have been, becoming what I will be, and expressing myself from this position of stability and change.

Day 205: How I Become Hard and Uncaring - Self-Forgiveness

In this blog I'm writing self-forgiveness for points and realizations that came up about myself during an experience while in an experience of becoming hard and uncaring toward another that was sharing themselves as well as some possible relevant information about the dark side of the entertainment industry and the world -- Day 204: How I Became Hard and Uncaring

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not, in a moment of opportunity to educate myself, see and realize how I am making information look massive, innumerable, too big, or too time consuming to sort.  And within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to attempt to process new information in my mind rather than writing out the points that I am seeing and/or are being presented.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be uncomfortable with and thus separate myself from what I am hearing and within this, allow myself to to go into my thoughts with my beliefs, judgments and insecurities.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to then, when I go into my thoughts with my beliefs, judgments, and insecurities, tell myself that the beliefs, judgments and insecurities coming up are Not Me or are not Who I Am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to disregard the fears, thoughts, beliefs, judgments, insecurities, and self-definitions that come up when I am working on something new and/or am in communication with others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress the emotions and feelings that come up when and as I have gone into reactions.  And I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to suppress my emotions and feelings by telling myself that I do not have time or that I will get to it later - instead of directing myself to make a note of it so that I can sort through what's coming up when I do have the time

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to get lost in denial - where, because when I have been in this denial of the truth of myself and trying to force myself to be someone that I'm not, I have gotten lost in not knowing who I really am or what I could be doing that is best.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to project my fears, thoughts, beliefs, judgments, and insecurities onto others - as if they belong to someone else and not to me.  Within this, I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to attempt to separate myself from my fears, thoughts, beliefs, judgments and insecurities.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to attempt to suppress thoughts like, "It's because of them that I am this way, " or, "It's because of them that the world is the way it is," instead of self-forgiving myself when and as these thoughts come up - regardless of whether or not I'm aware they are are bullshit - and take responsibility for them just the same.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to remind myself that when I am in my mind and in my thoughts, that I can not hear what's going on outside of me.  And I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that being in my mind and my thoughts is the very same reason why I have not been able to see.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become angry with another and demand in my mind that they must take responsibility for what they have done - rather than taking responsibility for what I have accepted and allowed, letting go of the anger, and allowing myself to see/hear what another is saying/writing/showing.

And I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to utilize anger as a means to keep myself separate from others and to not allow myself to get to know them, understand them, be gentle with them, and care for them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take what was shared and make it personal - and within this taking it personal and wanting it to stop, I went through words, phrases, quotes, beliefs, and self-definitions that I have stored as information and knowledge - not an expression of me, and attempted to express the knowledge and information as Being Who I Am.  Here, I forgot that: when I have been making things personal, reacting, and going into my Ego, that it has been impossible to express myself in a fluid, genuine way.

I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to take the time to write out my childhood history and experiences, my real beliefs about myself, my conflicts with myself and my confusion.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to beliefs that I must shake things up in the world - that I must agitate things - and within this take prompts from what I can come up with in my mind from past experiences, information, and knowledge and attempt to change things in that way.  I realize that perhaps it works for some but it doesn't work for me.  I also realize realize that I am attempting to be/live out someone else's expression instead of allowing and trusting myself to be/live out my own.

Day 204: How I Become Hard and Uncaring

This past week, I had the opportunity to communicate with someone that works in the entertainment industry and is very famous.  The purpose of this discussion was to expose the dark side of this world and to show how celebrities are used, manipulated, abused and expected to participate in specific actions to ensure their success, their personal wealth, and for some, their survival and the survival of the people that they care about.  For themselves, they said this was a healing process - that they were breaking the rules - though, for them it was worth it to communicate with the people outside of the world that they exist in as it reminded them of a time when they were normal and the process assisted them to re-align themselves with their humanity.  They said that they were in a unique position of having a group of others around that protected them in a way.

For me, the things that I heard and was shown seem massive.  Like, there are an innumerable amount of points to be sorted out and directed. However, I see how I drive myself when researching new connections and within this, how I do not slow down and support myself with my process through writing - so obviously, I am processing most of this information in my mind which is going to make it seem too big and time consuming to sort through.

More importantly though, I must be self-honest and share that I went into this with some judgments and insecurities.  See, even though I was participating and reminding myself to be open to what was being said and to not make it personal, I saw all of these thoughts about myself running in the background - most (if not all) of which, I attempted to suppress with comforting words like, "This is not me coming through," or, "I am this way, not that that way," or "I am beyond seeing and experiencing myself like this ..."  

I was lost in denial.  So much in-fact that I was determined to show how the personal points that were coming up for me were not actually about me but about something else or something that someone was doing - who they are, how they got to who, what, and where they are, and how the system works.  

I eventually had become angry from all of this and found that I was wanting for this famous individual to take responsibility for what they had done, participated in, and perpetuated.  The consequence of my reactions, suppression, and projections is that my ability to hear and make a connection had been compromised.  I stopped communicating fluidly, I physically felt hardened, and my words became short and sharp.

My head started to hurt which is a flag-point that I use to show myself that I am too much in my thoughts and that I am not getting anywhere by trying to process or sort through what's going on.  For me, it's a reminder to stop participating with the thoughts until I am able to write.  So, the thoughts would come up and I would say, "No.  This is not getting me anywhere," and I then went about arranging myself some space and time to write in my personal journal as these were the points that kept coming up again and again and again - how I was taking this whole thing personal and attempting to pin it on someone or something else and trying to come up with words, phrases, quotes, beliefs, or self-definitions that would make it NOT about me.

I sat down with my journal and I wrote out every thought that was running rampant in mind.  These are some things that I have not wanted to face - childhood experiences, my real beliefs about myself, and how I have always allowed these experiences and beliefs to place me in conflict with myself, confuse, influence, and change who/what I am in any given moment.

Later, when I returned to the discussion and reviewed what had been shared, I saw so many points that I had missed as I was in my thoughts and then reacting. I see that I was fortunate that the entire discussion has been documented on a public platform on the internet - if it had not been, and I had been face-to-face, I would have missed an opportunity to fully understand the presenter and what was being presented.

I also found that when I was no longer in my thoughts nor on the defense in my Ego, that I was able to be more gentle, genuine, and caring.  So, points that I saw were important for me to make were well-received. From this,  I see that I also must stop giving in to this idea that I have to get into places and shake people up which is something that I have been doing for a long time with the belief that it works when in reality it does not.

Day 203: Equalizing Stability

Recently, I observed one individual threaten, bully, and attempt to diminish another. The one on the receiving end of this attack, saw that it was their responsibility to stand up, face, and speak out a response - apparently, it is a part of their culture to do so where if someone 'calls them out', it is expected that they answer the call.

I saw this action as being admirable and as something that we all could be developing for ourselves. 

However, as the situation unfolded I saw that the one on the receiving end saw themselves as safe from their attacker - they have money and they have placed themselves into the system in such a way that they have become something like 'untouchable'.  Which was a fascinating thing to witness - how one in an actual position of authority directs themselves when faced with conflict.

Unfortunately, the element that did not exist was understanding and care. See, because the responder had still taken it personally that they were being bullied, they reacted. And in this state of reaction, they began threatening with greater measure.

What I realized from this is that even though someone is in a position of authority, has standing, and seems to be doing great things in the world, does not make them an individual that will always handle others in a way that is best. To many, it may be an obvious point - for myself, I have had the tendency to look up to others that I have seen as having a strong presence, voice, and an unshakable belief of themselves - and within this ignoring or accepting the details and consequences of our individual actions and words.

I also see clearly how we are all the same in how we're dealing with things. How our family, our education, our culture, our positions of responsibility in the world and our individual experiences - regardless if these things are positive or negative - have not been changing how we systematically process and respond to each other and our external environment. 

In this case, we see the same exact programming playing out of seeing others as separate from ourselves, seeing how they are in the wrong, seeing how they are doing something to us, seeing that we must defend ourselves, our honor, and our self-definitions and within this recreating the exact same war between us that we're working on stopping outside of us.

Don't you see? That until we stop this programming by becoming people that actually understand and care for ourselves and each other, that these battles and wars will continue to manifest? So, you can invest all your time, your energy and your money into stopping the evil that exists in this world but in the end, it will have been all for nothing and probably go right back to the way that it was because while we were focusing on stabilizing our external world, we did not see what was required to be stabilized in our inner and inter worlds.

A solution would be to stop ourselves from reacting which is easier to do when we direct ourselves to see with understanding rather than seeing something as personal. Further, it would be best in the long-run to take a look at our cultures and the beliefs that have been entrained into us about how we should or should not handle ourselves and others. Is it truly beneficial to hold onto these things when we see throughout time that it improves nothing? That there is always a winner and a loser? Somone with power and someone without? Do we want to continue repeating patterns when we realize that patterns produce the same results?

In closing, I propose that if we do in-fact dedicate ourselves to changing and creating stability in this world, that we utilize equal resources to changing and stabilizing ourselves and each other.