What I find hard to accept: Letting go of the need to always be right and unconditional surrender
What about yourself do you have trouble accepting or acknowledging and why?
This is going to sound a bit self-centered...I know...but I've had a hard time processing at times that I'm not right about everything, it's funny how sometimes, what defines us the most is what we find the hardest to see or accept about ourselves.
For a long time, if someone had asked me this question that @galenkp asks us, I probably would have rambled on with superficial answers. But with time, or rather, with the maturity that the years give you -and some uncomfortable situations, why deny it 🙈-, I have come to this answer that, although it can be liberating, also challenges me constantly, because it also costs a lot to let go of patterns, especially if you already have a whole life behaving in one way.
I can't say for sure now if that attitude was just for ego, if it was a way to disguise some insecurity, or if my teaching training inclined me to that, or simply responded to the way I was raised in the plain, where parents said the “holy word” that had to be fulfilled without question or counter-argument. It is probably a sum of all these possibilities. What is certain is that this has brought me a few situations at a relational level. Today I recognize that my family has had a lot of love and patience for me because of it.
I think where it has affected me the most is in my relationship with my daughters, sometimes they feel that I meddle in their things and I know that they avoid me on many occasions or do not involve me so that I do not give my opinion. This makes me very uncomfortable, because I want to help and be helpful, but my stubbornness has prevented me from being a little more humble in recognizing that there are other valid points of view, and that I do not have the “absolute truth” up my sleeve, and this alienates me from people.
I am not like I used to be, I have learned to give space, I wait (impatiently 😅) to be asked, and I try not to impose myself, I know that I still need to work more on all this.
Another thing that has been hard for me to digest is that it is not always right to give everything to others unconditionally. Sounds contradictory, doesn't it? We have been taught that giving is noble, that generosity is a virtue. And it is, no doubt. But I have learned that there is a fine line between generosity and self-abandonment. In my eagerness to help, to be present, to not disappoint, I often forgot my own limits, my own needs.
Understanding that setting limits is not selfishness, but self-care, has been a transformative revelation. Learning to say "no" without guilt, to prioritize my well-being without feeling that I am failing others, is also a path under construction. It is to understand that in order to be able to offer the best of myself, I must first be well, complete and with my own needs met.
In short, these are virtues that have distinguished me all my life, and at the same time, they are my great working themes. It took me a long time to see it, I hope to be in time to change certain traces of the past.
This has been my response to the: Weekend-Engagement topics: WEEK 264
Thanks for reading and for your support! 🤗
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