Maybe you fear succeeding because you know that once you hit the top someone will be there to throw you out of your pedestal.
Your question led me into a spiral and I went to look for answers. That is when I found an article about self-sabotage. I have years of expertise in the field.
Aristoteles wrote "Nicomachean ethics" to his son and one of the points he made is that all human actions have happiness as an end goal. I agree with him and believe we fear not achieving happiness once we succeed. It's like realizing that your unhappiness was not related to what you thought was wrong condemning you to restart your search for the root or deal with the thought that you will be unhappy forever.
I will extend my rant a bit more and dare to add to my friend Aristotle's philosophy by saying; We look for happiness through love, but we fear giving love and being rejected. Once we refrain from loving we assume that others will do the same... it is a vicious circle of not loving once we fear not being loved
Jul 18, 2024
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I think continually asking why you want something can help with this. When you do, you may realize the ”it” you want is rooted in other people: how they’ll perceive you, if you’ll be accepted by them, etc. The older I’ve gotten I’ve been better at untangling some of my desires from the ego and I think it has lead to better self-satisfaction of where I am at and where I am going. it’s also allowed me to ”let go” of some dreams. That’s sounds negative or sad but I don’t mean it so: sometimes you white-knuckle-grip an idea of yourself so hard that it destroys you! I think ”letting go” doesn’t mean things won’t happen, it means they don’t have to and that pressure alleviation can make all the difference.
That’s not to say to never let the drive of the ego take over…I’m not sure we would create art/great things without it. I guess what I’m saying is that knowing the root of our desires is a key to balance and self-assuredness.
Feb 18, 2025
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love myself, the choices I make, the people I let into my life and the lessons I learn
I want to start doing things that center what brings me joy and not what is necessarily expected of me, I feel like I get trapped on the misery wheel, when I am consistently making choices that are not good for me but do not know how to effectively take back my agency.
I feel like if I loved myself a bit more maybe then I would not feel like I deserve to be on the wheel at all, maybe I could feel like I can build my own wheel, a better wheel, a wheel built with love
May 29, 2024
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To be upfront, there are two things about myself that I love:
1. I'm tenacious AF
2. I am generally a positive person. I can handle almost any situtation, and I've had to learn to actually ask/demand more, so it's not always great.
With that being said, I've wanted to die many times. I've experienced a lot of trauma. I have PTSD for years. Things got to a point where I knew if I didn't make really drastic changes I was going to die in some way- I simply could not go on how I was.
The only thing that started to change things is when I started to learn more about myself and my reasons for doing things, being with certain people, getting into certain relationships. Part of my whole issue was that I had major trauma from childhood that I was actively avoiding. So many things happen to us as children, big and small, that we don't have the capacticy to deal with at the time. But as adults, we do.
I remember the moment where things started shifting for me. It unlocked a hunger in me to dig more and more to why I was the way I was, and why I made the choices I did, in a really deep way. I became more action oriented in facing my shit, healing it, and discovering what I was like without it. It definitely wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun most of the time, but in reality the years I spent doing that are small compared to the life I have ahead of me. I'm a whole new person, but the parts of me that are true are the same. I became a more mature, loving, responsible version of myself.
Hating your life is a sign something is not working. If you're unsure what that is, go inward. If you don't know where to start, think about the very next step. That's all you need to do. You're never locked in where you're at now forever. Don't know what you want to do for a career? Switch gears and do a completely different job. There is no timeline. You can literally do whatever you want. When I was doing a lot of the stressful inner work, I worked at animal shelters because I needed something so low stress. And I was mid 20's!!! No career goals in sight!!! Not even anywhere in my brain!!! If you're straight up hating something that is taking up most of your time... just quit it. Life is too short.
Success to me is ease and grace. I want a peaceful, joyful life (most of the time). Sometimes to figure out what you need to do, you gotta take a giant step back. Or a step to the left. Or take a big roundabout. Or maybe a quest needs to be taken...
Dec 4, 2024
Top Recs from @maristella
Jul 21, 2024
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Getting to the checkout and realizing that the price on the shelf was wrong and you actually don't think the real price is worth it, but the cashier is looking at you.
May 16, 2024
THE CHRISTMAS CAPIBARA. she is dancing some samba as well. Better then snow in my books
Nov 17, 2024