What about me? (again)

[SpirosGyrosAU]

Hi,

I believe that I've lost all hope with the world.

All I can do is laugh at the moment but this is my story...

I've had different sorts on problems throughout my upbringing, ranging from speech problems (trouble communicating my ideas) to confidence problems (speaking to others and standing my ground as an example).

I'm in my late twenties and I believe I've lost touch with the person I used to be and right now I'm stuck with nowhere to go. I had so many dreams on different paths to take and as I get older I'm afraid that if I take the wrong path then I'll loose out on the other paths.

Right now I live far away from my family but I do intend on living with my family again as I believe it's a good thing being close to your family (even though sometimes we don't seem eye to eye on matters).

I've lost clarity when trying to say someone and I don't seem to have that spark when speaking like I used to speak (I'm not sure I ever had that spark to begin with in the first place).

I lay here every night thinking what to do with my life and wanting to better our society somehow but I know the realities on my situation is that I could be starting a family soon.

I've tried different meditation techniques into to trying to receive some clarity in finding out who I am, what I want to do with my life at this stage in my life, why do I keep finding myself in bad situations (always seems to be financial), What am I interested in? - hobbies and such, etc.

I've read two books on two famous leaders and on how they inspire others by their vision but I don't believe I'll ever be that person due to the fact on how I've been brought up in this life (with the issues that I've experienced over the years).

I work in an industry where it's very cut-throat and very political ( in a office politics sense) and I find that I'm always in the middle of it even though I try my best to do the right thing. I always see others get promoted whilst I stay in the same role. I'm all for loyalty but I'm not sure how much my loyalty can stand when I see these specific issues in my life.

My immediate family seems to be comparing me to my friends, and their friends but saying that they have built their lives (i.e. apartments, houses, etc) but I haven't built mine (due to the fact that I've lived out of home since I was 18).

My best friend also past away a couple of years ago and although I didn't appear hurt on the outside, on the inside was a different story. He died young and I thought to myself what's the point on living if you're not happy with your life when you die. Once I thought this was, I started enjoying my life at great financial expense to myself yet I'm enjoying it at the moment.
It's hard to explain this to anyone else but this is how I feel yet at the current moment, whatever I do, I don't feel great about it just in a rush of doing it to say it's done.

I've had some great financial blunders in my time with investing at the wrong time to buying property that ended up turning into a money pit. So all the money I've saved and worked for went nowhere and all I have to show for it is the experience - hurtful experience that I've endured - the only way I get through it is by laughing about it and moving on.

I'm always nice to my friends and always willing to help out with their issues yet when I was young I felt that I was being used for my skills so I can help them and since I'm far away from home I've stopped receiving any phone calls from those friends.

My vocabulary still doesn't seem to be the greatest since my last post so all in all I seem to be in a cross roads of my life (in Australia) leading to somewhere random (where I don't know about yet).

I haven't been big on politics on religion as they have never seemed to help me out when I needed them the most so I've let myself slide away from these two critical areas.

I was even thinking about studying again whilst working yet I think I might be running myself to the ground if I take this approach and I'm not even sure that I want to do the specific course as I believe the leadership within me in inept -taking charge and leading people is nowhere to be found yet I can see younger people who are stronger in these areas then me and I don't think doing a course will fix it for me).

I've tried other things like learning about other topics, in different areas (Toastmasters, History, etc) yet i can't find one that is really suited to me. I'm still yet to find my passion in my hobbies as I have no idea where or what to look at even though I've tried many things. i seem to start someone and loose interest quite easily to it and move on to something else. One reason why I've stopped is information overload with learning the same things yet differently as specific people believe that's the best approach, etc.

The only great thing in my life in my partner (my job is fine by I'm loosing my satisfaction to it due to the fact that I believe I'm becoming complacent in the role - even though I've changed roles recently). My partner seems to support me and has traveled a long way to be with me in supporting me with my work, etc. I'm scared though that the financial strain and family strain might eventually be too much and she will move away in frustration. I don't believe this will happen but the thought does cross my mind occasionally.

As you can see my thoughts are all over the place, and this is how I feel and think, randomly, so what person am I? who can I become? am I a logical person? will I have the clarity I desire? will I just be another worker in the rat race without nothing more to give to society? why are we placed on this earth if we can't find our way?

Regards,

SG

[James81]

“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” --Jacob Riis

Yours is a case of beliefs. You don't change because you don't believe you can change. Look at your opening sentence to this thread. Look throughout your own post, which is riddled with beliefs about yourself that are negative and limiting. Examine your beliefs and discard the ones that aren't useful. How? When you catch yourself telling yourself one of those negative beliefs, stop yourself midthought and tell yourself a different belief (even if you don't believe it). The idea is more to get you to stop thinking that old negative belief moreso than it is to get you thinking the new one. Interupt that pattern any way you know how.

Stop focusing on all your past failures and problems and start accentauting your strength. You have to be good at something. Or at the very least, there has to be things you enjoy doing that you COULD get good at if you just took the time to get good at them.

[cacheborn]

Hello SG,
I feel your pain. I feel for people going through tough times ćos I was there once. believe me, you can make it. You have to STOP focusing on the negative. When you think of future, try to imagine things going positively for you. remember, the positivity has to start from within and not from the circumstances, which is the normal belief. Try to talk things over with your partner.
You ask why are we placed on this earth if we cannot find our way? You are placed in that situation so that you can find a way. And the things that you learn in order to find the way make you stronger in the long run.
Don't give up! No matter how bad the situation, there is always, always a way.
Good luck!

[ellie]

Oh Spiros you sound like me two years ago. Even the writing thing, speech, confidence thing...me to a tee! If you look at my first post on here, I wrote something like, "I'm not very good at writing".

But there is hope my friend!

I figured out it was all utter crap! But I think I understand why I did it to myself...basically it was my inner self, trying to stop me from doing things that weren't the real me. I was not ballsy enough at the time to really look deep within myself and be selfish enough to ask myself what I really wanted to do in life. If I had looked deep within, I would of realised that I just hated working for other people, that I liked creative freedom and I would be stupid to waste all my talents on making money for other people. So my inner self kind of took control and did things to self sabotage me. I didn't understand at the time why I kept on putting myself down. I just thought I was worthless and I had a curse of some sort. But now I look back and it was basically a way for me to manipulate my mind. This is where I have come to realise that there is more going on with our mind than we realise. Our "inner something" takes over when we can't verberlise out loud what we want.

So for example I would tell myself I was the worst writer in the world and so I could never get a job, which required any writing. Unfortunately, all the jobs in my field require good writing skills to write up proposals, but because "I was not good at writing" it canceled out most jobs for me. But then of course there were the jobs that required speaking as well, now I could barely pick up a phone, let alone speak to people about ideas, so that crossed out quite a few other jobs in my field.Then there was the problem with me talking to people in high up authority, I would crumble at the knees when someone powerful was in front of me. But then I thought I have to do something what about a working a cafe...nope can't add and subtract quickly enough (yep I did the same thing as you). It's true I can't add and subtract quickly, and never learnt any of my times tables. But there's a reason I don't have those skills...they just never interested me I'm the type of person, that if it just doesn't interest me I just wont bother with it no matter what. I'm fine with being not good at maths...don't really need those skills anyway for what I do.

So basically I came to the conclusion that I just wouldn't be able to work for anyone because they would soon realise I was an absolute loser with no skills at all.
But the fact is that's not that case I have many skills, and good ones at that. Too many good skills that would be wasted working for others. I would only able to utelise a fraction on my skills and enjoyment in working for others.

I'm not sure if a lot of how you feel, is because of your work situation...for me it was. So that's why I am talking about it from a workplace perspective.

I will leave you with two questions my friend, Spiros do you hate authority and have you ever had an entrepreneurial mindset?

If you do have an entrepreneurial mindset, your post suggest you might as you say you jump from one thing to another and lose interest with things quite quickly. It could be stress or it could be because your entrepreneurial. If you do have entrepreneurial tendencies then read this book Amazon.com: Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love (9781594863035): Barbara Sher: Books I'm happy to post you my copy if it helps.

Oh and I am a fellow Aussie too

[SpirosGyrosAU]

Ellie, James81, and cacheborn...

Thank you for your heart-felt replies to my situation.

I have tried to find my inner-self but as you all say, it seems to be hidden or lost with my failures or upbringing/programming as a child.

A couple of weeks ago I came to the conclusion that when a person reaches adulthood, especially when they are hitting '30', then it will be extremely difficult to change thoughts, habits, mannerisms that have been programmed into them as children.

I thought no matter what sort of training I do that deep within my mind, those same behaviors will come out and stop me in my tracks. I thought it was like this... As an example, I've been training to lead, yet I could follow all the rules in the book about leadership and how to deal with subordinates, yet when push comes to shove, when the multi-million dollar question is asked - which could be relating to an obstacle or disagreement with said subordinate, then deep within me I won't be able to use those skills and revert to my basic instincts which would be my thoughts, habits, behaviors, and mannerisms, that I've grown up with throughout the years.

Ellie, I'm exactly the same with my said 'maths' skills. I've never had time to acquire them as I was never interested in it yet for myself I find it sometimes unnerving when someone prompts me with a basic calculation which I can't answer.

James81, quite an inspirational quote I must say. How could one re-program themselves to start fresh or feel like they are reborn? Some of my friends have had the opportunities to excel in certain areas and I believe it was to them dedicating themselves to those areas or that they had the confidence to do it. So how can I do away with all this bad programming / belief structure in my head? Should I try and write down each bad belief that comes to mind so I can start noticing all of my negative beliefs?

cacheborn, I'll try my best! I feel like I've lost my way and I'm stuck in an endless maze in trying to get out of it and back on the 'yellow brick road'. Would constantly thinking of positive thoughts allow me to find my inner purpose? I've always enjoying the interactions with people in my role and previous roles and I do enjoy helping people out with their problems (in regards to my profession) yet I do generally enjoy doing those things. When I was younger, I would always go out of my way to meet up with a friend, (even if it brought inconvenience to my family) just to have a chat and have that 'Earthly' interaction with the world.

Ellie, that's exactly how I feel at the moment when reading your post. I can't seem to vocalize what I'm feeling or what I want. How did you find your true purpose (when you felt the way you did) and how did you know it was what you wanted? In answer to your questions, that's yes for the first and leaving-towards-yes for the second. I've always hated the bureaucracy or the person-handling of employees when dealing with specific issues. What would institute those tenancies so I can answer the second questions better as I don't believe it's stress - well I hope not.

SG.

[ellie]

Spiros if you are anyway like me, these emotions you feel will be there for a while.
At some point you will get so low, that you will end up letting all your worries and concerns go, just like you said in your OP ..."and just laugh about it all".
But ultimately I believe those feelings are there to guide you in the right direction, even if you can't see it right now. So you very lucky that you are into Personal Development, because people that are into PD become highly aware about things and their purpose is to discover their true self.

What I would start do and what helped me, is to verbalise my concerns that happen to me on a daily basis.

So if I had a bad day at work, I would drive back in my car (alone) and verbalise out loud what I was feeling. So it be something like, "I hate it how Jack treats me like an imbecile in front of others at work, why does he do that to me?", then you might say something like, "you know the real reason I am annoyed, is Jack is really not that smart, he is lazy and does no work, but what is good at is manipulating people to believing he is good at his job, so I am happy that I am a better person than him"

When you start verbalising your thoughts out loud, your confidence and your convictions grow and you start to see things for how they really are, and you believe more in your intuition and yourself. You become stronger and closer to your true self.

Well I would suggest looking at the book Refuse to Choose and see if any of the writers suggestion resonates with you, but before I read that book what really made it clear that I was enterepenur was Yaro Stark's blog Internet Business Blog - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak when I started listening to some of the interviews he conducted I resonated so much with what a lot of them were saying. A lot of them said the same things that I would say to myself...never good working for others, always had lots of ideas but got bored of them, had all these skills but never really utelised them yada, yada. Actually shoemoney's interview was the one that did it for me, his personality in some respects was a lot like mine, like he wasn't great a school because he was only interested in things that interested him and that he was a very hands on person Podcast: How Did Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker Get To Where He Is Today? - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak Through that whole interview I was going "OMG that's me" and it was a like a light bulb moment.

I've always had entrepreneurial tendencies I just never really embraced them or verbalized that that was something I would want to do, as I just thought it wasn't possible to do that sort of thing.

Since verbalising that I am an entrepreneur and putting my ideas into action, I have had the best time. I get so excited seeing my ideas turning into actual projects. Everyday I wake-up focussed on my ideas and putting them into action and at the end of the day I am still excited. This is what gets me going.

So you can change, I am living proof...it's just wether you are strong enough and wise enough to take the journey...most people are not, those that are...well are really lucky

[James81]

Originally Posted by SpirosGyrosAU

James81, quite an inspirational quote I must say. How could one re-program themselves to start fresh or feel like they are reborn? Some of my friends have had the opportunities to excel in certain areas and I believe it was to them dedicating themselves to those areas or that they had the confidence to do it. So how can I do away with all this bad programming / belief structure in my head? Should I try and write down each bad belief that comes to mind so I can start noticing all of my negative beliefs?

You're asking the wrong questions.

Ask the right questions. Instead of asking how you can get rid of the bad stuff you don't like about yourself, ask yourself how you can obtain the good stuff that you do like.