Are you trying to make a change in your life? Acknowledged some bad habits and are doing the work to address their sources and make adjustments to overcome them?
There’s something that’s not in the “self-improvement” manual that I think you should know.
There are people in your periphery who are going to be hard-pressed to acknowledge that you’ve changed. I’m not talking about those closest to you who are witnessing your efforts, cheering you on, and providing support along the way…
…I mean the ones that you call “friends” but are really more like acquaintances. These are people in your life you would not call upon if your car broke down at 3am, but you would have a conversation with them at a party.
They took a mental picture of you back when you first met, and filed it away in a folder with your name on it. That is who you are to them – no nuance, no complexity. You may be a three dimensional object but you are static, not dynamic.
This is a normal thing. You do it to people all the time. There was a woman when I was in my 20s who was in her late 30s that didn’t realize I’d overheard her when she said to a mutual friend “I don’t want phi to tag along, She’ll take all the attention away from us” when we were making plans to go out dancing in a group. Later that afternoon, she feigned a migraine and told me our plans were cancelled. I filed her away as “jealous, petty, insecure, lying bitch.”
I’ve not seen nor heard from her in 20 years. In that time she might have changed completely and become the sweetest, most charitable, and kind-hearted grandmama you’d ever meet – but I wouldn’t know it. If I were to run into her today I still think of her as the woman who lied to me because she’d created a competition in her mind that wasn’t there.
“Ok, so people won’t believe I’ve changed. Who cares? I don’t care what they think.”
Well, to an extent, yeah. Except for a lot of us, our self-worth and self-acceptance is wrapped up in how others treat us. Many of us are programmed to seek validation from others in order to feel secure about ourselves. What happens when there are a bunch of people who still treat you like you’re the town drunk when you’ve been six months sober?
You start to feel like that hard work you’ve put into self-improvement has no payoff.
THAT’S what’s not in the manual.
The idea of self-validating *is* in the manual; at least, it was in mine. I was given that piece of information early on by someone who was a friend and is now in my periphery. He said I had to learn to stop seeking external validation.
I didn’t understand why, or how to do it – but I did know that it was part of the changes I would have to make. What I didn’t know is that nearly every one of my successes now can be traced back to my learning to self-validate. To disassociate my self worth from the value set OTHERS placed on me.
It’s not the same as saying “I don’t care what people think.” I do care. I take it into consideration when I look at myself and ask “are they right?”
If I believe they are, then I ask “am I okay with that?”
And if I’m not, then I’ve got a new challenge to take on.
polyammering 