'Aint All About You

Life's a journey of discovery, adventure, challenge and learning, isn't it?

I mean, sure, not ALL the time. That would be unrealistic, not to mention utterly exhausting! Sometimes we can and should have periods of sitting back and just letting it all unfold around us, or simply chilling out and switching off for a while. What I'm saying is that when we're truly living at our best, we're constantly having to work on thinking about things, problem-solving, reflecting and rethinking our positions on stuff.

I firmly believe that often the only really major mistake people make in their lives is to get to a place where they believe they 'know it all' already, or at least they feel they no longer need to learn or change anything, and they stop making the effort to keep on adapting their thinking as they continue through life. At best that way leads invariably to stagnation -  getting 'set in your ways' - and at worst to becoming so completely out of touch with the world and other people that narrow-mindedness, prejudice and various neurotic thinking patterns set in. The nature of human entropy - the fact that our thinking becomes out of touch with reality if not continuously challenged - dictates this to be inevitable anyway.

The work of self-analysis, self-awareness, self-discipline, self-improvement and self-actualisation, whilst absolutely a positive and I believe essential ongoing process we should all be doing, is by it's very nature a selfish thing. The clue is in the name, right! This is what leads me to write this piece. There are, just as with anything else one does in life, pitfalls to this otherwise wholly positive and beneficial process. There is always the danger that in our work on 'the self' we can become too self-absorbed. Take my journey for instance. I hear it often, usually from the lips of my amazingly wise and incredibly patient wife, and I've learnt to listen and take heed..

"It's not always all about you sweetie."

What sage words of advice!

My mental health journey has invariably led me to spending inordinate amounts of time and energy thinking and talking about myself - usually to just about anyone and everyone who will listen. One of my particular and unique issues has always been the sense of not being listened to by key others, at the key moments in life when it was essential for my growth and continued nurture. Although I have finally come to a resolution on this, it still has an affect on my everyday life, and no doubt it always will be one of my weaknesses. I therefore have to always be conscious and mindful of the fact that I can get a bit selfish and bang on about myself too much sometimes.

Different mental illnesses and neuroses, and the stresses and strains that people suffer and struggle with, short and long term, cause differing levels of selfishness and predication towards this 'self-absorbed' tendency. I do believe, however, that this concept is something which is probably universally applicable to the human experience. We don't need to be a basket case, or even 'going through the ringer' to fall into the trap of allowing things to become 'all about us', at the expense of others. We can be the very model of stability and 'totally sound of mind', yet still fall into the 'self self self' trap. After all, we're each of us essentially alone inside our minds, within our conscious thinking, are we not? It can get crammed in there, and it can get toxic so easily if we fail to be sufficiently self-aware.

I don't think it needs to be a huge deal for us to combat this tendency towards self-absorption either. Changing our mindsets, dealing with problems and pain in life, striving to be better - all this requires continuous and often hard work. Accepted. But I don't accept that it is necessarily such a difficult thing to avoid becoming selfish throughout the process of our work on the self. If we are mindful of the tendency to neglect the rights, needs and feelings of others in our lives, we can very much reduce and hopefully negate the possibility of it happening too much, or indeed at all.

It's not perfection we're striving for ultimately, just improvement - and continued awareness that other people's needs exist beyond our inner worlds, and we must strike a balance between our own requirements for peace of mind, stability, well being and progress in life, and that of the other people around us.



Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.