There is no use keeping to the agreement for the sake of it if all I'm doing is just giving the image that I'm keeping up to it. I gave the agreement that I'll not go for the course until I feel that I don't need it already. But the past few days I kept thinking about all the various possibilities if I could go for the course. But know what, those are fantasies. Those are merely my own imagination and there is no use thinking about all the what-ifs. If I am committed to the agreement I would stick with it mentally. That would mean taking away all the fantasies and start living my life in real. What does that mean? This means I will empower myself, develop myself in ways that will benefit me. Wishful thinking will hardly get me anywhere. I need to act.
Anyway, for those who know, I've recently gone through the Asiaworks basic course. I have benefitted immensely from it. A few important lessons I have learnt:
1) Honesty to myself. So many a times I try to keep up an image of myself, but I increasingly lose touch with who I really am and who I really want to be. So honesty to myself and others is the way to increase my self awareness and esteem. Associated with honesty is openness. Am I open to different possibilities? This is something that I need to cultivate.
2) I have so much latent energy within me. I have the power for achieving many things that I want. I just need to will it and believe that it can be tapped on. One way to capitalize on it is to take risks, as I had in the past week. There are so many things in life that I dare not do, people that I dare not confront, issues I dare not face. But how powerful I saw myself when I took the big step to face the truth. There is, however, still one hurdle that I just cannot risk - my relationship. It is important to me. So when what I want is in conflict with my relationship, I still dare not risk it.
3) Commitment and responsibility. Participating 100% at all times and being responsible for my actions and choices really increases my confidence. I noticed how often I victimize myself in so many situations, and how my confidence has been dwindling since. But actually, those are all choices that I made. Knowing that I had a choice, and I could make a choice immediately opens up so much possibilities for myself. Being responsible means that, I made the choice, and so I will accept whatever outcome, including any emotional or mental outcome. Again, it is about choosing how to view my outcome - optimistically or pessimistically? Of course, either way will have great payoffs, it is just what I want.
For example, I can say that I am victimized by schoolwork. I feel helpless against the tide of deadlines, and there is always so much work to do. What do I gain by feeling this way? I gain other people's understanding, sympathy, and I can feel lazy, because all these work are forced upon me. I need not be responsible for the lousy results I get, because 'there were too many deadlines for me to handle'. But what is lost in return? I lose confidence in my ability to handle a huge amount of work. I lose interest in my studies, and I don't get the results I want. If I just change the perspective, I'll accept fully that I chose to study, I chose the modules, I chose to commit myself to the CCAs, and I chose to procrastinate till the last minute when all the deadlines are coming. So I am responsible for myself. I really cannot blame the external circumstances, but myself. With that understanding, I feel more urgent to take action now, for my assignments and my deadlines. And when I accomplish them, I know it is really up to me to make the difference. Confidence increases, and I feel more fulfilled and interested in life.
4) There are some things that I did not get out of this course as well. It is not the course, but I admit that I haven't been reflecting deeply enough. In some ways, the past few days felt quite surreal. Even though the course emphasized that everything we go through in there is also a part of life, it cannot be denied that the environment there is a created one, so that I can feel safe to take risks, feel secure to share. I am a person who likes to live in my fantasies and imagination, and so I fit right in. But after I came out and start to interact with real people, including WL, the reaction they(mainly he) gave me was, "you're brainwashed, you're obsessed". I could not adapt readily into the real life I was living, such that it created very negative results in terms of my relationship. Ironically, one of my purposes for going for the course was to improve my relationship with WL, but after I came out, we had a major quarrel, so major that he brought up break up. He felt that he became less important after I committed to the course, and I am so caught up with the course that I failed to consider other people's feelings.
At that point, I admit that I was caught up in the mentality that I just want to get what I want, and if this is not getting to where I wanna go, I rather let go. At that point, I wanted to improve myself through the course, and he was 'getting in the way'. I actually didn't feel anything even when he wanted break up. Even though I knew what I wanted, I also knew I didn't want to break up. Hence the conflict in what I wanted came in. It was until he repeated stressed that, "You don't know how serious is this. I brought up break up and yet you didn't feel anything", that I was suddenly aware that I didn't feel anything. And I was also suddenly aware that, in pursuing what I want, I really failed to respect what other people wanted, and even though he was important to me, I didn't care about how he felt.
Actually thinking back, I have this thought. I may be wrong, and so I'll not let this thought confine my actions and affection for him. He is actually very insecure about this relationship. Time and again, I see that happening. Many a times, the result is that he'll get really angry for some of the things I do or didn't do, and in a very emotionally violent way, try to get me to change. When I didn't he also got less security cos he saw my lack of change as a sign that he is not important. A few times already, he defiantly expressed his distrust in me, and they are evident in his actions (less willing to look at me, less affection). I want him to understand that wanting me to change might be a form of wanting to control. I may have triggered his anger, but his anger is entirely his, cos another person experiencing the same action from me might not get so angry. As long as he owns his emotions, he may realize that actually, a relationship is not just about interaction between two people, it is very much about individual reactions too. How he reacts to me, and his experience of me is not necessarily really me. But if he believes that I am what he sees, his road in this relationship is a self-defeating one. Cos in his mind, I am the person that he cannot trust, and no matter what I do, he'll only pick out the evidence to support his mental image of me. But who he is really not trusting is himself.
Of course, I am also responsible, since I had always avoided the issue by issuing a quick apology and hoping that things will solve themselves. So I had let certain issues snowballed, and the bigger it got, the more fearful I got about dealing with them. I was so afraid of him getting angry, and this in turns feeds my insecurities about myself. It is a viscious cycle actually, cos the more I avoided, the less confident I got, and I began to form belief that I was incompetent to change. With that strong belief that I could never change, I never did. Of course this led to the more times that he gets angry with me, and I avoid, etc etc. And I am also responsible for creating my untrustworthy image in his head. What I can do, is to be trustworthy. Give him enough evidence to let him see the side of me that can keep to agreements, that can negotiate, that is self assured and confident. And let him see that his faith in this relationship might possibly be undermined by the preconceived notion of me being untrustworthy.
I agree that many of the things I just discussed are things that many people already understand, just it may seem easier said than done. That's why I felt that the course was so valuable. It was intense, but for a good reason. Many people, including me, need this intensity to be truly aware and kickstart the action required to right the course of life. So to the criticism out there that says that it is brainwashing, MLM etc, well, it all depends on how you choose to see it, and of course different people benefit from it differently. Some might not even benefit from this, but for me, personally, my perspectives are much widened now.
Okay. Time to commit to my assignments.
