Anita:

Thank you for your in depth response! Very interesting that you brought up the external locus of control. What you said makes sense and I am familiar with the term. What is interesting though is that for the last few years I have felt what I thought was a very strong internal locus of control. To the point that I felt how people respond to me is mostly a product of how I feel and am projecting myself. For instance when working in retail, I made a point not to complain about ‘bad customers’ as 99% of the time if I was in a positive place that energy would seemingly just be reflected back to me.

I am not sure what has changed, that all of a sudden I am bending like water. Although I have always to an extent – more recently it feels extreme and trying to avoid it can often feel even less natural.

I feel myself at times ‘snap out’ of this whole chase but again, its only 5% of my life currently where I snap out of it and have a good time.

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Josie:

Haha I can resonate with the “do I have an authentic self?” question as of recently. I think I do, but I’m not sure where it hides, or how I find it when I want to.

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Eliana:

Yes I think this is a core part of it. And I do feel very restricted. Following this kind of advice for the last 5 years. I have been very ambitious and when I had spare time I would listen to audiobooks (e.g. whether walking, travelling, driving, gardening, brushing my teeth- Any time I can multi-task I would listen to self-development audiobooks). I really believed that I would reach a point where I couldn’t not integrate these principles and become highly successful like the people these books talk about. With the amount of effort I was putting in how could I not?

However, like you said these claims are very restrictive and they talk about things like ‘life’ so I would try to apply these principles to my ‘life’ in what I am guessing is an unqualified way. So i thought, if I am going to ‘CRUSH’ business meetings and high stake things in the future – it should be a walk in the park to be good in low pressure places like grabbing a coffee, ordering some food etc. But I put my own pressure on and now doing these things make me feel some uncomfort, whether anticipated on in the interaction. Its strange because I do put myself in high pressure situations and often cope (e.g. presenting to schools or at workshops,  training exercises in the military) yet basic things can rip me apart. And it leave me not knowing when I am going to get up infant of a crowd if I am going to be highly confident or crumble. I actually don’t know – because its so inconsistent.

I didn’t expect to write that much –> But feels good to get it out and have other people give their thoughts.