I know, I know. I’ve just posted about forcing myself into a corner to grow. But over the years, I’ve also managed to get a different perspective on ‘forcing myself’ and ‘discipline’. The following post from dirtsimple talks about it nicely:

http://dirtsimple.org/2005/08/doing-it-anyway.html

But let me summarize it and say it in my own words too.

Do you have to force yourself to do something? Do you have to destroy all other options, drive yourself into a corner, and then (and only then) be able to go through with your decision?

I used to be like that (and I still am sometimes).

But which way is better? Doing something because it’s the only option, or doing something because even though you have ten options, this is the best one?

It’s apparently rooted in the idea of not giving in. That if I gave in, I was weak. Sometimes, when you’re making a decision, when you’re choosing to change, you don’t want to give in, even to yourself.

And that’s where the whole idea of “being yourself” has been misunderstood to mean “don’t change”. Because when you change, it means you’re giving in to what you’re pressuring yourself to do. And it’s somehow “wrong”.

Let’s look at it in a different light. What if you want to change, but it’s because someone told you to do it? Is it “wrong” to change then? Almost unanimously, everyone will say yes, it’s wrong to change for others. Why? We change due to the influence of other people all the time. A friend tells us to try a sport and we like it. We then change to become a fan of the sport. What’s the big deal?

Being true to yourself is to be able to do what you want even if people tell you not to do it. And more importantly, even if people do tell you to do it. Sometimes, we fight peer pressure and influence so much that we rebel without thought. We say ‘no’ even though we secretly want to say ‘yes’, because saying yes would be seen as weak and losing face. Our ego is more important than doing what’s best for us.

We’d rather do something that’s wrong for us and show how “unique” and “special” we are than do what’s right for us if it looks like it would be seen as giving in.

I’m not saying that we should all be mindless sheep and follow everyone else. I’m saying that if you were truly strong and believed in yourself, you would follow what you yourself wanted… even if it was exactly the same as everyone else.

Changing my mind and my mindset

As long as I had the mentality that I was somehow “giving in” when I changed myself, I would always have to force myself into a corner. That’s where I slowly tried to evolve my mindset. I really like teaching, but I had an Engineering degree. To change to the academic field would’ve meant that I was mindlessly following in the footsteps of my father and sister… right?

But luckily, I caught myself in time. I was thinking nonsense and I blame society for teaching me a false meaning of being unique.

Why should I have to force myself to be different when I didn’t want to be? Why did I have to follow the footsteps of my friends who became engineers? Why did I have to feel as if I was wasting an engineering degree if I went into education?

In fact, it was the opposite. I would waste my degree if I went into the industry because I would probably be selling or maintaining technical products instead of designing them. I wouldn’t be different because I would be following in the footsteps of my friends and classmates. I wouldn’t be unique because I couldn’t bring myself to do what I wanted to do.

So I slowly changed my mindset. I had people wondering why I would torture myself with Masters (in Engineering of all things!) and probably proceed to a PhD in the same field later. Well, it’s because I like it. And why would I continue studying when apparently most people wanted to start work as soon as possible? It turns out I hate not having a flexible schedule.

This particular time, I wanted to change myself without having to put myself in a corner. I didn’t have to “give in” to myself. Rather, I could clearly see that it was what I myself wanted, and I didn’t need to force myself to accept it.

Needing a reason to change

I suppose that my last post sounds like it makes so much sense is because our society is oh-so-logical that we need reasons for everything. We especially need reasons for change.

So the moment that I wanted to make a change in myself, because I felt it would be better for myself, I also felt like it wouldn’t be accepted by society and the people around me. I needed to make a reason/excuse. I needed to force myself into a situation/corner to make that change.

But what if I could freely change myself at any moment, always improving who I was and removing the parts of myself that were bad? It’s a pretty scary thought to be a person who could continuously improve and grow to my true potential.

And that’s where I had to stop for a second and wonder… why is it scary?

And I suppose it’s because… well, it’s because I liked being handicapped. I liked having a reason to fail. I liked being a person that wasn’t at my full potential yet, because if I failed when I wasn’t at my full potential, then I wouldn’t *truly *fail. If I failed when I was already at my best, then I’d be a true failure.

Giving myself a reason to fail

I handicap myself. At least I used to. I had this odd notion that if I gave myself a handicap, and I still managed to win, then I must be awesome. After all, if I could do that much in 10 minutes, I must be awesome if I had 3 hours. Not true.

At least then, if I lose, I have an excuse.

I had a conversation with a friend a while back where he confided in me and said he was planning to start a business, and he’s going to do it in…bla…bla…

Something sounded off to me when he was explaining all this until I realized what was bothering me. I asked him then, “You’re expanding from your dad’s business right?”

“No, I want to succeed on my own.” And that shocked me. I’m still not entirely sure now why it shocked me so much. The sheer absurdity of wanting to succeed while not using everything that was at hand sounded so odd. Sure, it was fine while doing things for fun, or during practice, but when you actually want to achieve something, why not use everything that you have?

It was only later that I made the connection to how I’d been living my own life, proud to have a “problem” that gave me a reason to fail.

I was giving myself reasons to fail, handicapping myself, driving myself into a corner, because if I failed after doing all that, it wouldn’t be my fault. I could just say that I “hadn’t put my all into it, but I could totally do it if I had to”.

And part of giving it my all also meant that I needed to use everything around me and not just rely only on myself. Because apparently accepting help is also another version of caving in and giving in to others. Almost as if you’re too weak to handle the problem yourself. But in truth, it’s just another way to give yourself a reason to fail. It’s so that I can say, “of course I lost to him, he used his family money, while I did it with my own sweat and blood“.

Ridiculous. How arrogant!!! Why then didn’t I just use all my own resources instead of handicapping myself?

So here it is,

You don’t have to succeed on your own

Because if not, it means the purpose of your success is to prove your own ego, rather than wanting to actually succeed. That’s right, we don’t want to succeed. We usually want to fail. Or at least, we don’t mind failing as long as it’s not “our fault”. In fact, failing is usually easier since you don’t need to put that much effort into it.

Succeeding is so much harder. You actually have to take responsibility that it is your own fault when you fail and that you’ll have to try harder next time.

So I finally learnt my lesson(s):

  • Change whenever I want to. I don’t have to wait for something to push me along.

  • Never give myself a reason to fail.

  • It’s ok to accept help to succeed.