Weekly Check-in: Wedding and Guilt (Not What You’re Thinking)

Date Posted: May 14th, 2010

So my new favorite blog is Havi Brooks’ Fluent Self. (My favorite because she explores ways to break through mental blocks about mindful business and marketing, things I’m dealing with right now.) She does a weekly check-in as a form of therapy and a way to let readers get to know her better, and I’ve decided to go ahead and try it too. Basically in the Check-in I go through what I’m working on, how I’m doing on it, and any insights I’ve gotten (or may have gotten). Here’s what I’ve been working on/dealing with this week:

Wedding

Oh man, this has been eating my time and energy. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, the wedding’s on June 6th. Less than a month away!) Some of the energy/time eating’s been due to worry. Some of it’s been having to face uncomfortable (but good!) things like writing up vows. Some of it’s been guilt at not having personally made much progress on the gowns in a while. (My friends have been incredibly helpful, though.) Here’s what I’ve learned:

• I have great friends. Seriously. They’ve been so helpful and supportive… in an unconditional way. I don’t know how to thank them enough. I don’t know the right way to say thank you.
• I don’t have this money thing down. This has to do with the “I don’t know how to thank my friends”. Part of me thinks I should give a cash gift to thank certain friends that have been over-the-top helpful. Another part of me thinks any gift I could afford to give would be less than what their work is worth. It has to do with the “No one Pays for Thanksgiving Dinner” problem. I want to stay firmly in “social norms”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m sure they’d be alright if I didn’t strictly give anything, but I still want to. I just don’t know.
• I’m better at being a manager than a producer and I feel uncomfortable about it. When I look back on the past few weeks I haven’t made that much. I’ve made my hat, and I’ve attempted to make the hats for my bridesmaids, and even on those hats I’ve gotten other people to do significant parts of them. Things have been getting done, but I feel weird that I’ve mostly been in the position of “tell others what to do” or “tell someone they’re on the right track” more than I’ve actually been producing.
• *Whispers* I kinda like being a manager. Ok, I said it. It feels good to be in power. And scary. And guilt-inducing. “Only bad people like power.” etc. etc. But things are getting done… I’m just not doing them. No one resents me at the moment (except perhaps some family… but that’s neither my problem nor related to this issue) so I must be doing something right.
• It’s a good idea to not expect your friends to do anything. One thing is ask people to help but not expect them to come through. If they do, I’m thrilled. If they don’t, that’s OK too. This way I totally avoid resentment. Not everyone’s in the same position to give, and that’s alright.
• It’s hard to apply this to my family. All of us have expectations. And resentment. It’s not pretty.

Good thing: I think this wedding is going to happen. Yay!

Guilt

I’ve been afflicted with guilt since… at least elementary school. I remember walking to the bus-stop, worrying and feeling guilty about not having worked on homework that was due in a few days. My hope was that I’d do the right thing in order to avoid the self-punishment. It’s almost never worked, but I feel like there has to be some sort of consequence for me when I don’t keep my promises. I’m starting to see that this reasoning is flawed, but it’s a long-ingrained habit.

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned/realized about my guilt problem:

• I’ve been doing this for a long time. See above.
• I don’t know what a life without guilt looks like. Do I go around breaking promises all the time? With no punishment, why should I be good?
• Hey! That sounds familiar! It’s the “Without the Church people would lose their sense of morality” argument. That’s clearly false. “Good requires Guilt” is probably also false, maybe even for the same reason.
• Still don’t know how to deal with me not keeping my promises. The best of I’ve come up with so far is to:
  1. Figure out why I broke it.
  2. If it’s because it’s something I don’t actually want to be doing, I forgive myself and move on.
  3. If it’s for some other reason I first apologize.
  4. Then I do whatever I can to fix it.

  So, in keeping with that. I’m sorry I didn’t update last Saturday’s post like I said I would. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Right now this blog is, sadly, not quite my top top priority. Aside from the obvious tops of Relationships and Work, Wedding comes first right now. Then Blog. Then everything else. I still want to edit that post because I want to improve my writing, but editing takes time and energy I have a hard time providing right now.

  Not sure how much I like this method for guilt-dealing mechanism.

So that’s my check-in for this week. Methinks this will be a good way for me to get in my “one post a week” minimum (and let you get to know me a bit better).

Tags: Character-Development, Emotional Health, Family, Leadership.
Posted at 4:26 pm | No Comments »

The Type of Person That Succeeds

Date Posted: April 23rd, 2010

Is INDEPENDENT
Independence is about taking responsibility for your life. It’s about doing what you intend to do independent of what other people say. It’s about not waiting for permission to go out and do your thing.

It’s scary. It’s hard. It’s necessary. It’s insufficient.

Is DEPENDENT
Dependence is about realizing you need help to do what you need to do. You alone can only do so much. None of us is truly independent. Look at all the stuff you have. How much of it did you make yourself? If you have anything that you didn’t make yourself–start to finish–you’ve been dependent on someone else to have that thing. Dependence is part of the human condition.

Is INTERDEPENDENT
Interdependence is about both independence and dependence. It’s about being responsible for your actions and accepting help from those who can help you.

Also it’s about giving back. In order for an interdependent society to work, all parties have to give and receive. If you’re interdependent you give freely when someone can use your help and it won’t make you feel resentful. Giving greases the wheels for getting. People are way more willing to help when they feel like they’re paying you back for all the help you’ve given.

An Example: My Wedding
My wedding has turned out to be a lot of work. I’m making my own dress and the dresses for two of my bridesmaids. My choir is singing during the ceremony. Aaron’s dad and step-mom are playing music during the ceremony. We did our own invitations. … And a bunch of other stuff.

If you look at it from far away it almost looks like Aaron and I are doing it all ourselves. That’s anything but true, though.

My dress–which I mostly made myself–has been worked on by more people than just me. From the costuming expert in my local SCA chapter to my sewing savy friends from singing, I really didn’t do all that much of it. Same goes for the bridesmaid’s dresses. Luckily I have an awesome social network filled with talented, generous people.

Music-wise I gave my choir over to one of our talented members to direct during the ceremony. Without his help things would be… interesting.

Invitation wise we got some help with folding paper and stuffing envelopes. We got a friend to draw up the main invitation. We also bought a kit from the store instead of buying paper and cutting it into the appropriate size.

You get the idea. Every piece of this silly event has required the help of at least one other person. Most pieces have required the help of several people. So,yeah, if you look closely, it’s not hard to see how we’ve depended on others.

The independence component of the wedding lies in the choosing what we want to do and making it happen. We organize. We ask. If we just sat around merely dreaming about our perfect wedding it’d never happen.

The giving back component happened before and will happen afterward. Aaron and I do a lot of things for our community. We host singing and music practice. We’ve hosted weekly D&D nights and cooked for people. We volunteer when we find out people we know need help.

We love doing this stuff. We’d do it because it’s the right thing to do and because we enjoy it. I think that because we do this kind of thing freely, many people are willing to help us when we need it. Not everyone mind you, but that’s A-OK.

After the event we’re throwing a thank you party for everyone we can think of that’s helped to make this happen. And when any of them need help with something that I can help with, we’ll be first in line to volunteer.

Final Thoughts
I know I’ve written about the differences between independence, dependence, and interdependence before. I just keep hearing people say that only one of these ideas is the key to success. “You have to be independent.” “You have to rely on others.” “It’s all luck.” “It’s all hard work.”

Everything I’ve experienced has said that all of the above is true. You need to be self-reliant AND you need to rely on others. There’s no either or. If you’re stuck, talk to other people. If you’re feeling too dependent, start taking steps toward self-reliance.

Tags: Character-Development, Interdependence, Relationships.
Posted at 7:00 am | No Comments »