How Do I Get Out of My Own Way? Part1 (iteration 1)
I had a troubled childhood. Filled with anger and frustration at mental and emotional trauma beyond my ability to cope with, I would explode without warning. Due to a history of fighting with anyone I could get my hands on, my parents sent me to a private school when I was 12. Pulled out of the public school where there were 600 or so other students between the ages of 5 and 12, I was sponsored by our seventh day adventist church to attend their school, a much smaller context with just 60 students ranging from 5 to 15 year of age. My class was the largest in the schools history at 22 students, aged 13, 14, and 15. This environment had a dramatic impact on me and my ability to express myself, and live with others.
One day when I was 14 years old I remember having a conversation on the swing sets with a friend. He was the same age and talking about his troubles with his girlfriend. Even then he lamented the trope, “girls just don’t make any sense.” I scoffed at this idea “girls didn’t make sense? What are you talking about? Girls make perfect sense. Other people are obvious and easy to figure out. You just have to watch what they do. The thing I can’t figure out is me. I am the mystery.”
More than 20 years later and a lot has changed, but not that sensation that the tricky bit of living lies within the confines of my own experience. While circumstances present their challenges, with continuous ups and downs, making progress back and forth with circles inward that spiral ever tighter unto themselves before breaking out, all difficulty proves temporary.
In the New Testament Paul tells us: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength but with your testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). In my experience this has proven itself to be true, after all, despite all the tests that have been presented to me, whatever it is that I am, remains, albeit changed.
Looking back after some struggle from this expanded perspective of self, containing more time and experience, it appears that the only real challenge was the limitations of my previous vantage point. The obstacle/challenge/event itself was only incidental, the instance that revealed my boundaries. The actual difficulty that I struggled with was the process of digesting this new perspective of “I” outside of my previous one.
This is the set up to the question I have been looking into: how do I get out of my own way? This week will be devoted to exploring the question in the hopes of being able to attempt any answer at all. Specifically I want to explore:
The concept of “I” and how exactly can “I” get in “my” own way?
What is it specifically that I am experiencing as an obstacle?
Where do those impediments come from?
My hope again is that this inquiry can help me chart the inner territory well enough to figure out how to traverse it and answer the ultimate question of: How do I get out of my own way?
Thanks for reading! How do you recognize the concept of "getting in your own way"? Where does it occur most frequently? What do you do about it? What would you give to be rid of it?
If you're interested in this exploration and this question, follow this space.