MIGHTY MONDAY #5: The Good, The Bad and The Growth (which can be ugly and contains a lot of swearing).

It’s been just over a month now, and my my, mighty Monday... the continuous curiosity has brought me so many insights it's f@#$% painful - again. I swear, can we bring back the first analogy that I spoke about in my first blog already? The mental gym is as gruelling as the physical gym. The more I move into new spaces – and now in solitude with just a few people to trust – the more I get that it is so f@#$% easy to give up.

Dr. Gabor Maté, author of the book The Myth of Normal – which I recommend as a read for all DE&I managers if not all management – talks about belonging whilst challenging people that there is always a hard to handle in life. He reckons that one can choose to stay in the same place and pertain to the hard by forming yourself into something other. The ‘other’ being the idea of what people around you expect from you. And as a result, handling your own painful demise through sacrifice as you depart from an authentic self but you belong to a group.

Or, you move and pertain to the hard of curiosity and creation, finding new places and people that can handle your authentic becoming with you belonging to yourself.

Generally, people tend to stay in the same place with the same people as we are very capable in tricking ourselves with stories that keep us at a superficial position but look like growth. This good behaviour - predominantly programmed during the first 20 years of our lives - confirms how irrational we actually are, yet, at the same time, how clever we are at smoke and mirroring ourselves as noble beings who are doing what is best for the group by example of partners, families, friends, colleagues, the world, and so on.

We chatter, do workshops, go to entertaining places, and go on retreats to then find ourselves right back where we started when we don’t put the mental intention into a durational curiosity and creation practice. This is also where the entrepreneurs, athletes, artists, and other “exceptionals” separate themselves from the masses. They choose their hard and in doing so, belong to themselves.

To keep belonging to oneself is a f@#$% tricky practice that requires constant dedication – which oftentimes can go in loops and make you feel loopy-loop because going against the grain can get really challenging as you can become isolated. You can feel alone. And you can feel that what you are doing is unnecessary because if it were necessary then why wouldn’t everybody else do it? That is my cue; This is where dangerous thoughts start to happen for me.

I now know that when I go into isolation mode that I have a hard time equally tricking myself back to self-belonging because I place too much emphasis on the group.

?A week ago, on Sunday, I had a long walk alongside the wide-open waters. It was the favourite trail that, for a while, was a place of belonging to a uniquely creative and very charming character who has left our reality by joining the upside-down world*.

I was drawn to visit this place as I was experiencing confusions again in my mind and for a moment, I could find an alternative connection through him to myself as I pondered over hard decisions and that our decisions were hard work. I questioned myself again? Was I going into isolation mode? Remember that I had spent the past 8 years relying on myself through a therapist and now decided I can go through the motions alone but have yet to figure out whether I am creating a healthy alone moment or am I going into isolation mode.

Today, so I have come to understand, I only knew surface level of the confusions he had in his mind. I was perhaps dealing with my own chaos and maybe even too chicken at the time to have deeper and more meaningful chats with him. I felt a lot of shame and vulnerability around my state of being because I too am sensitive to groups and there is a hardwired group idea about mental diversities and adversities.

And so, as I discover new experiences on the spectrum of personal peace or an isolating escape all I can connect to now is the hardship of making an active decision. Being there I reflected on the expanse of our mind as I sit in an imaginary circle with him and the others that I know that chose for the upside-down world*.

In that moment I actively chose to take this place as one of peace to turn around the triggers that had occurred and brought it to the circle to un upside down the thoughts. I told the spirits in my mind circle that I fell into a group consciousness, that I was 'keeping peace’ by accounting a lot of responsibility to myself as I was taking on other people’s (“normal people”) behavioural splits and in the process handing in my own peace. My cue was to burden myself with puzzles they needed to solve for themselves. I was holding space for the sake of group harmony realising that I was unconsciously under the influence of group consensus in combination with my own harmful confirmation bias of which I am now aware when they occur.

The result of that inner conversation was to go straight through the disappointment, the disillusion and above all I had to look the grown women in her reflection and tell her that she was taking on experiences as though she was that young girl she once was and needed to stop that.?

Ironically, later that week I experienced another kind of hard evolving around my mother who finds herself in similar loops. The becoming of a generational looping that can keep going if you have chosen to pertain to an image of what others will think of you, thus your children. This being a good girl who does not want to be bad – yet in turn has gotten ugly. I wondered why it is so hard for us all to find each other in growth. She too is still experiencing current realities as if she were still a girl with no autonomous power withholding herself and others from growth.

Quite randomly, yet similarly I felt the same when I was watching two very clever high-profile men discuss retaliation strategies in warfare as Israel had been attacked by Iran over the weekend. I thought “Are these men truly present? Are they mindful of their experience and how they are strategizing over other people’s extremely hard experiences? Or, are they stuck in a superficial loop and behave in a way that they think is expected from them in these roles that they have evolved in?”. I was sure that the children they once were wouldn’t – perhaps couldn’t – imagine themselves discussing the threats and demise of other people in such a way. How do they cope? Where do they find peace? What hard are they pining over – in this instance it’s definitely not their own.

Moving back to the Sunday before, whilst overlooking the blue skies mirroring in the waters with its gorgeous innocent white clouds – I realised – I had been departing from myself and I was in fact becoming a complicit feature of the group once again. A single cloud that looks as innocent as those other white clouds but could then very much turn into the cloud that takes the thunder and eventually becomes the storm other skies are trying to avoid. Like these men, like my mother and like a number of people I have come across, including myself, our experiences can get clouded and we depart from ourselves drifting into the group.

And at that point, I felt as something was stuck in the top right pocket of my jacket and there I found two polaroids taken just over half a year ago with Evi and myself swinging round the carousel in a fair playground having the best time. Then and there I was reminded that play is there to help us break from the confusing loops, lift ourselves out of the clouds, and break routines.

We can step into new carriages and experience the world in a new way by floating in between our peace and pains - a spectrum of solitude and isolation. I could make other shapes in these clouds and keep them as independents and thought to myself action does cure all fear. And with that action the fear for falling back into isolation mode left me. I could take the reflections for what they were and action myself right back into the good life that I have been able to create with perseverance and curiosity instead of chaos and catastrophes. Belonging to myself and able to choose who I do or don’t want to group into a carrousel with. I am grateful for the good, the bad and the growth, and confident I can take all those for a spin!