Blog entry for:

often shows my willingness to take risks and grow. shame, fear and guilt and interesting trio of feelings, that have nothing to do with character defects, but plenty to do with the reading at hand. part of what drives me is my FEAR of FAILURE coupled with my FEAR of success. both of those fears are tied to self-worth, and how much i really esteem myself, and neither of those fears are truly a character defect. the defect is, my distorted image of myself, and my lack of humility, in the truest sense of the word. being paralyzed between those two fears, is the outcome of those shortcoming being played out in my life, namely because i want to ALWAYS look good in the eyes of those around me, but i do not feel worth taking the chance to succeed. so i do nothing, because i will feel guilty if i do something that ends up in a mistake, and the shame litany will start with: “i should known better…”
shame is just guilt turned inwards and used to beat myself up over stuff in the past, guilt is the feeling i get when i detect i have done something wrong. most of the time, there need not be guilt over my mistakes, unless i made conscious choices, that i later came to regret, because the results were harmful to myself and others. putting myself up for a new position and failing half the test? nothing to feel guilty about, the lesson i took away was to to get more training, so the next i am presented with a similar task, i can work my way through it, instead of sitting there staring at the keyboard for forty-five minutes.
stabbing one of my peers in the back, by deriding their use of language and lack of content? well probably harm-causing and a behavior that needs to be addressed, and yes something i can feel guilty about, the mistake is continuing to go there, instead of walking away. quite easily that guilt could be turned into shame, using my character defect of low self-esteem as the jumping off point, “see what piece of sh!t i am, i still have the need to burn others down to make myself feel better about who i am!”
and so it goes. each time i make a mistake, i have to run it through the filter of my TENTH STEP inventory, when i get that luxury. was this avoidable? is it something i WANT to avoid in the future? is there a lesson to be had in how i went about it? is the possible reward worth the cost of failure?
anyhow, i am certainly running very late this morning, so i will move along and into my day, as i still have a job, that pays my bills, and allows me to live the life i have come to desire. it is all because i choose to live a program today and can see the difference between at least some forms of insanity.

∞ DT ∞