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i am given the grace to meet the challenges i have encountered. like many of my peers, i can view challenges as personal affronts to my ability to walk through life, unimpeded. i know in realty, y=that is the sort of attitude that got me in trouble, spiritually and socially anyhow, when i was active addiction, and it consequences are no less severe, all these days later in active recovery. bulling and bullying my way through life, just to get my way, is certainly self-will. the reading, however, was not about self-will, but something more insidious and for me, certainly more deadly, the underlying root of my equal aversion to success and failure. okay, you got me, the reading said FEAR, and i used aversion, to soften the blow, after all, i am FEARLESS don't you know!? what the reading barely addressed, but what i heard this morning, was all about the root causes within me.
FEAR is a feeling, period.
FEELINGS are NOT character defects.
so FEAR of failure and FEAR of success are shortcomings arising from the character defects that are part of me. quickly going over the inventory of my defective character, and i can say that with a smile on my face, because the emotional attachment to my character defects has long been removed, it seems to come down to a case of self-worth, namely, low self-worth. yes, i am no longer ashamed or even embarrassed to admit that my self- worth, is not what i would like it to be. my value to myself, was diminished across the years of active addiction,m and certainly was not all that high before i ever picked up that very first time. i fear success, because i do not believe that i am worth succeeding. i fear failure, because it PROVES how worthless i really am. it is ironic, that these dueling fears should arise from the same root, when they appear to be opposites. each challenge i face, in living just for today, activates one or both of those two fears. i can be, and often am, paralyzed between those extreme, waiting for someone else, or something else to make the decision for me. that way i am blameless for the outcome and i can say i had courage, because look what happened, i did not melt away. the honest truth is, when i choose to live by default, i take the coward's way out. if i want to build my self-worth, than i have to stop looking at the outcomes, failure or success, and focus on the journey to get there. it is true, that in the long run, i will fail or succeed, but how important is that, really. it is not like i am going to quit my job, just because a recruiter is calling me on the phone. nor, am i liable to say, thanks but no thanks, just because i am getting a paycheck. i want to advance my career, but i also like where i work and the compensation is more than enough to keep me living comfortably. i face and will continue to face professional challenges today at work, but how well i accomplish the tasks at hand, will not make me a less or more valuable person, even though it will affect my worth as an employee. and that is where the separation needs to be, for me at least. i am not my job, nor am i my career, although each of those are part of who i am, i am not defined by either. the days of being cultured into believing my self-worth is equivalent to the number of toys i have, or the size of my investment portfolio, are quickly fading to black. today, i can face the challenges i encounter, allow myself the freedom to succeed or fail and be part of my solution, instead of my problem.
the time has come however, to get rolling down the road. it is a great day to be clean, and after 3 days off from the hustle and bustle of work, it may even feel good to get back to the grind.

∞ DT ∞