Last Edited on 5/17

There’s a specific framework that has helped me tremendously in the last year or so. Like many others in the world, I’ve experienced and still do experience a lot of shame in my life. Whether that be in my adolescence or adulthood, shame was introduced as a strong motivator and perpetuated as I journeyed throughout the world. It became an incredibly valuable tool at my disposal and really something I harnessed to…“get shit done”.

As I’ve become more curious about myself and my motivations, I’ve started to (at least try to) unwind this underlying shame motivator.

Disclaimer: Nothing here is written to convince anyone of anything. Believe what you want. I’m trying to put these thoughts into something tangible that I know have become somewhat of a guiding principle in my life.

shame

Shame runs pretty deep, any type of search will yield you a multitude of definitions. In an effort to explain it simply from my own experience and perspective, I’d distill it as the self-narrative of “I am bad”. Any variation of those. Doing X means I “am” insert self-deprecating descriptor.

I want choice

I am a human. I desire and crave choices in life. No one wants to feel unable to make their own decisions or that their actions and thoughts are specifically because others pushed and provided them. Even if that’s how I was raised (it was), there isn’t infinite longevity in that. There can’t be! I subscribe to the idea that it always adds up and that people will want a choice or at least that their perspective is that they have a choice (whether that’s “reality” or not doesn’t matter I suppose.)

If the alternative “choice” is shame, then there is no choice

Here’s the key piece that I’ve noticed helps the most. I suppose an example works best.

Example: If I don’t pickup my friend from the airport with my car, then I am a BAD friend.

  1. I would NEVER want to “be a BAD friend”, and picking up my friend from the airport I can definitely convince myself is a low-effort task to provide myself the self-worth I need
  2. I’m doing my friend a favor and serving them and they will be eternally grateful because I’ve proven my worth as a good and reliable friend
  3. If that’s the criteria for friendship, seems like a low bar

There’s many driving factors here, but even in this simple example, none of the factors take into account my own values or choice. None of it mentions my own intrinsic desire to help people or anything related to connection or friendship. Everything revolves around the principle of what I deem is “good” and “bad” and how I want to get as far fucking away from the “bad” as possible by doing.

Really, when presented this option, all of these thoughts are firing through my head and I’ll convince myself there is choice of picking up my friend. Too bad! The reality (or at least what I’m seeing now) is that there is no choice! I used shame to motivate myself into doing something I probably didn’t even want to do – or at the very least didn’t even think about what I want!

Now imagine this type of thought pattern repeated over and over again your entire life, and it being reinforced by others as “good” and “appreciated” behavior. It’s easy to see how one could spend their entire life doing what they don’t want to be doing.

I want to feel free, make choices, and live a life of ease

These days, I’m envisioning my life to be more rich as I explore making choices, feeling free, and choosing ease. It’s pretty counter cultural to the grindset mindset or hustle culture that has captured our capitalistic society by storm, but really. I want to enjoy my time here. It doesn’t mean that I am laying around all day not moving, but it does mean that I feel more autonomous in what I want to do at any given moment, and that there are options. I’m less and less motivated by the narratives of I “am”. I am not a “bad” husband, son, employee, father. I don’t know if I would even say I’m a “good” one of those. Those are just roles I fulfill and I hopefully am able to live my values through each of those and spread kindness to people.

Anyway – There’s no reward at the finish line for working more than your peers. We’re all flesh and bone.

Maybe there’s a time for an illustration where I can have circles and arrows, but really this is to hopefully capture a snapshot in my life where I’m practicing (keyword:practicing) this mental model to feel that my decisions are authentically my own.