Do we really do anything purely for ourselves???

June 4, 2009 at 12:14 pm · Filed under Relationships, Success Tips, Uncategorized and tagged: adulthood, emotional wound, inner child, leadership 360, leadership circle, leadership survey, meditation, michael brown, mindfulness, parental issue, pleasing others, presence process

Been reading this AWESOME book called the Presence Process, by Michael Brown.  At the moment I am reflecting on these paragraphs.

“As children, we entered the world of order, routine, and “appropriate” behavior through the guidance, encouragement, and insistence of our parents.  We acted according to what we perceived as appropriate in the eyes of our mother and father.  The consequence is that today, on an unconscious level, our motivation for the way we eat, dress, bathe, and behave is almost solely sourced from the reflected presence of others.  We unconsciously use these “others” as ongoing reflections of our mother and father.  We are still attempting to please and appease our mother and father in order that we may gain their approval and unconditional acceptance.

This initial motivation transformed and transferred into adulthood.  By the time we entered our adult experience, this need for outer validation became cloaked as a desire to be responsible, or to “get ahead”.  Therefore, let us call most of our behavior what it is: a desire to get a reaction, a drama staged for the purpose of gaining out attention.  And for some of us this desire may have manifested as its polar opposite.  In other words, we desired “NOT” to fit in or get ahead.  This resistance is also a reaction and can be traced to our initial interactions with our parents (or their substitutes).

…The tragedy is that we can go through our whole life and never stop for a moment to accomplish anything “REAL” and therefore lasting for ourselves.”

I am particularly interested in this work because I recently got my 360 results back from my Leadership Circle survey.  And to my complete surprise, my colleagues ranked me extremely high in the category of “pleasing others” while I scored myself really low.  What a blind spot!  How can this go by unnoticed by me? How has this need impacted my success and achievement ability? How else has this impacted me that I don’t know about? AND what is worst, WILL I EVER stop this madness?  When will I feel safe enough to be as is????

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