JTL Day 91 – Giving Up On Myself, Part I

About nine months ago, I began to look at a new assignment dealing with memories. Just reading through this assignment was daunting. Then when it came time to actually start doing the assignment, I became overwhelmed with anxiety because of my experience of it as too confusing and too large. It was like trying to climb a mountain or something.

I had been holding onto a belief/perception and fear of myself that I could not go through my memories. I new that I would eventually have to walk my memories and secretly held this fear and belief that I would not be able to do this when the time came, because of my experience of not being able to really look into my memories in past experiences. So, this assignment brought all of this suppressed fear up to the surface and as a result, I saw this assignment as daunting and confusing. In this, I became overwhelmed and I just gave up on myself, this assignment, and my entire process, to a certain extent.

Nevertheless, I 'tried' to push-through, but my experience was that, just as I 'suspected', going through my memories was indeed really difficult for me. So I actually wound-up giving up a few times as I would make a little progress and then hit a wall, and then quit and then start again.

My daily blogging dropped-off considerably as well because I was already accepting and allowing resistance to writing to exist within and as me, which was magnified by this assignment be so difficult. So, although not completely, I gave up on process as well as my assignment, because I allowed this assignment to represent the entirety of my process as being just too big and too complex and too daunting, and too time-consuming, for me, considering that this assignment had initially proven to me my fears of not being able to go through my memories.

I had back-chats like 'See, I can't do it' and 'there is just too much to do' and 'I can't even sort-out my memories', and 'I don't even understand shit' and 'I can't just spend all my time doing this' and 'I am too fucked-up to get through this' and 'my mind is like a locked-cage, with all the memories inside and I just can't access them, so how the fuck am I supposed to get through this and sort these memories out if I cannot even access them?” and “see, I knew it, I cannot sort my memories out, I just get confused” and “what's the use of daily blogging if I cannot even go through my memories”. All of this was just self-imposed bullshit that I had put upon myself as a result of my fears, resistances, and to feed my desire to give up and not do this.

In this, I accepted and allowed myself to be directed by the energetic experience of my mind. And the more I gave-in to these thoughts, feelings, and emotions, the more that it became difficult for me to push through. Eventually, I was like 'down for the count' – a KO for the mind with the referee counting down for 10 and then on 10, I grab the rope all bloody and I pulled through. I'm still here. I pushed through. I completed this assignment.

So, I can see that the reason that I gave up was that my application has not been effective because I accepted and allowed myself to be controlled and consumed by the experience of 'wanting to give up' when faced with this assignment and then I gave up, not only on the assignment, but my writing, and myself. I did not stand as that strength and determination to walk through the experience of wanting to give up. I can see that the desire to give-up is not real, it exists only in my mind. So, now I am going to correct this point of wanting to give up and giving up on myself, and also applying myself more effectively so that I can stand the next time I am faced with this.