This morning, after a long sleep in, I found myself scrolling through various social media platforms and wondering, why? Downstairs I could hear my son being his usual annoyingly beautiful, rambunctious self while, no doubt, my husband in his Ramadan-fasting state, lay on the couch watching a movie. Why was I on this thumb-numbing feed instead of with them?
I’m troubled by this so-called ‘social media depression’ that now exists where people – myself included – compare their lives to those in their feed. There’s no balance in the stories. I’m left feeling empty for the time spent on there and yet, at the same time, those platforms are the very same places I need to spend the time to market and advertise my business. I’ve not posted any content for quite some time because of this one-sidedness. I’ve yet to develop a system to manage it.
Mum taught me something the other day about values & voids. If we need something we need to create a void within ourselves by giving more value so we can create room for what we need. I literally had to get her to repeat what she’d said so that it sunk in.
There’s no way I’m giving as much as I can in terms of my knowledge – which brings the social media dilemma back to the fore – and yet I feel somehow unable to know what to teach, what to write, and what specifically to give. I have a lot of knowledge and experience and yet feel so overwhelmed by it all that I don’t know where to begin.
I know now, having written that, that I need to reverse engineer my knowledge and tailor it to Emotional Intelligence, well being, leadership and the fourth industrial revolution, as well as be dedicated to its production. Being on my own is lonely and overwhelming too – and yet I know I don’t want the overhead of employees. It all comes back to my childhood dream: to travel, write, and get paid to do it. That needs to be my focus – anything else is just shiny-object-itis.
I also know the only way I’m going to get better at delivering my emotional intelligence leadership coaching service is if that’s all I concentrate on. I’ll let the few business coaching clients run their course but not take on any more. If I really mean to make a significant dent in emotional health issues then I need to take a greater focused approach.
Last week’s deaths by suicide of fashion designer, Kate Spade, and chef, Anthony Bourdain, has saddened me. We assume that they killed themselves because they had a mental illness, as though that’s the only causality. And yet, let’s consider that they did have depression, and that was the reason, everyone’s asking, ‘why didn’t they tell someone?’
When I think about my own needs when I’m experiencing depression, I physically cannot reach out for help. I don’t want contact with other people. I don’t want to try to explain the inexplicable. I don’t want to hear that tone or see that look in their eyes. I don’t experience depression often these days because now I have the resources to apply to what put me in that state in the first place – like journalling, this expression helps me identify patterns, ask myself questions, challenge my thinking all within the relative security of the book’s pages.
I have very little need to speak to others because I’ve learned how to solve my problems. Or, if I cannot solve them, at a minimum I can identify them so I know I have to reach out to specific people to solve them.
This is what I need to teach people. Journalling specifically for depression. A book that asks questions and challenges thinking with all the NLP techniques that I naturally use. Even if this book/journal is the end result I still need to develop the exercises, create the content and publish it. I still have to put myself out there.
And there lies an underlying fear.
Putting myself out there requires me to get comfortable with creating and being vulnerable. When I am facestalking I’m seeing the success of other women. On one hand, I’m happy for them but then there’s this other part of me that’s jealous and thinks negative, judgemental thoughts that tear them down. These thoughts, of course, are my thoughts about me. This is the very essence of what ‘perception is projection’ is all about.
In the same value/void conversation Mum and I had, she pointed out my low self-worth – something I didn’t think I have. But, clearly, if I can think negatively about others then I still have some work to do. Not only that, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back from sharing my knowledge if I didn’t have a fear of judgement.
When I think back to the root cause of this fear, I think about my childhood filled with being bullied and scared of rebuke by other children. I never understood why or when it started but certainly it was fueled by the care factor I placed on others judgement of me. It won’t be until I can sit with this line of thinking and apply Time Line Therapy® to myself that I’ll be able to resolve it. And if not by myself, then ideally with the help of a colleague.
This is the benefit that journalling brings – it uncovers thought processes and fears. And yet, I don’t have to remain in this state, I have the resources to change my mind permanently. Damn, if that isn’t something everyone needs to know how to do. I am duty-bound to sort my shit out because I have a methodology that could’ve kept Kate & Anthony from harming themselves.
With gratitude,
