Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
Bel's thoughts
Once you overcome it, you'll never face it again
David DeAngelo said: "there is simplicity on the other side of complexity".
It meant that while to build something it takes time, toil, sweat, tears, repeated failures, and many years of struggles, once you have built it and mastered it, it suddenly becomes simple.
Both to maintain it, and to rebuild it - should we lose it.
Warren Buffett said: invest in yourself. It's the best investment you can make, because it compounds on you and cannot be taken away from you in taxes or in theft.
Bel says: once you overcome it, you'll never face it again.
After learning one skill, seeing one blind spot, understanding how we failed ourselves, we'll never face it again.
I'll never walk again in the evening without protection to feel the cold and pain and punish myself to feel alive.
And after learning something, we can compound on it: we can walk on to learn further and bigger skills.
For example, learning how to raise rates, instead of fearing our client will go away because we're incapable of simply maintaining the relationship with him.
I feel hope.
You can't reach your express objective if your body and mind are screaming at you to reach a hidden objective that you're fighting not to see
For years before-TPM, I concentrated on many external objectives: dating, finding a job, finding work, etc.
But the results were hit and miss (mostly miss).
Now, these days, I'm having lots of epiphanies in a short time.
I was reading materials on how to write resumes, how to find jobs, and suddenly something "clicked".
Yesterday I implemented them on LinkedIn, and I've already seen some recruiters "view my profile".
I thought "if I had done these things ten years ago, now I would be in a very different spot".
Then I realized this:
You can't reach an "express" but "secondary" objective if your mind, body and soul are screaming to wake you up to reach your "survival" and "primary" objective.
The reality is: I was being abused by lots of disfunctional people.
My body and mind was a trainwreck.
I simply couldn't focus on "finding a job", "dressing well", "investing", until I finally woke up and recognized what my body was saying to me:
Run away from these people who are abusing you, run away. They are destroying you.
It's ironic that only now, that I'm able to fight power moves (more or less, but at least at an acceptable level), I am having epiphanies on what I should have done to reach my express objectives at the time.
The lesson for me: if it seems I can't reach my express objective, look deep into myself.
Maybe I need to finally recognize that I need to reach a primary, more important objective that I'm fighting hard not to see.
Not being capable of feeling guilt
Yesterday I was talking with a person, and I tried to point out something he/she had done, asking to do it no more.
No avail. It fell on deaf ears. All I got back was basically "I am right, you are wrong".
Then I began speaking of another situation that this person had been in: I talked of a common "friend", who had gotten distance for more than ten years from this person.
I asked the person I was talking to if there was anything that he regretted having done, or not having done, with regard to this once close "friend", since it was apparent that the friend had gotten distance due to some behavior he had seen in this person.
Then this person said this:
Yes of course. With age I learned that I was mistaken in remaining angry at him. I should have forgiven him sooner, because he was clearly incapable of handling the pressure of being with me.
Then I had the epiphany.
Everything this person experienced was automatically reframed in its mind as "not due to his/her behavior", and thus as being something for which others were exclusively responsible.
Because: the person I was talking to was absolutely incapable of feeling, accepting or even conceptualizing any feeling of "guilt".
Everything this person did was automatically "right". There was no possibility of this person feeling, understanding, seeing or even imagining that something he/she had done was "wrong".
So that explained why, whenever I tried to ask for a change in behavior, none came.
Whenever I tried to suggest something this person had done was "bad", or "wrong", or even "undesired", it was automatically reframed as it being "my (Bel's) problem".
Initially, I thought this was a "manipulation".
That this person was aware that he/she had been gaslighting me.
But now, I see that in his/her mind, what he/she does is not "gaslighting": it's simply stating what he/she is sure of: that it's impossible that anything that happens is his/her fault.
And if it can't be his/her fault, then it follows that - by definition - others are always to blame.
So yesterday, I definitively learned that there is absolutely no point whatsoever in trying to have a honest, assertive conversation with people that are incapable of feeling "guilt".
They will simply think you're mad for even imagining that they have been "wrong" in something.
They really, really lack the ability to conceptualize "guilt".
Their life is an endless stream of other people aggressing them for no reason.
In reality, other people may be defending themselves, trying to explain, trying to make them change behavior, trying to get distance, trying to survive, trying anything.
No avail. Since they're incapable of feeling "guilt", everything any other person does cannot even be conceptualized as being tied to these people's behavior.
For them, it's always unprovoked.
It must be hell, living through life and seeing that others always get distance and go away in the end, and never being able to understand why.
Luxury beliefs - On Feints
I was reading some articles on "luxury beliefs" (here the Wikipedia page).
Basically the definition is used to identify "ideas/concepts" that the "upper class" expounds to signal high status and deceive the "lower class".
One example would be saying that "marriage" is not necessary to live a good life anymore; the belief is expounded while not intending to adhere to it, and knowing that one will in fact marry.
The idea is to deceive the "lower class" to hinder its advance into the "upper strata" by expounding counterproductive beliefs, and at the same time to signal one does not "need" what he/she has.
The articles tie this concept with the concept that, today, previous signals of luxury/high class that were used to self-signal as "high class" are not usable anymore, as they have been adopted by everyone (eg good clothes, cars, etc.). So the "upper class" now use "feints".
Assuming the concept does have some adherence to reality, it seems to me a form of "virtue signaling feint" that has probably always been used.
Personal story on a great feint that was used on me
There was one female friend I had for whose husband I had done some big legal work.
Problem was, he was not paying. And had stopped taking my calls. While I was still working for him.
And, at the time, I didn't have the skill to push for payment assertively.
I had even asked her (his wife) to be able to speak with him about this, and she told me
Her: You know, I myself am not even able to speak with him. He's so busy.
I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. And for months I continued to work while not asking for payment of my fees anymore.
So one day I was speaking to her (his wife), and was telling her of how my former boss had had me working for him for one year and had not paid me.
And I told her I was thinking of suing my former boss. Then she said this to me:
Her: You know Bel, my suggestion is not to worry about money so much. I would not sue. Don't be so attached to money.
Now I see clearly that this was a feint she was using to lower the risk I could push for her husband to pay me (which I later did do).
The irony: all the while I was also assisting her (this same woman that used the feint on me) in her getting paid from her customers.
In her personal case, lo and behold, she didn't mind in the least suing her clients who had not paid her.
Needless to say, I'm not friends with her nor him anymore.
In fact, I believe one can identify frenemies by how - when one is about to assert his rights - they suggest to "leave it be".
Which has happened to me even after this story.
But in those subsequent times, I made a good mental note.
