I remember shopping for school supplies with my mom in late August. I love stationery stores. I have had a pen and notebook addiction most of my life. It was so exciting to check things off the list, the scissors, glue, pencil crayons in the pencil case, the new reams of paper (that smelled divine, yes?), three-ring binders with tabs.
When school began, life turned into a game of what went into the backpack (and consequences from what was forgotten). Textbooks, binders, a packed lunch — how did I ever carry all this stuff everywhere all the time? I went to my locker in the break and just switched out one textbook and binder for another. Then I weighed myself down with extra-curricular commitments and study and anxiety for my future.
Fast forward twenty years.
I eventually moved to the Czech Republic to become a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. This is a backpack nation. To the point where the public transportation system has signs reminding passengers to take off their backpacks (put them on the ground or hold them in the hands) so there is enough room for people. Now I had my laptop, and my power bank, and my paper folder of lessons to teach, (and my wallet, emergency kit of medication, pencil case, you get the idea) and I grew used to the weight of my immense pack.
Then the pandemic came, I began to work from home, and suddenly, the backpack was no longer necessary.
With the absence of my physical backpack, I began investigating the contents of my mental, emotional, and spiritual backpack. I found bricks inside. What were these bricks, and how could I get rid of them?
Releasing the need to be liked
Humans are intensely social creatures. We must belong to a tribe. That’s why we endlessly identify ourselves in various ways, to make certain that we belong. A religion is one of the oldest ways in which to find commonalities between diverse people. A Mormon from Utah can go on vacation and find similar mindsets and culture in a Mormon church in Indonesia (I’m a former Mormon, so I know this very well). A gay person can attend Pride in any city and feel like part of a group that matters. In virtually any way you can identify yourself, you can create community.
My family went through a lot of hardship and tragedy when I was growing up, so I felt an intense need to belong. The easiest way to belong is to be likeable. When people like you, they take care of you. Being liked was a survival tactic when I was a youth. I made it my ‘job’ to please and care for the people around me. Even to my own detriment, if needed. I believed that this level of self-sacrifice was admirable.
The consequence?
A complete absence of boundaries and a sense that I was worthy only if I was helping others.
I discovered that establishing healthy boundaries sometimes led to conflict. In such a conflict, I might be perceived as unlikeable. I really had to get used to this idea.
Being likeable all the time likely means suppressing ‘negative’ emotions. Emotional suppression is unhealthy for the physical body. Surprise surprise, I was physically ill with stomach issues for over twenty years of my life. (My stomach ailments were also linked to not following my own natural direction in life and only doing what I was told.)
So now I’m trying to release my need to be liked by everyone all the time. This includes new behaviour on my part, such as telling a bunch of drunk guys that they cannot sit with us while we’re playing cards together (I felt so strong when I got really angry, pointed away from us, and told them all to leave). It means saying no to some things that I would’ve said yes to just five years before. I had no idea that my need to be liked was one reason why my boundaries used to be so loosey-goosey.
It turns out that my true loved ones, my Prague family and closest friends, like me even more when I stand up for myself and enforce my boundaries, even when it inconveniences them. It’s not easy to allow myself not to be liked, even by strangers, but I’m working on it.
Do you have a need to be liked? How is it serving you? What would happen if you made space for someone to not like you?
Releasing the need to be right/correct
I grew up Mormon, part of an entire extended family of Mormons, and was a devout (fanatical?) believer for the first three decades of my life. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints provided me with my identity, my community, my values, my morals, and even the entire direction of my life. I served a mission when I was 21 years old, I returned home, met a man, got married in the temple. I lived my life knowing I was doing the right thing, and that I would be rewarded for my faithfulness and virtue in the celestial kingdom (a concept of heaven the Mormons believe in, that only select Mormons get to experience). The fact that I was born gay was just something to overcome through faith and diligence, because homosexuality is wrong. If I stifled it long enough, and didn’t give in to my sinful urges, I would be rewarded in heaven.
A cornerstone of Mormon faith is The Book of Mormon, which they proclaim is the ‘most correct book on Earth’. They preach obedience and eternal salvation for the faithful. Above all, this church is determined that they are right (which means everyone else is wrong). This is why their missionaries go out in force, trying to ‘save’ as many souls as possible. (I apologise for everything I did when I was Mormon.)
Someone who is raised in the church and chooses to leave it? It is called apostasy, and is considered one of the worst sins in the entire pantheon of sins (akin to murder). This is one of the reasons it is so hard to leave the Mormon church. You are leaving everything that once defined you and communities that welcomed you.
I left the church at the age of 31 when I got divorced and came out as lesbian. I needed to find out what was right for me. Could there really be only one right way to live, out of the many hundreds of belief systems and billions of souls on this earth?
I gave myself space to be wrong, for the Mormon Church to be wrong. And, in that space, I found myself and my personal truth. In following my truth, I discovered perfect health and happiness and fulfillment, and a connection far stronger with the divine than I ever had while religious.
The need to be right is found everywhere in our society.
We love to identify with our beliefs, our opinions, because surely, if we believe it so fiercely, it must be right, right? When we have studied and invested so much time and energy into learning something, we mentally enforce it even more, because to be wrong then means waste.
I have learned to accept being wrong. I have learned to form opinions and then release them if they no longer serve me. I have learned that what is incorrect in American English may be correct in British English. Who can say what is right and what is wrong? And how dare any other being or entity, parent or religion, tell any uniquely gifted human being on a journey through life what is right or wrong for them?
Opening myself to being wrong has been amazing. I’m no longer afraid of failure. I’ll try things, and they might not work out. It might not be right for me. But at least I tried it for myself.
Something magical happens when you allow others space to be right or wrong.
Growth. Evolution. Learning.
Here’s the biggest deal of all, when you accept that you were wrong, and choose to make amends for it, you grow. When you allow others to have a different belief than you without having to change their belief, you grow. When you can honestly say that everyone’s opinions and beliefs are as valid as your own, that’s when you evolve into the sphere of unconditional love that surrounds us.
I don’t need to win arguments. My ego can handle being corrected. I even allow Life to correct me if I’ve started down an inauthentic path.
Being wrong is great. Because I see it, and I can learn from it. I would rather be soft, malleable, teachable, and wrong, than be rigid and inflexible and right.
How often must you be right, winning your arguments, taking your stand? What is the relationship between being right and being happy? What might happen if you admitted you were wrong?
Releasing the need to help and fix others
Bear with me. This one can be misinterpreted fairly easily.
It’s been the most difficult pattern to release in my life. I grew up with the narrative from the picture above, that in lifting others we rise. But the danger lies in the subtlety, the role of giver and receiver. Most often, these are not equal roles. There is an imbalance of power. A lack in the receiver creates a pressure in which the giver gives. There is a nuanced spiritual superiority at play (or emotional, or financial superiority). This kind of giving creates a sense of debt, even if it’s not intended.
Consider colonialism. The various European empires circumnavigated the entire globe, bringing what they believed to be superior culture, religion, and civilization to the ‘heathens’. We can now see the many detrimental consequences of colonialism, yet we persist in economic and political policies that would keep other nations dependent and ill-developed, all for a sense of power and superiority (in the case of capitalism, for example).
It is a fine and noble thing to help others in need. Permission is critical. But to help when help is not needed? To help when help is not requested or required?
Give a healthy person a pair of crutches and soon she will come to need them and forget that her legs were ever free.
When you help too much (to bolster your own ego, find a sense of purpose, or whatever other reason), you are taking away the receiver’s opportunity for learning and growth. There is a subtle message that they can’t handle it on their own. That they can’t trust themselves. That when things get tough, they don’t have the inner resources to handle it.
I’ve landed in some pretty tough situations because I wanted to help people who didn’t ask for help. And I’ve felt devalued and untrusted when others try to help me without me asking.
We need grit. Discomfort. The opportunity to experience scarcity and success in turn. These are all essential components of a life well-lived.
So I’ve learned to offer help, but not impose it. I’ve learned to ask for help, but only when it’s really needed, when it appears I don’t have the necessary resources. I’ve learned to stop trying to fix people and situations, to let them be as they are.
Because it comes down to trust. How deeply do you trust in the benevolence of Life? How deeply do you trust that each situation has the potential to become alchemically gold? How much must you interfere with Life’s processes for your children, your parents, your loved ones, instead of trusting, deep down, that everything will be all right in the end?
As one of my mentor characters told his protégé, “I will not build bridges for you, Adeline, for it is in the depths of the chasm that the treasure is found.”
The aura of your giving is undeniable. Help others find their own way in life, yes, without taking away their individual power.
I would rather guide and serve then help and fix. I would rather illuminate patterns than force people to confront them. Again, it’s nuanced and subtle, but, to me, it makes all the difference in the world.
My way is not necessarily the right way for someone who is not me. Each of us have our own mythic path through life. When we ‘help’ others by building bridges for them, we may be in fact denying them experiences they require for their own growth and understanding.
See? Quite nuanced, isn’t it?
In fact, I want to dedicate my life to serving others, but I serve with my presence, my love, my kindness, my boundaries, and my stories. I serve best when I live a life aligned with my highest values and stay true to my heart.
What is the flavour of your giving? To create debt, to feel strong? How do you define helping others?
I feel sometimes my backpack is more like Mary Poppins’ bag — the more I look in it, the more bricks I find! It has been extremely rewarding, however, examining what bricks I carry from my cultural conditioning and childhood and deciding what to do with them.
What brick will you drop next?
