Good afternoon ladies and gentleman

We are naturally obsessive and particularly compulsive in our nature as human beings. I feel like this is something that has become fairly well established over the last few months on Thinking Evolution. We all seem to live with a form of perfectionism, be that in a single aspect of life, or throughout all aspects of life. We all live with an insecurity of some form, regardless of whether it is something we feel like we can manage, or something we feel manages us. It’s this obsessive compulsive nature that can often make us feel like we lack control over our lives, based on the way the world is “supposed” to be in tandem with an often debilitating fear of failure that makes us live to ideas we aren’t interested in, to ideals that we think are the “right” thing, rather than what we truly want, regardless of what is supposed to be right or wrong, good or bad.

We have considered at great length these ideas as stand alone issues, be it the perfectionism, the insecurities and the self destructive behavior that can result because of them. Yet there seems a critical piece missing to this peculiar puzzle. How do all of these things connect? Should they connect? Are they caused by alternate forces, or does one issue cause another? For instance does our perfectionism cause the development of insecurities- or is there something else going on?

There seems to be a build up of things that we struggle to understand, which can make it particularly difficult to understand how we should react to them. It may start as a small thing, a minor failure on a task which you expected to flow effectively, an event that didn’t go your way or a person in your life doing something or acting in a particular way that unsettled you, that caused you to feel out of “sync” with what your used to. I think we are designed to loathe not being successful in everything we do and the maintenance of resolve can come much harder at repeated events of failure. We can feel defeated, deflated, concluding we might be better off alone, “maybe i wasn’t supposed to do that.” Thinking like this can limit the pain of failure, leading to a desire to be numb, because feeling nothing is supposed to be so much better than being in pain.

We become overcome by this sense of deflation,  so convinced that if we were to try something, even taking the smallest step closer to something or someone we desire so badly will lead only to failure and humiliation, leaving us further back than when we started. We try and deal with this feeling, to manage it and find a way of living with it. We convince ourselves this is the best step forward, even though all we are doing side stepping these issues because we are worried about how they might make us feel. Its as if we sidestep an emotional problem by trying to look at in a rational way, which is a sure fire way to not really solve anything.

So it continues to build and build, while we continue to battle against who we are and what we want to be, so utterly convinced we are of better this way, this limited version of who we are. We don’t realize how wasteful this is of life, because who we are surely shouldn’t be limited by fear or pain.

Nonetheless, regardless of what makes us feel outstanding, we crack on with this ideal. Then it hits you. You could by lying in bed, driving around or at your job, but its like you have just taken a sucker punch straight on the chin. All of this fear, this raw, debilitating emotion and negative power cannot keep building. There is going to be a moment where it will overflow, as the scale of what is going on takes hold, the weight of everything hitting you all at the same time. We are almost left in a state of shock from this, frantically looking for a way back. We feel like we can only fight for so long, as eventually you just don’t have the energy anymore, until it flows over you, almost like a virus.

Why do we let this build up? Why do we think we need to live with this weight on our shoulders? Its obviously a horribly deflating sensation, yet we let it get to this point so often these days, its almost a part of the cycle of our lives. Do we fear what we cannot control and understand- or is it the fear of something failing? We self destruct at that point where it overflows, because we are the point that we don’t know how to keep dealing with this and how to keep pushing forward. You feel as if you’re imploding inside but we do all we can to hide it from everyone and everything we know, while all you want is to just keep your head above the water.

We seem to be scared of how something good might feel- or how failing to reach a goal might feel, so we instead live in such a way that has the potential to make us feel so much worse?

Is it human nature? or is it not that simple?

Seems more complicated than face value would have us believe (like most things these days)
Yours, DR.

Random motivational picture