Читать книгу The High Achiever's Guide - Maki Moussavi - Страница 9
ОглавлениеHow did I get here?
The question nagged at me. It would pop into my head in the chaos of trying to get out the door in the morning when I was going to be late again, dammit. It made another appearance when I pulled into the parking lot, anxious about what the day would bring. The question would pop up over and over again, while under the glare of the fluorescent lights, reading the emails that signaled the day’s fire drills, wanting to slide right out of my chair into a pile under my desk. I couldn’t follow through on answering this question. I would begin to ponder it, the depressing evidence of how I had created my reality would pile up, and I knew that I had somehow, unintentionally, been the architect of my own despair. I tried to move on from it, but then this question’s best friend asked:
What do you want?
This was it. The million-dollar question. The one I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t even know where to start and, up to that point, there had been precious few times in my life when I wasn’t sure how to start and couldn’t come up with something that would get me on the path. How was it possible to not know what I wanted? Was I the only one whose internal response was the equivalent of an exasperated shrug? It made me oddly uncomfortable, as if there must have been something missing from me to not have a response to such a fundamental question.
I became obsessed with finding the answer. As I started to dig through my own mental clutter, it started to make perfect sense that what I wanted wasn’t immediately obvious. In our fast-paced world, we barely take a breath between one activity and the next. Our poor brains are inundated with constant stimulation. We are listening, reading, scrolling, participating, going, traveling, worrying, analyzing, thinking, and, well, basically just doing entirely too much shit. Worse yet, we are so used to doing entirely too much that we don’t know how not to do it. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that we have severely diminished capacity for tapping into our truest selves. We can’t hear anything above the continuous noise that we’ve come to accept as integral to our daily lives.
When this journey started, I was completely immersed in the cycle of “busy-ness.” I moved constantly. Relaxation was a foreign concept. When I wasn’t at work, I bustled around, tidying up, making dinner, getting the kids what they needed, remembering that thing I needed to do, responding to an email, watching the clock to make sure I got my workout in before midnight, fretting about how I was going to get enough sleep when I had so much left to do and was already behind on rest—an endless litany of thoughts piled up on top of one another, increasing my anxiety as the day went on. If nothing needed to be done, I would stand there and look around, trying to identify something that could use attention. WTF.
It was like an addiction, this need to “accomplish.” It made me a bit of a crazy person. My husband didn’t suffer from this affliction. I would get so mad at him for just sitting. How could he sit on that couch, chill out, and watch a show when there was so much to do, for God’s sake? Don’t get me wrong—my husband is pretty amazing. He’s truly my partner in every way, but one thing he had down that I was failing at miserably was the ability to just be. To sit and do nothing for just a little while. To shut it down, the whole messy monkey circus in my head that was in a constant poo-throwing frenzy. Honestly, I was jealous of his ability to turn it all off for a little while. I couldn’t do it.
All the mental and physical doing that I was continuously engaged in settled into my body in the form of symptoms like tightness in my chest, insomnia, and irritability. That last one, though. Everything got on my nerves. I woke up in a state of irritation and it was all downhill from there. It was actually this consistent state of irritation that served as the pivotal wake-up call for me. It was the car alarm that kept going off, until I finally reached the point where that sucker needed to be silenced. I couldn’t persist in that state. I didn’t like what it was doing to the way I related to my children. It seemed like I was always snapping at them for doing kid things, like wandering around in the morning with no sense of urgency. Didn’t they know I had a meeting to get to, for Pete’s sweet sake? Of course, I never said these things aloud, but I wasn’t proud of my impatience. It made me sad to think that my daily interactions with my kids were always rushed. We rushed out the door in the morning, rushed home to make sure dinner, homework, bath time, and bedtime all happened in a timely manner. If work needed to be done, it got squeezed in after all of that, and the only time I had for workouts was late at night. More often than not I’d be finishing up a workout at ten thirty at night, just in time to collapse into bed and start over again after six hours of sleep, if that.
How did I let my life get this way? And I wasn’t the only one. How did the collective “we,” the high achievers, get this way?
It all comes down to programming: the accumulation of the experiences that shapes our lives, that limits how we see ourselves, and that, along with continuous exposure to the expectations of the outside world, drowns out who we are at the core of our beings. The barrage of outside information invades our minds, takes up residence, and creates such a cacophony that, even though something is wrong, all we have to go on is this vague sense of unease that we cannot name or describe; we are so out of touch with who we are elementally.
There is no easy button for addressing how we came to be this way. We are like computers without the benefit of system updates to clear out the outdated crap and bugs in the system that no longer serve us. It is absolutely essential to clear the antiquated programming and to replace it with a sleek and self-efficacious operating system, one that does away with the old and busted to make way for the new hotness.
It’s overwhelming at first. How to begin? In this guide, you will be presented with a systematic approach that breaks down the process into manageable chunks that you can do a bit at a time. If there is one key thought to keep in your mind throughout what we will cover in this book, it’s this: You do not need to have the answers. Come with curiosity and compassion toward yourself, suspend judgment, and observe. Answer the questions at hand and the more complex answers will take shape and appear when it’s time, when you are capable of accepting them because of your progress on this self-development journey. It took you years and years to become how you are today. All those experiences came together to make you the high achiever you are. You will not undo it overnight, and trust me, you would miss all the fun if you could! You may be scoffing to yourself now, thinking “Yeah, right! Fun? This chick is crazy.” It’s okay that you don’t believe me yet. But the sense of empowerment and the clarity you will create if you follow the process are not only fun, but downright exhilarating. You are worthy of investing this effort in yourself. Make the decision, right here and now, that your life is worth this investment of time and energy, and remind yourself of that as often as needed. When it gets tough, recommit. We will talk much more about how to keep going when you’re losing steam a little later. For now, this first commitment to yourself is the most powerful move you can make to change your life.
Now that you’re in it to win it, it’s time to get into the external influences that have shaped the way you operate today. There are many, many sources of programming, so for the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on the following categories. Keep in mind that each of these is highly complex and loaded with lots of considerations. The list of questions for each is meant to get your self-examination juices flowing. It’s important to get your head into the right space for looking at your programming. Starting with a limited list will trigger the process, and it will naturally continue once you’ve started.
Sources of Programming
Family relationships. Consider your relationship with your parents, their marital status, how old they were when they had you, whether they had close parental or family relationships, your sibling relationships, whether you had grandparents or extended family in your life, the dynamics of your family, expectations for behavior, what made a good son or daughter, what you were or weren’t allowed to talk about, and so on.
Socioeconomic status. How much money did your family have? Were finances a source of anxiety? What kind of home did you grow up in, and what part of town was it in? Did you get to wear what you wanted, or were you stuck with hand-me-downs? Did your status make you a target for teasing or ridicule? Did you have so much it made you uncomfortable, like you were flashing your wealth in the faces of those who didn’t have as much? What about the kids you hung out with? Did you stick with those who had similar backgrounds? What labels did your family/friends use for those who had more or less than you did?
Cultural background. Are you part of an immigrant or ethnic minority? How did it influence the way you were raised? Was your life a blend of that culture and the one you were raised in? What are the expectations and value system of your culture of origin? What challenges came with this experience? Did you feel those outside your experience didn’t understand your family or its priorities? What slurs or comments did you hear that targeted your ethnic group?
Geographic location. Did you grow up in a rural or urban area? What are the values and norms of the area? Is there a particular identity associated with that region? Is it agricultural, industrial, coastal, etc.? How did your location influence your thoughts about what a “normal” childhood experience should look like? How do the values of that upbringing show up in your life today? Did you long to escape the kind of environment you grew up in? Did you decide early on it was the only way of life for you and stay put? Why did you want to leave or stay?
Political and religious influences. Was religion important when you were growing up? What beliefs did your religious upbringing ingrain within you? What are the politics of your family or the part of the world you grew up in? Is or was there any conflict between your religious and political belief systems? Are your current beliefs in line or at odds with how or where you were raised? How do you think about those whose belief systems don’t align with yours?
Social network. Who are your friends? Who do you spend time with? How do all of the above factors influence your chosen network? Has that changed over the course of your life, or has it remained consistent? Do you seek out those who are like-minded, different from you, or some of both? Do you find yourself trying to stay in line with the expectations of your group? Do you silence yourself to fit in? How does this network uplift you or bring you down?
Remember that you don’t have to know the answers to all of these questions just yet, but seeing the various angles in black and white should instill an appreciation for just how complex our programming truly is. When I started to do this work on myself, I realized how little awareness I’d had around the experiences that had formed me. They were just my experiences; I hadn’t ascribed any particular meaning or weight to them. One of the benefits of this exercise is that it gives you the opportunity to think about who you are through a layered approach that will hopefully show you how awesome you are to have come through what you have.
If you’re tempted to dismiss the exercise because your life was “easy” and privileged, don’t. Our programming in and of itself isn’t good or bad—it just is. Its impact on you is the real point of digging into it. You’re reading these words because you believe your life can be better. Remain open and don’t close the door on any element of examination based on preconceived notions.
My own programming played a huge role in where I was when I began this process. For me, the question “What do you want?” couldn’t effectively be answered until I understood why I was so far removed from where I wanted to be in the first place. I had to look at the influences and expectations that had shaped my life, and that was no straightforward task. As the child of immigrants, my early life included a hodge-podge of influences. We lived in student housing; my parents were closely tied in with their cultural group but also had many American friends. We didn’t have much money, but I always received the best educationally because we lived in a college town where the learning standards were high. My own parents came from a culture that valued higher education, so I learned early on that being a good student and eventually going to college and beyond was the righteous path. We had very little extended family around. I only ever met one of my grandparents and didn’t really get to know her because the visits were brief. Naturally, most of my friends were in the same lower-middle-class bracket, which made it easy for us to understand one another and relate to each other’s experiences, especially in elementary school. As our world became larger in middle and high school, the influencing factors and the lens through which we viewed the world began to shift. There was a whole other place outside the little neighborhood where we could walk to one another’s front doors, school, or the pool in the summer. We experienced everything within a mile of where we slept until it was time to get on the bus for middle school, where we finally met and interacted with kids from all over town, no longer limited to our little bubble. But even as those influences within our microcosm grew, some things remained constant. We grew up in an agricultural state in a college town, surrounded by rural farmland. A border state that was on the side of the north in the Civil War, there were vast differences in culture between our state and the one next door that we would sometimes drive to for camping excursions. There were and are a lot of misconceptions about my state, Kansas, and to this day, when people ask where I’m from and I answer “Manhattan,” they assume I’m talking about New York. It blows their minds that someone like me could have grown up in a small town in Kansas, and it’s even more confusing to many how on earth my parents ended up there as immigrants from Iran, of all places. I grew up without religion; my parents were open to letting me attend church with my friends if I asked, but there was no particular reinforcement of any one belief system. Politically, they were liberal and highly engaged in politics, as they and their families had been greatly impacted by the internal and global politics that shaped the conflict and regime change in Iran.
My early experiences formed the backdrop and led to the formation of the limiting beliefs that came to shape my standard mode of operation. Limiting beliefs are the thoughts that keep you from moving forward by diminishing your belief in yourself and what you’re capable of. There are a couple of lenses through which limiting beliefs affect you. The first lens is that through which you view yourself and whether your capabilities are enough. The second lens is that through which you view the world and how you see its limitations, and what impact those limitations have on your own life.
The following represent common limiting beliefs with regard to the self:
•I can’t pull that off.
•This is all I know.
•I’ll never be able to [fill in the blank].
•I never say the right thing.
•This always happens to me.
•I don’t have what it takes.
•I didn’t finish school, so I’m not smart enough to [fill in the blank].
Add these up, and what you end up with is “I am not enough.”
This next list details some thoughts that represent limiting beliefs with respect to the external world:
•The world is a terrible place.
•It’s scary to go out in public not knowing what may happen.
•The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
•It’s all falling apart, and it gets worse every day.
•There’s not enough [fill in the blank] to go around.
The general theme with limiting beliefs regarding the external world is “There is not enough,” whether it be enough money, food, compassion, sense, etc. It paints a picture of an unfriendly place, one that is against you, so what’s the point of trying anyway? In the extreme, thoughts like this can lead to defeatism, in which you being the loser is a foregone conclusion, or extremism, in which you view yourself as a lone crusader, constantly fighting and thrashing against the status quo. A healthy balance between practicality and optimism is the best way to move forward, and we’ll talk more about that later in the book.
My personal limiting beliefs were not completely unknown to me, but going through the exercise of contemplating and writing them down was eye-opening. I’d been walking around with some serious BS in my head about what I was capable of and what options were open to me. Here is a sampling of my own limiting beliefs that may help as you begin considering your own:
•This is all I know. I’m limited to this field.
•I don’t have what it takes to work for myself.
•People will see through me.
•No one wants what I have to offer.
•If I don’t have status, I’ll become insignificant.
•I can’t make the kind of money I want if I leave.
I could go on, but you get the gist. These are all of the “I am not enough” variety. When I dug into these beliefs and really thought about them, I realized how strangely basic they were: egocentric and concerned with being small, unseen, and unheard. Thoughts of this nature had been such an integral part of my thinking, embedded in my mind as if they were factual, that I didn’t have any reason to take a hard look at them and see them for the weirdly insignificant thoughts they were. You will have the same realizations, and you will be freed from the limiting beliefs that bind you if you have the courage to face them head-on. After going through the identification process, my response to my own beliefs was some variation of “That’s dumb!” or “So what?” or “That’s not even true.” People don’t like the real me? So what? I don’t have what it takes? That’s not even true. I don’t know enough to work in a different field? That’s dumb. And not true. Think of what you’d say to a friend who was confessing their own limiting beliefs to you. How would you respond? Chances are, it would not be with “You’re right. You totally suck. That will never work. Don’t even try.” We are much more generous and compassionate when talking with others. Act as your own friend when you become aware of your limiting beliefs, and defuse their power over you.
Because you’ve been programmed, the key to unlocking your transformation is to rewrite the programming and patterns that are keeping you in the hamster wheel of stagnation. As a high achiever, you have within you everything you need to do just that, but it can be hard to make the leap from a whole lot of what’s not working to what will actually serve you instead. I also know that, as a high achiever, you likely love your checklists and goals, so for that reason, in each chapter, I’m going to share a brief “To Don’t” list that you can use to keep yourself on track throughout the process.
To Don’t:
•Don’t judge yourself as you dig into your programming. We each have our own to deal with.
•Don’t try to fast-forward through the process. It will take time to undo years of unconscious beliefs.
•Don’t let your limited view of yourself stop you in your tracks. There’s a more powerful version of you beneath that limited view that you are trying to reach.
Do Instead:
•Remember that your experiences have shaped who you are today. You wouldn’t be the kickass high achiever you are without them.
•Stay curious and compassionate. Treat yourself as you would a dear friend.
•Invest the time and energy it takes to get started. You only need a few minutes of focused time each day.
Summing Up
Your personal sources of programming provide critical insight into how you got to where you are today. In our quick-fix way of life, it can be tempting to fast-forward to the remedy, but there’s no way around doing the deep work. Roll up your sleeves and get to it. The understanding you will gain about yourself and others as you do this work is priceless. You will walk away with a newfound appreciation of who you are and how you came to be, beginning to chip away at the self-doubt that keeps you from moving forward. I encourage you to keep a journal as you work your way through the process. There’s no better way to pleasantly surprise yourself than to look back and see how far you’ve come.
Remember:
•You’ve been programmed by many influences at work in your life, including your family dynamics, socioeconomic status, geographic location, political and religious influences, social network, etc.
•Limiting beliefs are formed through our experiences and sources of programming. There are two basic lenses through which we see limitations: the lens through which we view ourselves and the lens through which we view the world.
•Up to this point, you have been heavily influenced by the external world and its expectations, which naturally leads to stagnation as you are not expressing who you truly are, rather marching to the drumbeat that many others are marching to in the absence of a personal definition of success.
•Understanding your personal programming lays the foundation for going from a lack of fulfillment to empowered self-expression and intentional creation.
Get out your journal or laptop and begin your self-examination by contemplating the following questions.
1.Create a table or list and write down the thoughts that come to mind for each of these categories: family dynamics, socioeconomic status, geographic location, political and religious influences, social relationships, and whatever else comes to mind for you. Think in terms of the influence of each of these on you from early life until now. If one of these categories is particularly significant for you, spend some additional time focusing on just that area. For instance, if your family was active in the church and you suffered abuse at the hands of someone respected, how did what you were taught influence the way you decided how to handle the situation? Remember, do not judge yourself. Programming is incredibly powerful. Nothing you did or didn’t do is reason to be down on yourself. It just is, and now is the time to understand why.
2.Start identifying your limiting beliefs. When you consider doing something new or out of the ordinary, what thoughts pop into your head? If it helps, review the list earlier in the chapter until you get rolling. You can separate these into beliefs about yourself versus beliefs about the world around you, if that helps with focus.
3.Once you have some of your limiting beliefs down on paper, ask yourself the following about each:
a.Are they your words or someone else’s? Have those words been spoken before, about you or around you?
b.Do they contain absolutes, like always or never? Those words should be automatic triggers to identifying that particular belief as untrue.
c.Do they point fingers or look externally rather than internally? For instance, a thought like “They always gang up on me” looks outward to blame instead of inwardly asking “Why am I tolerating this?”
d.Are they excuses? Are you saying to yourself “I don’t have time” to do what should be high on your priority list? Again, the point is not to judge yourself, but to see where you are participating in holding yourself back.
As you keep track of your thoughts throughout this process, remember to date your entries and to keep your journal handy. If you have an important realization when you’re out and about, you can use the voice memo app on your phone to quickly record your thoughts and review them later when you have time to sit down and listen. Even if you’ve never journaled before in your life, now is the time to begin. Writing or otherwise communicating what’s happening in the analytical part of your brain helps get the other side of your brain engaged in processing, which will lead to breakthroughs for you as you continue through the process.
