I don’t know if it’s human nature.
Or if it’s something we were taught.
Or if it’s just me.
I don’t know why I always find myself running away from reality when I’m not acting in line with my principles. When I’m not doing what I think is right, I try to escape.
I go on Facebook and scroll my newsfeed like I’m looking for my salvation.
I eat chocolate and pizza; I buy lattes. Things I know are unhealthy for me in the long-term. I know they aren’t going to make me feel better, but I’m trying to hide from what I know. I hope they will save me from the guilt.
They don’t.
I keep looking for ways to escape. I try to avoid the pangs of emotion that come when I think about the things that are bothering me. I try to run away from myself. I get caught in a self-esteem death spiral.
I don’t live up to a commitment I make to have something done by a certain time at work. Instead of accepting it, understanding it, and acting to fix it, I try to hide from the uncomfortable feelings.
I leave work and stop to get something for dinner. I make a choice to look for short-term gratification. I eat something that I feel guilty about eating, so I feel worse about life. I’m feeling even worse. I’m looking to escape even more. When I eventually get home, I dive into my computer to dry and hide from the guilt that is tormenting me.
Instead of working on a creative project I want to work on, I am on youtube for two hours.
I stay up later than I want to because I’m trying to escape into my computer.
When I wake up the next day, I snooze three times because I’m tired. I don’t want to get up. I want to go back to sleep. I want to hide from life.
Instead of feeling bad about one thing I feel bad about four things.
I keep making decisions that I don’t rationally agree with, and the more I do, the more I try to run from my rational mind. The more I try to run from the knowledge that I am in control of my life. That I know how to eat healthy, that I know when to go to sleep, how to wake up without snoozing, how to invest my time to achieve my goals.
I might have spent my whole life running from myself if I didn’t hit a wall.
I have a code of right and wrong in my mind. You do to. We all do. Or at least, everyone I’ve met has.
We evaluate every action we take against what we think is right or wrong.
When you do what you think is right and live up to your code, you feel good about yourself. You feel in control. You trust yourself.
When you do what you think is wrong, you feel bad about yourself. You feel guilty. You trust yourself less, and if you don’t address the guilt, you will stop listening to what you think is right, in an attempt to escape your bad feelings and start to feel better. You start looking for solutions in all the wrong places. Food, the internet, praise, drugs. You destroy your self-esteem.
“It’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.” – Dr. Vincent Felitti
All the ways you can try to escape almost work. But you can’t hide from yourself forever.
Eventually, you have to deal with why you feel like you’re doing something wrong.
Your code of right and wrong has a massive impact on the quality of your life. But, lots of people have never stopped to examine their code. Most people haven’t decided on their own what they think is right and wrong; they’ve just absorbed it from their parents.
And, if your code sucks, your life will suck.
For a long time, my code sucked. I had unreasonable expectations of myself. I thought all sorts of things were wrong, and eventually I thought that I was wrong.
Picture an RPM meter maxing out. That was like my guilt-o-meter.
When I notice myself with a lust to escape. When I want to watch sports, eat bad food, and check Facebook over and over again. When I catch myself feeling guilty, I try to remember there are two ways out.
To start acting in a way you think is right, or to reevaluate what you think is wrong. To make yourself more accepting, understanding, and open. I can either change my actions or change my code.
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