Three feelings that seek to destroy our dreams!
Miniseries about negative feelings - Part 1: Prologue
If people do not achieve the things they want to achieve, the reasons for this are usually not external but internal. Of course, external circumstances can be restrictive. Financial bottlenecks, physical limitations, etc. are a hindrance, sometimes even major obstacles, but from my point of view the real causes of failure or stagnation are coming from within. Negative feelings about yourself are the main cause. And the fact that you are unpleasant, paralyzing or self-destructive is only one part of the story. Above all, negative feelings prevent us from doing the things we have to do in relation to our goals. Three feelings are most successful in preventing success: fear, guilt and shame.
Fear is paralyzing us
We are held back by fear. We are afraid of being abandoned, fired, despised, socially rejected and marginalized. Fear is a fantastic way to make people freeze. And most of the time, fear is of no use at all.
Guilt is our internal prosecutor.
To feel guilt, there must be a part of us that accuses us. One voice in us reproaches us for wrongdoing. Our own ideal conception of ourselves is constantly being compared by this inner prosecutor with our actual ego and its actions. And just like fear, guilt is usually useless in itself.
Shame as a punishment from our social environment
In contrast to feelings of guilt, shame is created when our social environment rejects our behaviour. Accordingly, shame is dependent on the respective norms of the social environment. While many indigenous tribe members will hardly experience any sense of shame due to nudity, this is clearly different in the western world. In this case, shame is useful, but in most cases shame is useless as well.
Three days! Three feelings!
If, on the one hand, these three feelings are often more of a hindrance than a useful and, on the other hand, they are a major obstacle to achieving our personal goals, why do we let ourselves be dominated by them? Well, because it's not so easy to control emotions with your mind. But this is possible, because feelings follow thoughts. In the next three days I will publish a blog daily, which will be devoted to the three feelings of fear, guilt and shame. Perhaps this may be a first step for some of us to achieve our personal goals and leave self-destructive feelings behind.
What do you think? Let me know!