Self Focused.
The first step in personal growth.
By
Trine C. Jensen, Founder of Success On My Own Terms.
Too often we get caught up in the judgments of others. We put too much emphasis or importance on what other people think of us, and we become focused on tending to their perceptions in order to control a given situation. In the worst cases we engage in a constant battle to control what people think, a process known as image management. There’s nothing wrong with this—most businesses and politicians do it to perpetuate or maintain a public image, and ordinary people like you and me do it as well. However, if we do it excessively, it becomes a tremendous energy drain, and our lives become centered on ministering to the needs of others at the expense of expressing ourselves authentically. The key to overcoming this problem is to find a healthy balance between being other focused, as mentioned above, and self focused, which means having a healthy focus on your needs in specific situations. Being Self-focused has its downside, but here it’s used to denote a positive focus on individual needs.
For many, a lack of stability in childhood is often a factor in developing an other-focused mindset. Kids who grow up in uncertain environments can become other focused out of necessity. Learning to navigate drama or even violent situations forces them to appease the uncertainty by focusing on the needs of those threatening them. Conversely, kids who grow up in stable environments can be focused on their own needs and learn to express those needs appropriately. In other words, they will have had the experience of having their needs met by their caretakers and are not as likely to develop a limiting other-focused focus.
Codependent relationships are other common environments in which this condition can thrive, especially if the seeds were sown in youth. When we find ourselves in such relationships, we often develop a skill set that is great for reading other people’s needs and for ignoring our own. In fact, it’s often difficult to know what our needs are. And for those of us who were disconnected from our self at a young age, it takes a bit of work to reconnect and learn how to maintain the connection. Meeting the needs of everybody else is second nature, and it’s often our path to safety, since it feeds emotional elements such as acknowledgment, belonging and acceptance. That’s how we learned to get accolades in our early environment, and we tend to follow the same pattern as adults.
Being other focused isn’t without merit, but like all impulses, it has to be effectively managed. In fact, it comes with a skill set for a slew of careers in the caring professions. Therapists, coaches, and healers are often very other-focused. But leading a healthy life requires striking a balance between tending to others and tending to yourself. Becoming positively self-focused helps us claim our identity, discover our needs, determine what we want from life, and, when completely realized, allows us to communicate those feelings at will. We learn to judge a situation based on whether it will fulfill the aforementioned criteria, and we are able to choose whether or not to stay in it. This is incredibly empowering because we now have the power of choice, and rather than trying to get our approval and security from others we become the generator of our own safety—the generator of our own sense of worthiness. It begins by learning to catch those other-focused moments that threaten to undermine our best interests.
When we’re able to say, “I’m going to check in with myself and I’m going to make a different choice here,” we’re on the right self-focused track. Initially, however, this process is going to take a tremendous amount of courage because the buttons that it will push are connected to our fundamental sense of safety. When we break the pattern that has given us value in this world for so long, the “other pleasing,” the assessing what others need and meeting those needs, we’re going to get some push back. If we have a life full of relationships founded on that behavior, then when we start to take care of ourselves, some friends may say, “Hey, I liked it better when you were accommodating my needs!”
Some of those relationships will come to an end, and some of them will grow and transform with us, and they will become incredibly valuable compared to what they were in the past. They will resonate with our authentic sense of self because we will be relating on an equal basis, instead of engaging in self-effacement in order to please the other. And it’s hard to cop to those behaviors in ourselves because nobody likes to raise her hand and say, “I’m a real doormat in half of my relationships.” That doesn’t feel good.
But the point here is not to call ourselves a doormat and then use that as an excuse to beat ourselves up. It’s much more about saying, “Okay, these are the circumstances, these are the types of relationships, these are the types of people that trigger me to be over accommodating at my own expense.” Get really clear about these elements and then start taking small steps to correct them. What can I do differently when that button is pushed? And I’m feeling scared. My sense of security in this relationship feels threatened and it’s because I want to change my behavior and take different action. What can I do differently? How can I be courageous and express my truth right now?
Some additional steps to consider:
The self-focused process has to do with paying attention to ourselves, to our feelings and to our needs. As a place to start for the next couple of days pay attention to your hunger before meals; are you really hungry? What are you in the mood for? What flavors would you like to taste? What is your body asking for? You can apply this line of questioning to any activity you are about to engage in and ask yourself similar question; Do I really want to do this? Why or why not? What would I rather do?
The point is really pay attention to the answers you get from within, you don’t have to make any changes yet, start by just paying attention to the answers you get, you can decide what to do with this information later. Have fun and enjoy getting to know yourself better! Visit Trine’s website at www.SuccessOnMyOwnTerms.com
