642. Pessimism and Embracing The Blank Page

 

As I briefly mentioned in my previous blog, pessimism has been one of the very ‘ingrained’ patterns in me that I’ve become more aware of lately since finding out I was pregnant. I have to say that I didn’t see myself as a ‘pessimist’ per se, but I was able to identify this way of being in me based on the feedback that I got from my partner as a way to describe my focus on ‘the worst’ of the early pregnancy experience and the fears and limitations that I would bring up in terms of how things ‘would be’ for the future and so forth.

This all seemed ‘normal’ to me and that’s where this point begins, because! I’ve seen firsthand how the same event can be approached from a very different perspective, one that sees the inconvenience of certain symptoms as part of creating something that will be a life-change in our lives. One that can see the ‘adding’ of responsibility as a catalyst for change and personal growth, one that can bring fun times even with the stuff I could define as ‘a hassle’ or ‘troublesome’ – yep, this rather constructive perspective is how my partner approached the whole thing and I’ve been certainly learning more from him and learning to see living potential in it all, instead of only focusing on all that I could define as ‘the bad’ which, again, is not the best of me that I want to cultivate, it is the worst of me that interestingly enough has resurfaced again, because! Yes, this is a ‘life changer’ situation and one that I ‘feared’ a lot apparently, so I faced the consequence of cultivating all of those fears for many, many years. But I’m also learning to let go of them as I go facing this pessimism in different ways and in some of the most ‘sneaky’ forms.

This ‘pessimist’ core programming certainly started in childhood and yes, due to other circumstances unrelated to my pregnancy, we’ve been opening this up with my parents considering that these same fearful patterns have been spilling out into the children of the family and causing some consequences. So, confronting the situation is serving as a preparation ground for both of us to get to understand how I got to be quite limited by all kinds of fears that were imprinted from a very young age by my parents and within that, us all getting to see how that is affecting the newest members of the family, consequently to understand how these patterns came to exist in us and how they are still having ‘a hold’ on us.

Here I perhaps point out something that is by now a ‘well learned lesson’ when it comes to parents and getting to understand and forgive the ways in which they brought us up, because they most likely also didn’t know ‘any better’ and they did what they could in what they perceived as a way to care and love their children.  In this, there are no ‘hurt feelings’ for how I was raised, I instead enjoy understanding the familial patterns to see where and how I came to be ‘who I am’ and within that understanding, take a more active role in being responsible to change those very things that I’ve seen have limited me – and are Still showing up as limiting in my experience currently when facing the point of becoming a mother, becoming parents.  

I have come to make sense of how this ‘pessimism’ is therefore rooted in all kinds of fears that led me to ‘automatically’ think of the worst case scenarios, ‘all the worst that could happen,’ and it’s been quite astounding to see to what extent I do this on an automatic and “natural” way – meaning, I wouldn’t necessarily see it as something I had to flag-point and become aware of, because I deemed it as ‘care’ or ‘creating a sense of security’ – which by cross-referencing it with my partner, are more like my own conditioning – meaning, my past being ‘brought forward’ to the present and even ‘into the future’ … and that’s exactly what we don’t have to do, but instead approaching every moment, every day as a blank page where we decide how to live and how to face situations or ‘challenges,’ and to no longer kind of predispose myself to ‘facing all the worst’ because, I’ve seen how prominent that exists as a ‘normal thinking’ in my mind, and it doesn’t have to be that way, I have to actually stop seeing it as ‘normal thinking’ when seeing that I’m actually considering ‘all the things that could go wrong.’

It all really starts at that level of accepting and allowing those seemingly ‘small thoughts’ to creep up, feed them – which means go into them, thinking about them – to spiral them out into personality patterns like ‘the fearful mother’ and! Well, I would not want to become that, but I also see that I may face these fears in reality in order to become aware of what exists within me, so that I can become aware of them and change them. How else would I become aware of them otherwise?

I really even once thought that it was a cultural thing to constantly be gasping and fearing for a child’s health and wellbeing… well, nope! It’s more like a family thing that I truly need to become aware of Within myself, instead of kind of only going criticizing it and judging it on ‘the outside’ which in all cases, indicates that there are points I am not yet understanding and so, not forgiving that exist within me as well. This means that as long as I am reacting to it, then, there is less of a possibility for me to actually acknowledge, understand and embrace it in order to see where and how that exists within me, so that I can direct myself in a more flexible, understanding and unconditional way, one that considers the moment, and the present as that blank page and stop ‘re-loading’ all of my memories and fears and past conditioning as a child in my own family.

I noticed this pattern even more so recently where I was looking at a future situation of how people in my environment and their character could ‘affect’ the child and within this looking at it already from a starting point of fear: fear of the child going through the ‘imprinting’ of fears and anxiety that I went through as a child based on interacting with these individuals. And I allowed that to go as far as seeing how we would have to possibly disengage from being around these people to attempt to ‘protect’ our child from that kind of ‘character flaws.’ So here again, realizing I’m still holding a judgment and a reaction, which certainly I allowed myself to be affected by, which in turn I feared could ‘happen to our child’ and then going into ‘wanting to protect the child.’

I realize that as long as I am judging, criticizing, fearing certain attitudes and types of ‘character,’ then I am not yet coming to see ‘who am I’ towards those characteristics and emotions in others so that I can work on stopping my own reactions, realizing that others’ reaction do still create an effect on me – and therefore the child inside – and that it is precisely there where I need to act and apply myself to simply stop reacting and understanding why I get to react to them, so that I can decide in self-awareness to change how I respond in those moments.

It’s very easy to deviate from the point of self-responsibility when attempting to blame others for their character flaws, their patterns, their reactions and thinking that ‘they have to change’ or ‘we just have to avoid them altogether’ instead of realizing how it is only myself that can change how I face those situations and that that will in a huge way determine and be an example of how our child can face, confront and walk through similar situations with people. So it’s not about wanting to ‘prevent’ problems –  because we create ‘the problem’ when reacting to others in the first place – but it’s about being an example of how to best face the situation with stability, understanding and focusing on solutions, not giving space to ‘react back’ to anyone, but to stick to what is practical and reasonable to do. Now this is where the real self-change is at.

This time around again it took a good conversation while walking with my partner to explain to him what I was seeing with this whole thing that I just explained above and get back to Earth about it. I saw how I wasn’t really going to get anywhere with the ‘getting away from’ or ‘avoidance’ plan, I was mostly also ‘trapping’ people in their ‘usual selves’ and assuming how they would behave and be in a hypothetical future situation, which is one of the ways in which we keep ourselves ‘trapped’ and limited in the same personalities, the same judgments of how we believe ‘we are and will be’ and don’t give each other that space and opportunity to outgrow our old selves. 

I also was approaching the situation from already assuming and determining how our child would interpret certain attitudes, voice tonalities, expressions as if he or she was going to already judge it as something bad, negative, etc. when in fact, there is no reaction that is pre-recorded there. It is mostly all learned from the environment and that’s where our role comes in. The example comes from ourselves as parents to stop reacting to others’ expressions in a positive or negative way, but instead keep an equanimity and discernment about things which will in turn demonstrate to the child that one doesn’t ‘have to’ go into fear, worry, anxiety or anything like that if someone else is demonstrating such traits in themselves. This is where the change of character happens, with ourselves as the examples – the rest is then learned from observation and imitation.

Within all of this, I also kept on  ‘scheming’ how to ‘go about’ with certain people or situations in life, where I would most likely end up trying to seclude our child from anything that I would be judging as bad, wrong, negative, destructive. Of course, here I am not talking about some kind of ‘extreme’ unsafe or detrimental environment, I am simply looking at character flaws, which yes, we all do have as well so in doing that, I was ignoring my starting point – which was fear – and not taking these judgments, expectations and future projections back to self, to see what we are now more equipped and have tools to go about facing the reality of the world and the people in it ‘as is,’ without wanting to sugar coat it for our child to ‘be safe from any bad influence’ – but, who determines what the bad, negative, wrong stuff is? I do, through reacting to it.

So, it’s a great point for me to look at and stop reacting in FEAR of ‘what it will do’ to a new being. I also discussed that with my partner and I came to see that ‘the other way around’ is the way to go, to expose the child to various kinds and types of people so that there can be a discernment formed over time about people and getting used to getting along and getting to understand – eventually – why some people are a certain way and make their own decision in how they go about with them.

All of these points have opened up as well in seeing how my family and I are used to handling kids. I may say I am working on ‘debugging’ myself from these thoughts, but in general there’s that sense of having to ‘be careful’ all the time, and having to ‘protect them from anything that could harm them,’ and trying to ‘prevent them from getting sick’ all the time and all sorts of paranoia that I notice has started to ‘kick in’ as the ‘mother/parent’ construct and I definitely can work on stopping it on its tracks at this stage.

Once that I ‘spelled out’ the point – which means talking about it – things changed – but! New points opened up like the ones I have explained here in relation to future projecting how ‘things could be’ – for the worst – and forgetting about rather focusing on ‘what’s here’ and supporting myself to be the best that I can in my day to day, rather than being up in my head fearing and scheming ‘the worst case scenarios,’ wherein I’m not seeing how THAT is actually causing fear and stress within me, which is far more directly affecting the being inside me than any other ‘person’ out there.

Now that’s more of an eye opening perspective that I need to have a clear awareness on, that’s my real responsibility Right Now. Whatever else happens and opens up in the future, as my partner said, then we will deal with it ‘then’ and look at solutions, but no need to start kind of taking the artillery out already and start seeing threats and problems everywhere where there are none for now. So I decide to trust myself in being able to face whatever may come our way with a new perspective.

Something else that assisted me to look at it from a different perspective, is to remind myself how many times whatever I may perceive as something that I could define as a limiting change or something that I fear having to do – yes, stepping out of my comfort zone – are usually opportunities to grow, to challenge, to develop ourselves further and approaching it from this perspective then takes the ‘mind away’ from merely focusing on ‘the worst’ and spending time on scheming only ‘in the mind’ what I would do in such ‘worst’ that is not HERE at all. It is a waste of time and as much as it might be just ‘ok’ to consider certain potentials, I do have to make sure I am not creating a predisposition to ‘all the worst that could be’ and feed that in my mind as if that is a sign of ‘care’ or creating some kind of ‘security’ for our child, because in the end the starting point and origin is still just: Fear.

I had also been worrying about how to go about these let’s say ‘out of the ordinary’ ways – in comparison to how things are ‘usually done’ here – which we are planning to apply with our child, which may stand in direct contrast with, for example, how other people in our family do things and how they approach their own children, etc. So in this, I also realized that there was that same fear of being judged or going through what I ‘went through’ when I started doing some radical changes in my life over a decade ago and I basically had to step-away from my family for some time, because I just could not really ‘get along’ with them.

What I didn’t consider back then is how I was reacting and judging them all the way, that’s what caused me to find it – apparently – ‘impossible’ to be around them, and this also came from a secret desire for them to do things ‘my way’ or ‘do the same process I was walking’ and in general just causing more and more conflict until yes, it was for the best that I simply stopped seeing them as often until I sorted out my own conflict projected towards them and learned how to Understand them and so be able to be around, know our ‘boundaries’ so to speak and still be willing to share and open myself up whenever asked or needed.

So upon realizing this, I have seen how this is one of those situations where I am projecting already ‘My own experience’ onto our child and this is quite the red alert as well, because this would be caused by nothing more and nothing else than my own prejudices, judgments, ‘loaded memories’ that would in turn surely would be super limiting and causing a new being to be conditioned by ‘MY’ experience around certain people. This means: the work that needs to be done is entirely WITHIN MYSELF, instead of starting to project onto others how I believe ‘things will be’ for our child based on my own past, which I now have to prove I can truly let go of – and embrace the blank page that’s growing within : )

Within this, then it was also supportive to have another one of those lengthy talks with my partner about ‘who I was’ in my family and how I came to single-myself-out from it and how I remained in judgment towards them as if that was ‘the only way to be.’ But, I realize that if I apply my own mindset towards the child, the actual consequence would be caused by myself, not by ‘others’ and that I would then be recreating the same problems and patterns I lived through for most of my life.

So, within all of this, everything of course points out to myself, to learn to be more unconditioned, to learn to see every new day as it unfolds as a blank page that we are freshly writing on and that each blank page does represent that opportunity to re-wire myself, to change the old programming of fears, worries, what ifs, pessimist attitudes and bleak future projections and instead, welcome the potential of the new phase that’s opening up. This means stopping feeding any idea of wanting to ‘save’ or ‘secure’ the child from certain things because, yep! That can lead to paranoia of not wanting the child to see the light of day so to speak, which is of course parental abuse as well. This is an exaggeration of course, but I’m playing it out this way so that I get to remind myself ‘what I’m doing’ every time that I go into my mind and start scheming things from a starting point of wanting to ‘prevent’ certain things and realizing it comes from a point of fear that I have to simply let go of.

How can this be practically done? By being able to self-forgive it out loud in the moment as it happens so that I can then lead myself back to realizing how this is not about ‘the child’ or ‘others’ but myself bringing up all of these ‘loose cannons’ as fears that I had not become aware of yet, because yes, this is certainly a new phase in my life and within that, there comes a whole new and uncharted territory that I can simply work with and face as I go with this kind of approach towards these seemingly ‘simple moments’ where I go into my mind and start fearing or future projecting some ‘worst case scenarios.’ That’s entirely possible and in my hands to do, and whenever I may ‘still’ see some of these fears as ‘very real,’ then that’s when I can talk them out, communicate them and cross-reference them with my partner and any other person that I trust their judgment on and create solutions – or simply get to understand a situation to then decide how to best act and approach it.

It may sound as if this point is quite ‘big’ within me, and it probably isn’t, lol. But I do like to in a way create awareness on it as if it was already a ‘big deal’ because it ‘could’ escalate if I don’t see it through this magnifying glass and understand what I am accepting and allowing whenever going into fears, judgments, prejudices, future projecting the worst and so on. Otherwise, I would go ‘brushing it off’ and I have seen the kind of ‘accumulation effect’ that we can create in our minds, where we then end up getting into a point or experience where things seem too big, too heavy, too difficult to change, because we allowed all those small moments of ‘feeding the patterns’ to go unnoticed – and therefore not taking responsibility for them – and that’s where I then go compromising my own standing and self-awareness.

So, all in all it has been cool to open up these points and even get to discuss them with my parents to understand ‘where’ they got those fears from, how they affected their lives with them and yes also get to understand that, to them, some may be quite difficult to change, but that’s where I also then have to see the opportunity that I currently have in my hands to ‘change the tide’ when it comes to those family patterns that have been already passed on to the younger kids in the family. It’s not like ‘they are screwed’ now, because there’s always the opportunity to take self-responsibility and later on as they grow, they also can decide to change – or not.

My point remains in reminding myself that the child to come is a blank page as well and that I have to be of utmost care to not approach that opportunity to raise another being with fears of ‘what runs in the family’ or ‘what has happened in the past’ or ‘what I went through as a child,’ because THEN I would most likely be conditioning all of that and imprinting that through my every move, voice tonality and interaction with the child.  I often criticize – judge – parents that see their children as ‘the problem,’ and still gets on my nerves to see how it seems impossible to look ‘back at themselves’ – as parents – to see that their child came into this world as a blank page – sure some genetics and so on – but most of who they turn out to be is determined by the environment – a.k.a. the parents, mostly.

I consider I am at a timely stage where I can create a big point of awareness within me of stopping projecting my own fears and what I defined as ‘bad/negative experiences’ onto a new being, and rather focusing on understanding my experience – which to me comes through nicely when communicating about it with my partner which always leads me to a resolution, a point of realizing where and how I need to be the change, while also knowing yep! Can’t create a ‘perfectly clear ground’ for another being and mostly being ok with the fact that I’ll face things as we go and that it is OK as well to make mistakes, learn through consequences, etc. Otherwise I’d go into control-freakism aaaand nope! We don’t need that either.

So that’s it, hope that this may be supportive for any of you, not only parents or parents to be, but anyone facing some of ‘the worst’ that exists in our minds in a seemingly ‘normal’ way. I would not have been able to bring myself through clarity without all the Desteni tools of self support and the invaluable self-supportive material available at Eqafe.com, specifically the Parenting series and everything else that you may find there as a way to understand our minds and so understand the ways that we can change that which we see no longer supports a new way of being and living, for the best, that is, embracing the blank page every day.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

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