On Receiving What You Think You Want, and Realizing You Never Really Stopped to Consider What That Was In the First Place
When you realized what you thought it was and what it actually is is two different things.
I’m not the jealous sort, so reading something from this perspective was helpful.
I made 3 articles based on what she’s saying here, and by the time this is published, I will have lists of writings on specific topics.
Why are people jealous acting? I wondered this my whole life, and How I Stopped Sitting Around All Day Seething With Jealousy Of My Peers, helped me with seeing the other side.
I have a catalog of articles of how I kept jealousy at bay for my whole life, because in the end, it ultimately doesn’t serve you. I’m not gonna treat someone mean because they have something I don’t nor is jealousy going to stop someone’s destiny. What’s meant for them is for them, what’s meant for you is for you. If you can get the jealousy under control, you can have a better life.
On Self-Determination, Possibility, and Realizing You Are the Driver, You Have Always Been the Driver, and You Can Change the Destination
“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
―Louise Hay, You Can Heal Your LifeEntire new galaxies open up when you grant yourself even the tiniest additional bit of faith.
The decisions came rapid-fire once I opened myself to the elixir of possibility.
The pilot light was flickering inside my soul. Anything seemed possible. And I asked myself for the first time in a long time a question that really ought to be asked all the time, as many times as you can, until your compass finally starts pointing in the direction that will lead you home.
What did I ever want to do with my life?
The options started to seem endless when I stopped listening to my internal critic that only knew one word: “NO.” (Anne Lamott has a great visualization technique for the process of dealing with your inner censors, incidentally. She suggests imagining these negative voices as irritating little mice that you can pick up one by one and place in a container that you set aside so they can fight it out amongst themselves — and leave you out of it entirely.)
The decisions came rapid-fire once I opened myself to the elixir of possibility.-Mandy Stadtmiller
- Not being jealous of others.
- Not taking out your frustrations/things going bad in your life. It’s not other people’s fault, and sometimes it’s finding someone to talk to (or if you are like me and don’t trust people easily, spending time in nature or animals)
- Changing my environment, shredding old identities, period.
- Not being afraid to spend time by myself, especially if the people around me wasn’t positive/trustworthy/safe.
On Gathering Up The Splinters Of Your Soul, Scooping Them Back Up Inside Yourself, and Tending Lovingly to Them Until They Fuse Together Once More
“Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness.”
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s WayWhat could I do now that my future wasn’t restricted? Now that my days weren’t spent solely focused on naked incapacitating jealousy? The answer: Anything I wanted.
I began to take the realm of inspiration, and wonder, as serious business.
When you experience that first little spark of joy revitalizing your soul, you start to realize that you are the one who created it — and more is infinitely possible.
Colors seemed brighter. Music made me dance again. And week after week, my local public library became my new best friend.
Sometimes it really does help to have a saccharine cheerleader in the form of a self-help book telling you to do things like “take yourself out on an artist’s date.” But, by far, the most life-changing takeaway was author Julia Cameron’s explanation of how to develop the discipline of writing daily “morning pages.”
It was not me. It was a job. And anything was possible. I didn’t know what tomorrow might bring. I didn’t have to know. I could see myself as an adventurer with untold possibility rather than a shipwrecked lost cause, nurturing only her deepest held regrets and bitterest jealousy.
It’s amazing what listening to yourself can do.
For me, I could finally break free from a lot of toxic patterns I didn’t realize I had the power to break all along. Like my Googling habit.
I was starting to call myself on my own bullshit, and it felt thrilling, profound.
Because as much as my itchy internet trigger finger still wanted to type in the names of my peers so I could beat myself up at what a loser I was, I started to see clearly the mental prison I had unwittingly trapped myself inside.
All this time I felt blinded by everyone else’s status. But I was the one who afforded them that status. I saw them as players. But me? No, no, no, no. Energizing questions of personal agency began to rise up. I was starting to call myself on my own bullshit and it felt thrilling, profound.
What if my peers’ success wasn’t an indictment, but an inspiration?
What if I was exactly like all these people I saw thriving?
What if the main thing holding me back was… me?
I thought about it some more. It’s not like these people I felt so jealous of were born with some permission I didn’t have. No one gave them some secret license to work their asses off, figure out where opportunities might lie, decide to never be helpless, work their asses off some more, try, fail, try, fail, repeat several more times, and then, eventually, maybe succeed — when success is probably not even the point. The act of creating, of enjoying the journey along the way — that’s the point.
I realized that if they could do it, so could I.
All they had done that I hadn’t was make a decision: They decided they were worthy of pursuing what they wanted.
(That is an absolutely vital word right there, by the way: Decision. It’s the secret to all of free will. Realizing that you have a choice, now and always. Even when you don’t have one because of the most dire circumstances, you still have a choice in how you react to the situation. No one can ever control your mind.)
This, right then and there, was my Kierkegaardian moment of truth: I was the only one who could determine my story. And morning pages were helping me write it.
On Finding Tools and Loving Yourself Enough to Use Them
“Be willing to paint or write badly while your ego yelps resistance. Your bad writing may be the syntactical breakdown necessary for a shift in your style. Your lousy painting may be pointing you in a new direction. Art needs time to incubate, to sprawl a little, to be ungainly and misshapen and finally emerge as itself. The ego hates this fact. The ego wants instant gratification and the addictive hit of an acknowledged win.”
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s WayI had one extremely toxic friend who called me when I first started the practice to berate me about how indulgent I was being, and how she didn’t have that luxury. Which was interesting, because she certainly had 20 minutes to verbally go off on what a piece of shit I was. Truly, never underestimate what others (and oftentimes you, yourself) will do to invalidate the validity of awakening your creative voice. It’s a very threatening concept.
Because if you show that rejecting stasis is possible, well then, suddenly you’re in charge of your own fate, aren’t you? That’s a terrifying prospect for many people whose entire identity is rooted in why everything would have turned out differently… if only, if only. Stop saying “if only.” Write it instead. Honestly, write anything you like in your morning pages, just don’t censor it or hold back.
That’s yourself that you are reading.
I had one extremely toxic friend who called me when I first started the practice to berate me about how indulgent I was being, and how she didn’t have that luxury. Which was interesting, because she certainly had 20 minutes to verbally go off on what a piece of shit I was. Truly, never underestimate what others (and oftentimes you, yourself) will do to invalidate the validity of awakening your creative voice. It’s a very threatening concept.
Because if you show that rejecting stasis is possible, well then, suddenly you’re in charge of your own fate, aren’t you? That’s a terrifying prospect for many people whose entire identity is rooted in why everything would have turned out differently… if only, if only. Stop saying “if only.” Write it instead. Honestly, write anything you like in your morning pages, just don’t censor it or hold back.
Think about all the experiences you have that no one else does! I mean, no one else is the interim director of donor relations at Northwestern and has all these other experiences at newspapers. That’s awesome!”
Energetically, my entire state changed.
Mary gave me the approval I was having such a hard time consistently giving myself, and it helped me so much to be able to love myself, my career, and every step along the way. Maybe I could even stop berating myself for mistakes I had made that in reality were molding me into who I was becoming.
Had I stayed in newspapers I never would have gained the skills that helped me so much later on. What Mary gave me was the ability to believe in myself and my life.
She gave me permission to know that it all added up. That I added up.
I made a crucial leap in no longer walking around with radioactive shame and painfully unfunny self-deprecation (because honestly, it’s only funny if you don’t actually hate yourself). My framework — and my ability to frame — shifted. I could write for myself again. I could even create a blog with my own voice. F*** needing the prestige of having it come through the “vessel” of a job that society had agreed upon as the correct showcasing of talents.
I could just use and believe in my talents. Life didn’t have to be a clawing resume fest, as if I were constantly trying to squeeze in Spanish Club along with 20 other extracurriculars to make college recruiters think I was something special.
I could just know. I could enjoy the journey instead.
“[T]he engineers concluded they could not make that deadline… [Steve] Jobs did not get angry; instead he spoke in cold, somber tones… ‘I’m going to ship the code a week from Monday, with your names on it.’… Once again, Jobs’s reality distortion field pushed them to do what they thought impossible… Real artists ship, Jobs had declared, and now the Macintosh team had.”
— Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
“The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.”
— Seth Godin, Linchpin
To finish off, not everyone is gonna be happy for you. Some people only get a taste of success by taking a bite out of you, and some people never escape the jealous mindset at all. If you read enough of my stories, I ran into so many people that loved backstabbing, cutting, and gossiping about others to move themselves up. It was ridiculous. I’m not the jealous type, and I can pick up on jealous behaviors right away. There’s a lot of jealousy out here, but you still do you anyways. And just know there’s people out here that have your back and that is on your wavelength, but you have to find them. It may take time, but it’s worth it.
Since I’m rapping in Spanish nowadays, I’ll write out the Spanish and English versions.
It’s 2022 at the time of this writing, but by the time you read it, it will be 2024. I had to write a ton of content ahead of time to stay consistent despite what’s happening. 🔥🙌
If you like what you’ve read, please recommend it so others can read it as well. Please tell me what you want me to write about here!
Interested in having my Medium stories sent to your inbox? Sign up here!
Interested in what I done? Check out my LinkedIn profile I barely use lol. I’ll update it to add the new current businesses I’m working on one of these days. I haven’t updated it in months.
