Long term project: Life Balance

[manuel_moe_g]

Hello Mental Fairy!

Yeah, it is not going so well...

I am trying for some easy wins by starting with "Clean, neat, uncluttered, organized Physical Environment"

I am trying to put one thing away in my environment

it is not going so well, as i said

<sigh>

[oak]

I am trying to put one thing away in my environment

I am trying the same today, Manuel Moe.

You are not alone.

[Mental Fairy]

Every action and word spoken effects your future. We are all taking steps forward and yes a shuffle also counts.

[manuel_moe_g]

1. Health
2. Family and Friends
3. Romance
4. Personal Growth
5. Fun and Recreation
6. Clean, neat, uncluttered, organized Physical Environment
7. Business/Career
8. Investments/Money
9. Spiritual
10. Social Contribution
11. Intellectual Legacy
12. Self-Care
13. Chores/Life-Process

expanded the list slightly, my therapist brought up some things that didn't really fit anywhere else

[oak]

Nice!

Per #6, I send whatever vibes caused me to clean the stovetop yesterday.

[vibes sent]

[Mental Fairy]

Oak, may I ask if you like to cook and if so what do you enjoy cooking?

[Mental Fairy]

Manuel Moe

Can I also ask how you are coming along with your life balance? I am aware of your current distress and wish there was a way to help you.
I understand your life balance project would become someone unbalanced in places.
Can I ask if you go back five years were you a completely different person?

[manuel_moe_g]

Life balance project is going badly, but that is to be expected, because of a lifetime of habits of action. Some things are Important but not Urgent, so they never get done. Leading to an unbalanced life.

Five years ago I was basically the same person, but with one difference. Just in the last year I finally dropped the part of my ego that told me that one day I would be recognized as being a great person. Like with all bits of ego it led to harmful rigidity: I was afraid to deal with the fact that life is all about failure, forever, and that getting up each and every time you fail and fall down, forever until you die, is the only way to a meaningful life.

So now I am less afraid of failure, I see it as a necessary part of living, and I can concentrate on priorities and getting up each and every time you fall. I don't waste time trying to avoid failure that cannot be avoided anyway. I thought when I finally figured out how to be great and everyone would be obliged to know how great I was, then failure would be a thing of the past. It makes no sense.

I wish I knew the trick to losing ego - for me it is a very slow process. It all started at the age of 25 when I lost the bit of my ego that told me that I was so great that I would not have to work to have good things come to me. That piece of ego made me live life in a very strange way - I would go to terrific lengths to protect the idea of myself being great, which led to me isolating myself because that is the only way you know you will be safe from any contraction to the idea that you are great. For the last 26 years (I am 51 years old now) I have been stripping off bits of my ego and then having the flexibility to truly live.

I have no idea if any ego is left to harm me. Maybe. We will see.

It would be interesting to write down the step-by-step process of losing bits of my ego - what part of ego I lost, and what good thing I got because of the extra flexibility. It would be very embarrassing, because it is so weird the puffed-up things my ego told me was true about myself. All of it without any evidence or very little strictly circumstantial evidence. Really embarrassing.

[Mental Fairy]

Manuel Moe you are on the correct path my dear.
Have you read or listened to Eckhart Tolle ? The ego series helped me a little bit. Takes years of practice. And Pema Chodron whom really did help me further.

Failure is necessary. Forms growth in a person.
I think if anyone of you had come across me three plus years ago I would of not accepted I was failing myself. I failed my entire family.

What makes me sick is parents who can’t accept their kids want to do something they don’t want them to do.

Part of therapy has made me realise I’m still trying to make up for my shortfalls in my mothers eyes even though she’s dead. Madness.
You are a lovely soul.

So pleased you are not giving up on yourself and setting your own goal posts. It’s hard in this current world to allow yourself to shed ego.
My surgeon that took part of my left breast cut it in such a way that it made a happy face scar. He only removed a bit at the top chest plate and as every year passes it seems to frown! I get this giggles with it now! If I live long enough it will be a sad boob but I have the rest of the body to make up for it!!!!

[oak]

Manuel Moe, hi!

Thank you for posting.

May I ask, kindly, for clarification from your most recent post, for my own curiosity?

You discuss “ego”; can you please define your term?

Ego in the Freudian sense? The modern sense of “egotistical”? Some thing else?