I've been treating self-help like a subject in school, and happiness like the high grade that I strive to acquire, in order to not get my parents angry at me. I was acting out as my own parent. I've been working through my issues, not because I wanted to, but because I feared getting angry at myself, in case I failed. My journey has been fear-driven. Only recently did I discover the paradox of my attitude. How am I to become happy, if I'm constantly fearing failure? Failure is unpredictable, which means I am in a constant state of expectation and anxiety, because I don't know when and how it's gonna hit me. That, of course, makes me frustrated, and takes me back to managing my anxiety through different forms of dissociation.
I've been treating my goal of becoming psychologically healthy like something that I MUST achieve, before I can do anything else with my life. Happiness as a means to an end. A prerequisite for leading a productive life. This was a rather paralyzing strategy. Happiness is a vague goal, unlike school grades, so it would be pretty hard for me to estimate when it's been achieved. Whenever I was miserable, I perceived it as a "fuck you". "You're so weak, you'll never be able to get over your issues, no matter how hard you try", my inner bully would say.
How am I to become happy, if I'm not already happy with pursuing my happiness? You can't be happy unless you're happy. If my failures make me feel miserable, there's no way to proceed further. It's a Catch-22. So from now on, I go beyond this bullshit. From now on, I look up to failing, and I forget about succeeding, because failure is more probable than success. I want to fail on my journey towards happiness. I want to fail as many times as I have to. Happiness is not a destination, anyway. It's a state of being. I can be happy with having issues, and still work towards solving them. It's a want, not a need. I don't need to be perfect to enjoy life.
This week, I'll do an exercise. I'll teach myself to get used to failure. I'll take on impossible tasks and try to complete them, knowing that I can't. Every day, I'll set a different goal and destroy it. No more safe zones. Only risks and challenges, at least for a week. To be continued.
