Doing Your Own Thing, Traitors and Trust, and ‘Getting Along’ or People Pleasing?
Food for thought on knowing yourself
Welcome to the first Food for Thought of 2024 where I share some of the many nuggets of inspiration that prompt me to think about knowing ourselves, including knowing our yeses and nos. This weeks’s selection includes recognising that you don’t have to do everything yourself or in the way others told you to, how reality shows like Traitors expose our dodgy relationship with trust, and why ‘getting along’ isn’t about people pleasing.
“Dear reader, you don’t need to know how to do everything to be proficient, profitable, or sexy. You don’t have to make the paper if you’re an artist. You don’t have to mill the flour if you’re a baker. You don’t have to do the math of life alone if you don’t want to. There is someone out there who wants to help you.” —
in Artist, Not Bookkeeper
I’m a great believer in doing your own thing, even though, due to learning from a young age to be over-responsible as well as compliant in contexts where I deem people to be ‘authorities’ on something, I’ve often struggled to ask for help and then, conversely, taken in too much ‘good advice’ and sometimes accepted the wrong kind of help.
Sometimes we expect ourselves to own every ounce of a process, the equivalent, as Anna says, of attempting to “make the paper if you’re an artist.”
Where do you make yourself do something because someone else said you could or should do it? Where do you try to fit into other people’s boxes?
Doing your own thing means being willing to listen to yourself so you gain self-knowledge and self-awareness of what makes you tick. Other people aren’t in your body so they don’t know your bandwidth or how your brain works. Someone might feel that they can, want to or should do something in a similar context to you… but that doesn’t mean you need to mimic their choices with no thought for who you are.
“Like, okay, sometimes you’re going to need to rest. But also, sometimes you’re going to need to push yourself a bit. Sometimes it’s going to feel good to relax. And sometimes it’s going to feel good to be productive. Sometimes you need to be gentle and sometimes, honestly, you cannot coddle yourself until you’re anxious on the couch, pretending to be relaxed.” —
on Am I bad at resting?
After a year of being Low-Energy Nat, along with jet lag that lasted just over two weeks, I’ve thought a lot about rest recently. In fact, I’ve drafted a few posts on the subject of whether to push thorough, rest or slow down and danced around finishing these. Jamie sums up the struggle.
What I know is it takes vulnerability and a self-compassionate, curious relationship with yourself to have a sense of which situations call for what (rest, pushing through, etc) and also your temperament and values.
Sometimes you’ll feel like you’re bad at being self-compassionate. 🤣 Sometimes you wonder if you’re too “lax” with yourself. Other times, it feels like you’ve gone through a ten-season story arc with your emotions in one day. Ultimately, it’s a combo of having a more mindful relationship with yourself so that you can use hindsight from past experiences to take better care of yourself.
I have an old podcast episode on this: Help! Am I doing self-care wrong? (#233 of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions)
It’s January, which means, in our house, it’s time to watch Traitors (the UK one). The girls and I have also watched the US and Australian versions. We’re obsessed! We’ve also been watching The Trust (Netflix). Both are game shows that essentially require contestants to figure out who to trust and also be trustworthy. Except for that most find it near-impossible to do either.
These shows serve as reminders that despite whatever claims we might make about being ‘great judges of character’ and our ‘gut feelings’ about people, lack of awareness about our biases, feelings, baggage and motivations mean we can sometimes have a messy relationship with trust. So this is another reminder that the more you know yourself, the more you know your trust and your blind spots. It takes trust to know trust.
Of course, I have an episode for this too!: Trust is a Gamble, But We Can Learn To Make Good Bets (#217 of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions).