Tag: truth

I’m not a people person

Posted on by philipdodson

We get told these things by others, usually our parents, who say things like ‘she’s just like auntie Jean’ or ‘just like her grandmother Gwen’ and so on. Throw away lines often, but if used often enough, along with again well-intentioned, but amateur analysis at best, the damage can be huge.

Parents first and then teachers and latterly bosses all get involved. With little real understanding, surprisingly, many parents do not understand their own children, people start to label us. Often, as said, with no malice.

My label was ‘Philip’s not a people person’ ‘not like his brother’ ‘more like his father, likes his own company’. Now some of this observation may well be true, but at early stages, in our lives, it conditions us to others thinking. Parents influences are huge and as children, we take what they say as almost gospel.

So, I grew up believing and telling myself that I am not a people person, and that did influence my behaviour, as we live by the ‘truths’ we tell ourselves.

Much of my adult life that has led to me being reserved until I know someone, it has led to periods of being lonely, it has made me shy away from social events and because I told myself something, no surprise that’s what happened.

Well, firstly, I do not blame my parents for anything in my life, many years ago I forgave them and myself. Each of us does the best we can at any stage in our lives based on our experiences/knowledge to that point in our lives and with the mindset at that time. We all act most of the time with the best intentions.

Secondly, in the last few years, as part of my ongoing journey of change, and especially challenging the ‘truths’ that I have been telling myself all my life, I learnt that I am much more of a people person than I was led to believe.

Now, I have not gone form not a people person to Jumping Jack Flash, life and soul of the party and the world’s most sociable person. That’s not me and not what I want. However, as a result of realising that people matter a lot more to me, than I had conditioned myself to believe, I now enjoy a more people orientated life and that has brought me a great deal of joy.

So watch out you might get a call!

‘Challenge the ‘truths’ Philip’ is a thing I now say often to myself.

Buried emotions that dance around the graveyard of my mind

Posted on by philipdodson

A lot of my life I have been deaf through talking when I could have chosen to listen, I have starved people of the oxygen to explain themselves and left them fighting to be understood. The fear of being wrong if I listened coupled with wanting to earn another badge of being right.

The attention was gained from hogging the mic, talking the loudest, I’m right.

This is part of the journey that is hard, this where I have been in the last few years, in an emotional dark hole inside me. Braving up to the demons, dragging those buried emotions out of the graves inside my head, where I thought they would all rest in peace and leave me alone. But they didn’t stay in their graves, they danced all over their graves and haunted me.

The last 6-7 years, maybe more intensely in last 2-3 years, and now, as an ongoing journey of rumbling with and digging deep into the emotions of the past, I have been unpicking the past and I have been re-writing the past, changing the narrative to the real truth, not some other ‘truth’ that I have been telling myself, that I have been conditioned to think by ‘them’. ‘Them’ being the others, society all the people who have no right to tell me who I am, how I should behave, think, act. I am now taking ownership of my story, I am now choosing to be the star in my own life film instead of being a frustrated extra.

That way I can become an even better listener and give people who matter to me the oxygen they need to be understood, to tell their story, to share their narrative.

In order to move forward, we have to go back and dig up the emotions that are buried in the dark places. We have to be brave enough to face them, understand them and write a narrative that moves us forward and serves us well. Talking badly to ourselves serves us and everyone else around us badly.

I have learnt to be kind to myself, empathetic to myself, to change my inner voice, to be brave enough to face the emotions and demons. I am still digging up more in the huge cemetery that is the dark corner of Philip’s mind. It is an ongoing journey and a big task as the body count has been high in my life, the corpses have piled high, like an emotional Battle of the Somme.

Was or is it easy? No. But it is a whole lot better than having those demons, untruths and emotions dancing around my mind and preventing me from being me and living my life.

You have to see pain and suffering with purpose, as Viktor Frankl did on an epic scale, and then you can face anything because the pain has a meaning.

Despair = suffering – meaning (Thanks, Chip Conley for these wonderful and simple equations).

The more meaning to the suffering the less the despair.

The dancing party for my demons and untruths is coming to an end, they are running out of songs.