When and as I see myself looking for meaning and fulfillment within a thought - I stop, I breathe - I realise that I am separating me from my thoughts - and thus, from myself - through thinking/believing that something/someone outside of myself is able to fulfill me and give meaning to my life. And thus, I commit myself to investigate the nature of the thought as well as what triggered it so as to identify where I have separated me from myself, causing me to not be fulfilled as the entirety of myself, but instead, am looking for pieces of myself somewhere out in the world or somewhere within my mind.
When and as I see myself justifying a certain desire based on the belief that the desire stems from 'who I am' and is an inherent part of my self-drive and self-determination - I stop, I breathe - I realise that this desire is not an inherent part of myself, but was created within certain moments to try and make sense of my experience of myself where I felt that I was not 'enough'. And thus, I commit myself to investigate the origin of the desire - in what moment it was created and what thought-process lies behind it - to from there, give myself perspective on why this desire exists within me and provide myself with the solution in terms of giving myself what I perceive I had been missing, instead of merely acting on the desire, which would've never given the desired outcome - because the desire was a distraction from the real issue, attempting to solve an inner problem with something/someone from the outside.
When and as I see myself building up impatience as anxiety in relation to my hairstyle/the length of my hair - I stop, I breathe - I realise that I am experiencing a fear in relation to losing or wasting time, where I worry that I am investing my time within the wrong 'path' as either keeping my hair short or letting my hair grow, where I think/believe/fear that I am missing out on other experiences and where I try to make sense of the experience through telling myself that what my hair is like now must be wrong or not what it's supposed to be, to eventually acton the anxiety/fear/impatience through changing my 'path' - And thus, I commit myself to stop this pattern right here in this moment as and when I see myself building up impatience as anxiety in relation to my hairstyle/the lenght of my hair, through reminding myself that I have nothing to fear as I have already experienced all kinds of different hairstyles and they did not make a difference to who I am - and thus, that the only consideration should be practicality in terms of presentability and health considerations.
When and as I see myself becoming anxious when I see that a certain 'investment' or decision is not immediately 'paying off' - I stop, I breathe - I realise that this behavioral pattern is a result of the system we currently live in where time is equated to money and where it is believed that short-term satisfaction is more important than any other considerations, and where the tendency will be to compromise our decisions/investments/commitments to yield higher short-term benefits, regardless of whether this course of action is Best for All or not - and thus, I commit myself to let go of the anxiety and to simply re-assess my decision/commitment in common sense through re-evaluating whether it is truly in the best interest of all - and if so, I reconfirm my resolve and commitment to myself within the decision/investment that I have made and I stand by it.
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This blog-post is a continuation to 'Day 85: To Cut the Hair or Not to Cut the Hair - How Money Drives Decision-Making'.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to base a desire that I have translated on a goal that I must attain within my life on a singular thought in one singular moment - where I saw a girl walking by me while I was walking with my grandmother in Zafarraya and saw how long the girl's hair was, and where I thought in that moment: I want to have long hair just like her - and within that moment decide that this is something that I wanted and HAD TO achieve in my life.
I forgive myself that I have never accepted and allowed myself to question why I wanted my hair to grow long and why it seemed to just be an inherent desire that has 'always been with me' - when actually it wasn't, as it was self-created in a moment through accepting one singular thought - where, I believed that following this thought would somehow fulfill me and complete me.
I forgive myself that I have accpted and allowed myself to simply regard this desire for having long hair as a part of me, as who I am, without considering where the desire originated from and that, in looking at the origin of the desire, which was one singular thought in one singular moment, it was completely insignificant - and thus, that it is ridiculous to base 'who I am' on such fleeting thoughts that have no real substance.
I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to question and investigate my experience within continuously changing my mind about what I want to do with my hair, where the base-line was always to fulfil my childhood desire of having long hair that grows all the way to my bottom, but where I would always give up on letting it grow and go to the hairdresser or cut it myself.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see and realise that what always caused me to change my mind was impatience as anxiety - where I would build up more and more anxiety in relation to having long hair or short hair and then start noticing girls/women with the opposite - so if I had long hair, I'd start noticing all the women/girls with short hair and how it would suit them and imagining how it would suit me - and if I had short hair, I'd start noticing al the women/girls with long hair and how it would suit them and imagining how it would suit me and how much I would be able to do with it.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to take the anxiety as a sign that what my hair is like now is not what it should be or is supposed to be and that there is something wrong with it and that it needs to be changed - therefore, starting to compare my hair to the hair of other women/girls to then see other haircuts as better than mind, where I'd believe that if I just change my haircut to be more like that of other girls/women, the anxiety will go away because my hair will be what my hair is 'supposed to be like'.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to realise that the anxiety was actually a result of the fear to lose time or the fear to waste time - because each time I make a decision in terms of what I do with my hair, I was investing time within that particular course of action - and thus, automatically, excluding other options, making it unable to experience these other options within a certain timeframe.
I forgive myself for not accepting and allowing myself to see and realise that every decision I have ever made, including the decision to grow or cut my hair has always been based on economic principles, where I would consider the opportunity cost of 'spending' x amount of time towards trying to achieve and attain a certain experience and whether that was worth it in comparison to the other options.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become impatient when my time investments didn't show immediate results when I was letting my hair grow - believing that my investment wasn't paying off fast enough - because - as I invested more and more time within letting my hair grow, I was at the same time giving up more and more time that I could have spent on playing around with lots of different short haircuts.
I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to conform my way of decision-making to the idea that time is money and that I am continuously running out of time and running out of money - and thus, that I have to always try to get 'as much as I can' out of any money or time spent - regardless of whether I'm spending it on what I would support me/what I would really enjoy or not - simply trying to attain the largest range of experiences within a given time-frame or within a certain budget.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up my ability to be patient in favor of fear, as is instructed and encouraged in a world where time is money and where two dangers are always lurking: that you will lose all your money - or that you will die - and thus, throughout my entire life, base every single decision within this starting-point of fear of losing money and fear of losing time - continuously making compromises for ourselves through trying to make decisions that make us feel like we've made a 'good deal', but in fact has nothing to do with who we are, who we would like to be and what we would really like to achieve in this lifetime, in this world.
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