Self-observation on why I am not successful enough

• I imagine myself very differently inside than how my life is on the outside.
• I dream of becoming successful but it just doesn’t seem to happen. 
• I am continuously trying everything. Harder and harder. Sometimes I am trying to be smarter, more self-confident, and even tried to ‘believe the universe will help me’.
• It is a constant struggle. I just know instinctively that it should not be a never-ending battle and overwhelm. 
• There must be something that can change this situation. 
• When I think of my abilities, my self-confidence drops. 
• Still, it is not about my abilities. Many others have less in many areas and they are still more successful than me. 
• When I observe myself, I feel a great level of uneasiness. 
• This uneasiness comes from my desire to achieve.
• My mindset is that if I push it more, I will achieve what I want. 
• No, this is not the way. There must be a better way.
• I admit I don’t know what to do exactly.

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• Something is blocking me.
• I am not able to be myself.
• I am afraid to be myself. This is the block in me.
• I have low self-confidence and this is why reaching success is a struggle.
• No.
• Behind my low self-confidence is fear. Simple fear. Fear of losing my safety.
• The block is not my low self-confidence. That thought of myself that I have low self-confidence only happens as a result of my fear. The key is my fear.
• This is why I don’t ‘dare to jump’ and do what is needed for my success.
• And the way it works is that I block myself from being who I really am.
• I am not able to be that vibrant person who I want to be. 
• This fear is teaching me to see who I really am.
• This fear might even be more than that. I may be able to transform it into something that I miss now in myself.
• I will think about what I would like to transform my fear – my new friend – into.

This post contains insights, practical ideas, considerations, and food for thought about the practice of self-observation. While these can be handy, what we find truly important is the state of mind that makes self-observation work. We talk about that in this post: What makes self-observation work.

In self-observation, I look at my own self. I look at my thoughts, emotions, beliefs, my life in an unbiased, non-judgmental way. Self-observation is like a mirror; I can stand in front of it and look at my own self through it.  It is my own consciousness in action. The outcome is not only that I see and understand myself better, but I am changing myself for the better. It is a natural talent and arguably one of the greatest gifts that we have.

Self-observation in practice

Being non-judgmental

We all want to get to a place where we are non-judgmental. It hardly ever happens. This is a more useful thought in my experience for such mortals as me: ‘Of course I am judgmental. This is because it is a hard thing I am dealing with. I do care, I am angry, or sad. I do want to escape. I do use judgment to justify why I am in this hard situation. Let me work myself through it.’ It is proper self-observation in practice when I realize my judgmental approach. When I work myself through the reasons why I am so judgmental, then I can start letting some of my judgments go.

When I analyze myself

When I observe myself, I also analyze myself. That is largely automatic with most of us, and we do not differentiate between self-observation and self-inquiry. But let me make a separation now. This is how most of us think this ‘process’ works: I do self-observation, and then I analyze myself based on what I observed. This is not how it works, and this is self-deception, actually. If I do self-observation/inquiry this way, then I basically analyze myself based on what I already know. No wonder many of us overanalyze ourselves and are stuck in a loop. Instead, this is how I should look at the practice of self-observation: The goal is to see myself clearly for what I am, how I behave (hence the need to be non-judgmental). This is the key: Self-observation generates insights. That’s the gold we are looking for. We are looking for that moment of insight, that sudden realization. Such a thing is not an outcome of analysis. If the insight triggers analysis, that’s cool. If I start to analyze because I actually do not know what’s up, then that is not necessarily a good sign.

When I am stuck, when there is no change

Being stuck can also happen for no apparent reason. There is a habit that you can build, and it is called ‘Touch and go’: You observe, you acknowledge, and you consciously decide to immediately go on.

Here is another idea, a method you can consider, and it is called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. In a nutshell, it is a trauma elimination technique, and it helps the brain to reprocess traumatic information, allowing it to be a neutral memory. Beyond showing this technique to you, I bring this up because it points to something important about self-observation: EMDR is not considered a self-observation practice, but self-observation can have the same neutralizing effect. That is: Our mind processing or reprocessing something. No big insight, no conscious realization of something. Just ease. And new openings.

Doing self-observation as a daily routine

Let me be harsh: You will be missing out on self-observation’s spontaneous nature if you make it into a routine. Don’t control it. Don’t mistake self-observation for meditation. Self-observation is a tool and meditation is a state. Also, self-observation doesn’t need to last long to yield results. It is also true that the more often you do it, the better you get at it, and the more automatic it will become for you.

Self-observation for the greater good

Self-observation heals. It helps one to understand and accept the other more. It helps to take back our projections. It helps to develop the right outlook for the individual and for society at large.

Self-observation and enjoyment

I cannot think of a better way to wrap up this post than this. The more I practice self-observation, the more I enjoy my deep and colorful inner world. Nothing comes close to it.

Self-Observation on why I am always in a hurry

• This is clearly some kind of unconscious block in me as even when I see that I am in a hurry, I cannot stop it.
• I just keep on being in a hurry and it is making me even more nervous.
• Actually I even want to speed it up. Because I want to finish as soon as possible to ‘escape this hard situation’.
• I speed it up and so I get even more exhausted.
• I am afraid of the situation itself.

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• It appears to me that my need to hurry up comes up in situations where I have an ‘obligation’, some work that I feel I must do. I am not in a hurry where I have no ‘obligation to deliver’. 
• I have a self-confidence issue. My need to speed things up is due to the fear of the ‘situation’.
• No. It is not a pure self-confidence issue. 
• It is a question of trust.
• Let me approach it from another way and imagine myself with this mindset: If I had complete trust that this situation, this work to be done would work out just fine, I would have no urge to hurry it. It is not a self-confidence thing alone. It is trusting that things will work out fine; It is not just about me.  

Self-Observation on my avoidant nature

• I am trying to protect myself.
• It is natural to me that I am trying to protect myself. 
• My avoidant nature is self-protection.
• What I can say now that it is ‘this situation’ that I want to avoid. 
• I cannot say what I want to avoid. This is why I am saying ‘this situation’. This moment.
• If I avoid it that means I am safe from its bad effects.
• I cannot say what this something is that I want to avoid. It is not conscious but I know that it is not good for me.

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• There is something that is strange: Why do I stay in it if it is not good for me? If I just walked away there would be nothing to avoid.
• This something that I want to avoid is not here now but it is an image in my head. 
• Ah, ok: I want this situation. I am attached to it. 
• Then it is again a connection issue, a relationship issue. I need the connection, I am attached to it.
• I want connection but I got used to being in connection that is not fully good for me. 
• So what I do is stay in it but avoid it, avoid parts of it. I don’t have a better idea.
• I am in two worlds at the same time.
• What two worlds?
• I want to be myself and want to be in connection. But right now my belief is that if I am in connection then I cannot be myself. 
• The reality is that in many connections it is true. 
• So what will give me the motivation, the strength to be myself, no matter what?

Self-Observation on my financial struggles

• I look at money as something hard to get.
• Earning money is labor that is not about enjoyment. Work is constant hardship and there is no end to it.
• Why do I think that there is no end to it? Do I think I can never get it?
• People I know who have fewer issues with money do not look at money this way. I can see they have less fear about it.
• I feel fear. I feel I am dependent on money. 
• I find that I am dependent on people giving me money…They decide ‘to keep me alive’.
• Oh, I cannot imagine I deserve it.
• I cannot imagine I can have enough. 

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• Do I think my work is not particularly valuable? Somewhat yes. When something goes easy I actually feel some level of shame. ‘I did not push hard enough, I did not struggle hard enough.’ This is shame. But I cannot get out of it, even if I understand that it is shame that I feel.
• I identify work with something that I must do so that things will be ok. What is it that I want to get out of work? What does this mental image represent on an abstract level? 
• I want safety. Money will keep me safe.
• Dependence…
• Dependence is the key. 
• I find that I depend on people when it comes to my finances.
• Sometimes I go into situations and relationships where this is the accepted dynamic. I mean some kind of dependence and hardship. This dependence is more about people than money itself. 
• So this is the belief I built up about money: It is about safety, it is about ‘doing what the other wants’, and it is about proving my self-worth. 
• BULLSHIT! These have nothing to do with reality. I made them a reality to make sense of things and try to find solutions. 
• I end this twisted belief of mine.
• I will go into situations where work and money are about enjoyment and value. And not about dependence and people using each other.
• I look at money as something that can come to me. It is not blocked.
• Nobody is keeping it back from me. This is actually true. 
• This ‘easiness’ about money may feel awkward at first because I am not used to it. So I let myself get used to it. 

Self-Observation on why I am stressed at work

• A certain level of uneasiness kicks in even when I think about my job.
• I want to feel good at work but my stress, my anxiety kick in.
• This anxiety comes from the thought that I am not good enough.
• I feel shame and I want to comply.
• I find that my job is something that is not about enjoyment. Though I am looking for fulfillment in it.
• I just realize that my mindset is such that work for me is about complying and proving my worth. And about ‘begging’ to stay in it so that I feel some kind of safety.

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• This is not normal. My job shall not be about proving my self-worth so that I can feel safe.
• I project my fear onto my job. This is how I gravitate towards jobs and this fear is behind how I work with people.
• This is not how everybody relates to their jobs. Some people truly love what they do.
• There is this revelation now: Actually, I do not even like my job. And this is totally understandable since the way I think about it is that ‘I need to prove myself because I am not good enough’.  
• If I realized my self-worth, my view about how I want to work, and probably what I want to do would radically change.  
• Stress would be gone, I would not think about why I am not capable, and how hard my work must be. I would just naturally go towards what I enjoy. Stress would not even come up.
• I may not even need to see my self-worth; it feels good now that I have an understanding of why I am stressed.

“It feels as if everything is almost impossible to reach because they are just simply too hard and they seem to take forever.” Does this resonate with you as a major theme in your life? Then this article may be for you.

Important: Please take this article with healthy skepticism and use an open mind and critical thinking. The below can mean a lot of things so the conclusions here may be far from what happened to you. As with many of the articles on Self Chatter, the goal is to stimulate your thinking.

Do you have some of these things happening to you?

• Do you many times need to ‘jump up’ and leave? In other words, do you feel the need to escape from situations?
• Do you get anxious when you face a hard-to-solve situation and you fall into some kind of dissociative state? Do you many times have this thought that situations are extremely hard to solve?
• At times of these hard situations, is one of your fears that you may black out, or faint?
• When you have these hard situations, your body stiffens and you find that it is getting worse by the minute rather than better. Eventually to an unbearable level.  
• You stop just before the finish. For instance, you leave the last bits of your food on the plate because it would be too hard to finish it all.
• Do you have the belief that life is mostly about doing things that you don’t want to? And you may feel you have no other choice but to do it.

Some possible reasons

Birth Trauma

If you look at the above symptoms with this in mind, you may agree that they resemble the heavy feelings and hard labor that happen during the birth process. The likelihood that you have unhealed birth trauma may be higher especially if you have psychosomatic symptoms (like convulsive, spastic body parts, above average physical reactions in hard situations). 

If you have not heard of birth trauma before, imagine this: A baby with a yet underdeveloped body, no mental constructs developed yet to help her or him, with an equally exhausted mother, racing against time. Probably the hardest thing in our life is to be born. 

A lot of people have unhealed birth trauma. The hardest thing about it is that we find it untraceable, unable to consciously connect it to an event. This article is not giving you a detailed description of birth trauma; You can find a lot of material about it. Anyways, if the above resonates with you, then consider that you may just ‘replay’ this trauma of yours in your life situations.

Inherited behavior

It may sound obvious but it sure is ‘easy’ to inherit such beliefs that will result in the above symptoms. And again, something hard to trace and connect the dots until you become conscious of it. 

One addition: Imagine that you have a feeling of abandonment on top of the above. It will serve as glue…

You are going through a spiritual awakening

And you may not know it. Life is throwing these bitter and hard situations at you. You feel like you are constantly being tested all the time and it seems to never end. You have this image that you have to go through it anyways, coupled with the feeling that you don’t want it. The whole situation feels somewhat alien but still somewhat familiar, and it sucks. With the hope that it will be better. Sounds like a birth process.

(I personally believe that we are going through a major shift in consciousness.)

Self-Observation on why I feel unimportant

• This is a childhood trauma I have. I have had this self-image ever since I can remember.
• Sometime early in my life, I developed this image that I am not important. This has become a big part of how I relate to my life.
• I have all kinds of smaller and bigger issues with success and getting what I want. This is because I developed low self-esteem. Since I feel somewhat unimportant, I do not think that I deserve to be successful. So I resonate with situations where I play this out. 
• I do things like overexplain almost everything. I want to win other people’s acceptance this way because then I feel safe…
• I also let people do things that throw me even deeper into my self-doubt.
• Maybe I have made myself insignificant willingly. As a tool to justify why I can never really get what I truly want, at least this was my perception.
• When I do become important, then I feel shame.
• Now that I observe this image of myself, I understand why I feel contempt, resentment, and anger many times.  

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• I feel abandoned and lonely. This is also a little bit of good news because I have a vague idea of what I am missing.
• This feels very true: I lost connection, and I developed the idea that I must not be important if this break happened.
• What is strange is that I understand that this is my problem – I mean that I think I am abandoned – but still, what I want is to feel important.
• I am juggling between wanting to feel important and wanting to restore connection. ‘Wanting to feel important’ to me has to do with getting what I want. ‘Feeling connected’ is a different thing. I know this is more important, but I cannot describe why.
• I connected these two things: Feeling neglected and needing to feel important. ‘My sense of self-worth is dependent on how much people love me…’
• Now I understand that my need to feel important is a symptom, and the root cause is my feeling of being abandoned.
• Right now, for me, the hard thing is to see that it is important. I got used to being alone so much.
• Actually, I see that this loneliness is helping me to connect with myself at a deep level. Things aren’t as bad! And anyway, I am not looking for some half-cooked connectedness, or some puffed-up pride.

Self-Observation on my lack of trust

• I realize it is a main theme in my life. What I mean is that I can trace back basically all of my painful feelings and thoughts to trust. One example that comes to me now is that when something doesn’t go the way I want I ‘like’ to think that it is because people do not care about me, or they intentionally want to do harm to me.
• I am unsure if I feel a lack of trust or fear. 
• In other words – phrased abstractly: ‘I lost trust because I wanted something but did not get it. For instance, I want to feel safe but I do not. Or I want to be successful but I am not.’
• Trust is paradoxical to me: I understand and sort of agree that I should be trustful with people and with situations and then my trust will eventually bring the results. But this just sounds fully counter-intuitive.
• My take is that first I try then I trust. Now that I think about it more, this is not my way. First I trust and then I don’t get what I want.
• This is one main theme in my life…  
• No wonder I have ‘trust issues’. I probably attract them.
• Why is it so hard to trust? 

Chain of thoughts coming when I am able to go deeper

• Does trust have anything to do with hope? It should not. Hope sounds weak and trust sounds strong. 
• Trust is on the other side. Hope is not one step before trust but hope is just some pitiful begging without trust. Ok, perhaps there isn’t any problem with hoping as long as there is trust behind it.
• There is no such thing as 60% or 99% trust. It is either there or there isn’t any.
• Trust is meaningless alone because by definition it takes more than one entity. And also by definition, it can only be forever – what kind of trust would it be if I might lose it? And in this case, I am trying to understand trust and my trust issues the wrong way: I am trying to have trust in things that are ‘mortal’. 
• Trust is independent of the outside world. It is in me. Trust is knowing. It makes sense this way because then trust is independent of what happens with me in the world around me in the sense that it is ok if things are not always the way I thought. When I have trust, those things – I mean when something doesn’t go my way – simply mean that I misjudged the world. But it doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with me. This makes all the difference to me.
• I believe in God and this makes all the difference to God too. When trust becomes knowing, the concept of trust becomes unimportant. Why talk about it? The question doesn’t even come up.
• The great paradox for me: Right the moment I have trust, I have knowing. While I sense that I do have the knowing, it seems as if I reject it. For a while, this rejection may have been ignorance or arrogance. But now it is fear. Fear of losing myself. After all, trust is needed before it becomes unimportant.

I am writing this article in 2023. Many of us feel that we are going through truly extraordinary and disruptive times. And many of us find that despite the anxiety, rage, insanity, and confusion that is all around us, these are also the times that hold great opportunities for us. And I mean opportunities to raise our level of consciousness and develop our mental, and emotional health. Opportunities also for the whole of humanity.

So I would like to offer a tool that you can use to get the most out of these times. Not ‘just survive’.

The tool I am talking about is the lost art of Strategy. The below come from strategy experts, and yes, strategy is primarily used in business and in other ‘competitive’ environments with the goal of winning- but I tweaked it for personal use, and this time exclusively with a life-giving approach. 

As you read the example below and the notes, you will get an idea of how you can create your own. 

3 questions to answer that helps to build your personal life strategy

• What do I want to win from this period?
• How will I achieve this?
• What do I need for this that I don’t have today?

An example personal life strategy until 2026

What do I want to win from this period?

I want to increase my consciousness to the level that it becomes my major guide going forward instead of my fear-based, twisted beliefs.

How will I achieve this?

• I am going to use fear: Since fear and anxiety are all around me and it is accelerating, and I am also affected by them, I will consciously use these times to drive fear and anxiety out of my system.
• I will consciously keep away from such things as conspiracy theories, toxic relationships,  too much social media, and addictions because I know that in today’s life, I need to actively protect myself from them.
• I remind myself to get back into my natural consciousness and True Self as soon as I realize that I fell out of it and this continuous outlook will be one of my main tools. This reminder will be with me all the time and get stronger every day.
• When I want, I will seek to be around people who have higher levels of presence and consciousness because I know that their presence has a positive effect on me.
• I will work on healing the traumas that I still have. 
• I will set aside time for truly proper relaxation and for such activities as meditation and self-observation.
• I will let my intuition and consciousness guide me in how I eat and what physical exercise I will do that is good for me.

What do I need for this that I don’t have today?

Currently, I don’t have the best means to be able to spend enough quality time alone and in silence when I want to. I am working on changing my physical environment and relationships so that I can spend more energy on myself.

Some ideas on how to create your own personal life strategy

Your approach and outlook are more important than the mechanics of building it.

Make it come from the heart

The most important ingredient. And I do not degrade you by explaining why. 

Do not worry about the how

Worry about the What and the Why, and the Outcomes you want to reach. In other words, a strategy is not a plan. If you find yourself listing detailed steps, maybe even with exact time intervals on how you are going to achieve what you want then you are not yet thinking about your strategy effectively. It is generally a good sign if you find it hard to distill the What and the Why. It is hard for anyone who does it with dedication. I believe it is mainly because we are conditioned to be ‘solution machines’. Strategy is about having the right perspective, sanity, and honesty. Instead of the go-go-go and do-do-do that we are forced into.

Make it short

Say, make it into a maximum 1-page document. There is a reason for this: The more you force yourself to keep it simple, the higher the chances that you put in the energy that matures it. 

Coherence is key

These are three ‘questions’ to answer: (1) What do I want to win from this period? (2) How will I achieve this? (3) What do I need for this that I don’t have today?

These three things shall form an integrated whole. Coherence is more important than it may look at first. For instance, if you look at the above example: If I put in that I will exercise 1 hour every other day into the (2) How will I achieve this? part – How does this contribute to my overall goal? It doesn’t; It actually may even drive me further away from it. Maybe it is an opportunity for me to recognize that my actual goal is to look prettier so that I can have a ‘better’ job or a ‘better’ relationship.

Come back to it

It is not a one-time exercise but your conscious effort to get the best out of this period. It is normal if you change it (and it is not normal if you keep changing it out of fear or confusion).

Shall I show my strategy to anyone?

I think that only you can answer this. Here are two notes anyways: (1) Be very very careful showing it to anyone. Also, I recommend that you write it down on a physical sheet of paper. Strangely, this method has become more secure, and also it makes it more real. (2) Before you consider showing your strategy to anyone, ask yourself: ‘What purpose does it serve that I show it to this person?’ You may find that showing your strategy even to your closest loved ones does not necessarily serve the purpose you seek…Having said all this, I personally do not want to be in a close, intimate relationship where I do not want to openly share it.