Self-inquiry on why I am lazy

• I don’t want to be lazy. I hate being lazy. But I admit many times I don’t feel like doing anything.
• I enjoy relaxing, though. But they are not the same thing for me. Maybe a little bit.
• Here is one belief I have about my laziness: I am lazy because I shall get things without effort.
• This is my shadow: I am so much above the “swamp” that I should not go back and do dirty things again. Things should go smoothly.
• This is shame I realize. What is most important is that I don’t exactly know how I got to this insight.
• So in retrospect, it is easy to understand the connection between my laziness and shame: In reality, I don’t see myself as somebody so developed. Quite the contrary. I am pretty much a nobody sitting in the middle of the “swamp”. And I cannot face this reality. So I made up this fantasy about how mature I am. 
• I even have fantasies about past lives where I was “already above the swamp”; I also fantasize that one day people will understand me and acknowledge me for my greatness.
• Quite strangely, my laziness has been getting worse, since I have been sinking into some panic that I will never get ‘those big’ things that I think I am entitled to. I am running out of time.
• There is also something else here: I had to slow down to the level of a full stop for a while. I was overwhelmed and wasn’t feeling well.
• So I am not sure now what the real reason is behind my lazy, muted mode.
• This is one of those self-reflections where there is no direct insight.
• I want to be so clever and so right that I miss reaching what is important.
• There is no solution for me yet.
• The closest I can get is that I deeply believe that things that are for me should go smoothly.
• I feel that I should enjoy myself. This is an honest, positive feeling, not a cover story for my laziness. 
• I am lazy because I don’t feel like doing things. As easy as that.
• In other words, I should do things that are really for me. I am sure I will not be lazy doing them.
• When I think about how I would live when I truly enjoyed myself, I clearly see that I would not care about my laziness. I wouldn’t be lazy, nor would I care so much about what things I need to do. I would not care if I were sitting in the middle of the swamp or somewhere else. My enjoyment of living the life I want would wash away such stupid things such as laziness.
• Ok, so behind my laziness is my need to live a life that is truly for me. 
• It is a self-inflicted block. A defense mechanism? However strange it sounds, it does resonate with me for sure.

Self-inquiry on where my assertiveness has disappeared

• This is what I see about myself as the first thing: I have tried so many times and never really gotten what I wanted.
• I have been assertive before. And I did get what I wanted. I remember now how I used to enjoy being wild and assertive. And how much it helped me achieve success.
• And then it was gone.
• I think I stopped being assertive because, as I was growing older, I realized what I got wasn’t really what I wanted. 
• I have given up. Let me just be and do the bare minimum. Wanting things isn’t for me.
• Honestly…I am just waiting for something or somebody to get me out of my misery. Genuinely pathetic.   

• Wait! There is something wrong here with my “genius” logic. 
• So actually, I have been assertive, and it did work. The reason I gave up is hardly my assertiveness’s fault. 
• I just didn’t want the right thing for me. So after all, those things like money, beautiful smiles, nice car aren’t the stuff that ultimately make me happy. I know that. For the last 15 years, roughly. That was when I finally decided to go all in to finding out who I really am.
• So actually, I have to conclude that a good thing happened to me: I stopped going for things that are not for me…
• Why don’t I like what I have concluded here? I have to admit that it is not how I feel. 
• When I think of my assertiveness, I see that I miss it. I would like to see it work. I would like to use it. 

• There is a key thing that recently came to me.
• (Having read Carl Jung comes in handy here. He made me realize that it is the opposites that make things be in balance.)
• I am a sensitive type by nature. I understand emotions and thought patterns, maybe a bit more than average. I am intuitive, and I value depth. Relationships and receptivity are very important to me.
• And now I am realizing I have overrated these at the expense of my assertiveness.
• I have done it on purpose. This has given me the idea of righteousness. The idea of being morally above the other – after all, I haven’t taken anything, I just have been empathic. And I see the other lies I have hidden behind. I will work on these later. This is getting too much now. 

• My assertiveness is part of me. That is my Animus. 
• I admit I have made it dormant.

Note that this is a somewhat different self-inquiry from the others, as some parts have been left out. You will probably catch where.

Self-inquiry on why I feel lonely

• (More importantly, why can I just not get out of my loneliness?)

• Obviously, I feel lonely because I am abandoned.

• I know and feel that my problem is abandonment, but still, I am not over it.

• It is a dead end this way. There must be something more to it.

• After a lot of self-reflection and inquiry, this is what I got to: My problem is that I feel betrayed.

• I gave everything into the relationship, and the other person betrayed me by not taking our relationship seriously.

• This is a morality issue for me.

• And this is beyond the two of us.

• How can we, humans, have this capacity to betray one another? I am not talking about carelessness. I am talking about outright ignorance.

• This is what my morality cannot digest at the moment, and this is the reason why I cannot get out of my loneliness.

Self-observation on why I don’t want to work anymore. This is what I feel when I think of my job.

• Leave me alone with all this bullshit!
• Don’t force such nonsense on me!
• Stop passively or actively shame or bully me! Don’t you know better? I do. I want to be a sensible person also at my job. 
• Don’t scare me?
• Don’t knowingly manipulate me into things I don’t want to do. 
• Of course I don’t like my job anymore; It is a toxic place.
• I understand that this exercise I am doing is less about self reflection but I know that this is right. 
• The big realization for me is that I know I am right. This is the key for me here.
• I understand that some are also projections of mine but actually they are also correct. 
• I know that most workplaces are like that. But again; I don’t care. It doesn’t change that I don’t want to be in such environments. It appears that I grew out of it.

Self-reflection on why I can’t figure out what I want from my life

• What is it really I am looking for? 
• I want to feel calm and relaxed.
• And sometimes quite the opposite; I want to feel wild.
• I want to feel safe.
• I am looking for love also. And Success.
• Ah, I could go on with this list. 
• What I do see about myself now is that I am in a state of chaos.
• I want this chaos to end.
• This chaotic state depletes my energy level, and I just want to relax and calm down. 
• I have my ways of calming myself. I go into my warm, dream-like state that is so well known to me. It is like being in a cradle. 
• And this ‘cradle’ is sucking me in. It is truly comforting and nurturing.
• But when I observe myself, I see that this is not what I really want. Deep down, I feel that this alone isn’t right for me anymore. 
• I don’t want to be ‘sucked into this cradle’ anymore. I don’t just want to be one with it; It is not enough for me; My life has to be about other things too. 
• And as I am looking at this cradle, I realize I am afraid of it. 
• Actually, it is a big soup of chaotic everything. And the more I immerse myself in it, the more I lose my consciousness. 
• I realize now that my ‘cradle’ isn’t just all good. It is actually dangerous. 
• And most importantly, it wants to suck me in. It is its nature.  
• I am truly frightened to totally immerse myself in it. And I am frightened not to become my own Self. 
• It is fear that keeps me confused.
• And luckily, my open heart. 
• I cannot think of a better feeling as I am writing these lines than the vision of my open heart. It is coming from both poles.

Self-observation on why people are mean to me

• I am mean to people too. I hate this recognition but it is true.
• I have been working on this exercise for a while and for quite some time all my self-reflection was around the above recognition that I am at least as rude and sometimes more than those I find rude. Until recently, when things took some meaningful turns. Here are the outcomes of my self-reflections after.
• Yes, I am rude to people. It is sad for me to recognize this.
• I get rude to people when I get triggered. 
• Almost anything can trigger me. I am in such a state of irritation that the slightest thing can trigger me. 
• It is interesting to realize that deep down I still find that I have some righteousness with my anger. Yes, I overreact, yes, I can be a jerk; but still. It isn’t coming out of nowhere.
• The feeling I have is anger. 
• I am happy I learnt before that anger is a normal, healthy reaction to some kind of intrusion.
• Bang! Such a change in how I understand myself. All the time I was thinking that I was facing my shadow by seeing that I am also a mean and aggressive person. 
• The reason why I get triggered and become mean is because I feel my boundaries are overstepped. This causes my aggression. 
• What have those intrusions been in my case? Contempt, judgement, shaming, and probably most importantly, the simple ignorance to my limits.
• My and others’ “mean” behavior has a different light to it.

Self-Observation on why I don’t activate my life.

• I don’t ‘activate’ my life because I am waiting for something to happen. I find that until that something happens it doesn’t make sense for me to ‘activate’ myself.  
• There is fear for sure why I don’t do things. But I understand that this exercise will go deeper than this. As I am writing I know already that it will be about meaning. 
• I had ‘activated’ my life many times and it certainly felt the right direction for a while.  
• Why don’t I ‘activate’ my life? In other words, why don’t I live the life I would like? I feel that something is blocking me from doing that. I don’t know what this block is.
• I cannot tell what I would like exactly. Is that a problem?
• I realize something that is more important, some great news. I don’t activate myself because I don’t want those things, that kind of life that I could ‘activate’ now.
• This is confusing and mystical. I want to live a different life and I still think I cannot live it because I am missing something. But I am at the understanding that this thing cannot come from outside. So I am telling myself that I shall change within but I am missing something within. Confusing because one is not a cause of the other but clearly they come to exist at the same time. How can such a thing happen? 
• I was lost before when I ‘activated’ my life based on what I want from the outside world. I don’t want that any more, I want true meaning. I understand that thankfully this means that I am in fact not lost any more. 
• Maybe I shall just go on in any way I am able right now and that’s all. Even if things are confusing. Like as I am writing this post knowing that it is confuse and not being sure if anyone ever reads it or finds it valuable. 
• It is the realization that I am confused is the most valuable for me now.

Self-Observation on why I have a problem with limits

What’s causing my problem with limits?

• I get irritated easily. This is true for most things around me. Be it people, situations, the food I eat; almost anything ‘outside’ of me.
• I have this internal image that situations are irritating and hard and are always like this.
• I know it is a cliché but I can trace this feeling back to my childhood.
• I have this feeling – an image – that I am in a situation that I don’t like and this situation wants something from me that I don’t like. But I need to stay in this situation.
• So I am just sitting in it and getting ever more irritated.
• I feel I always need to fight not to let things into my own space. 
• I just realize that the problem is mine. I mean, sure situations are hard but I find every situation hard.
• Oh…There is something behind the irritation that I kind of see now.
• It is not the irritation but the fact that it is hard to ‘live with it, hard get out of it’. I mean that now I find it is ok to be irritated by things that are in fact irritating. My problem is that I find it literally impossible to solve it for myself. And that is because I find everything so hard to ‘solve’, finish. This is the key for me.
• My problem with limits and my view that it is hard to finish, and ‘accomplish’ things are not in a cause-and-effect relationship. What I mean is that I can not separate one from the other and say that one causes the other. They are together.

Self-observation on why I let people betray me

• Betrayal has been around me all my life. 
• I want people to be fully trustable.
• When someone betrays me the first feeling I have is sadness. I am sad for the other person and for myself that our unity has fallen apart. 
• It is so much part of my life that it usually takes quite some time for me to understand that I feel betrayed. 
• Actually, it is not just feeling betrayed. I can very easily fall into situations where people really do betray me.
• I understand that I have a part in creating the situation. I don’t like to admit it but I have to.
• What is strange is that I justify the other person’s behavior. No, it is not strange… I realize that it is a coping mechanism.
• Why do I let people betray me?
• I want people to be fully trustable. And I want to be so close to them; And so much together with them.
• And then comes reality. 
• And I hate myself to be betrayed again.
• One of the things I do is to try to ‘make them understand’, and convince them. 
• Of what? 
• It is disgusting for me to accept that people are not always 100% trustworthy. I am not always 100% trustable.
• It is just one fact of human life.

• I put a lot of trust in people. This is natural to me. 
• When I observe myself trusting someone, it is a good feeling. I don’t want to lose it. I think it is something very valuable to me.
• When someone betrays me the first feeling I have is sadness. I am sad for the other person and for myself that our unity has fallen apart. 
• Betrayal is something very much part of the human experience.
• I need to see what part I have in creating the situation.
• I see that it has to do with me not being mentally and emotionally independent. 
• I am looking for unity at the wrong place… through connecting with someone through their ego.
• I realize I am afraid to accept that I shall be independent. 
• Though it is easy after all: Until I am dependent on another person, it is not even love and unity. Just a form of dependence.
• I trust that I can find unity even after becoming independent. Though it still feels odd. I want unity and still, I know that I have to give it up to really find it.
• I don’t trust but I know that the unity I am looking for comes after independence.  

Self-observation on why I don’t have self-confidence

• I always fall back.
• I always question myself. I become anxious. 
• I am just afraid I will screw it up.
• This has to do a lot with how I relate to people. Even if my lack of self-confidence shows up everywhere. 
• Right now I am angry. My anger has to do with someone abusing my limits. 
• Sometimes I just feel like giving up. Then it is not anger. But sadness.
• I don’t dare to confront.

• I try to convince myself that I am worthy. 
• And I am trying to convince others that I am worthy. In all kinds of ways. Sometimes I am trying by being overly kind and ‘forgiving’. Sometimes I am trying with aggression.
• Many times I just lose my consciousness when the situation gets too tense. I mean when I am trying to convince the world around me. I either overachieve or underachieve.
• I just don’t know what causes my lack of self-confidence. 
• This works! I need to find what causes it. 
• What is the real root cause?
• Am I not good enough? That is hardly the answer.
• …
• It is not because I don’t trust myself. Indeed, I don’t trust myself but it is not the cause.
• This is the real root cause: I don’t have self-confidence because I am afraid to lose my sense of safety.
• This sounds strange but it is true.
• In other words, I don’t have self-confidence because I am afraid!!!
• I am afraid of what others will say. 
• When I really think about it deeply, this is what I see in myself: When I look at myself in times of lack of self-confidence, I see that I start to question myself because I start to think about what others will think. And this is why it is the real cause.