January 12, 2024

I found myself feeling a little conflicted over this prompt, because it reflects my people pleasing tendency, which I’m really trying to work on and let go of this year.

At the same time though, I recognize that it is consistently harder for me to motivate myself for things that are purely for myself than for things I perceive as being for other people.

I am deeply motivated by helping others and by the positive perception of others. The idea of disappointing people is deeply upsetting.

I am not easily motivated by spite. I know a lot of people are able to leverage other people’s negative perceptions into a kind of “fuck you, I’ll show you” attitude that just doesn’t really work for me. Perhaps it is because it uses anger as a motivator and anger is another emotion I am deeply uncomfortable with. I don’t react well to feeling anger and I don’t react well when I think other people are angry around me (whether or not that anger is directed at me.

The easy answer to who would benefit my goals is everyone.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is another quote from Brené Brown: “Clear is Kind.” It is one of those things I’ve never thought about in those terms but now seems so obvious. I know how much I hate uncertainty. I think about how frustrated I get when I feel like someone isn’t telling me the truth or backs out of commitments last minute because they weren’t able to say no initially.

I really want to be clearer. I think an obstacle there that I’ve been working on this year is that I don’t need to have all the answers to give a clear answer. I think ego gets in the way here. It’s hard to admit you don’t have the answers, but there really isn’t anything negative about that.