Life is full of ironies. With all the drama I am going through right now in my personal life, it always seems as though my classes are reflective of where I am.
Case in point: my current class is called Psychology of Personal Adjustment. Ha. The class just started last week and already it’s rough. There are two things so far that have caught my attention and seemed to have become themes this week: the cycle of personal growth, and becoming self-directed and making my decisions self-chosen.
My text explains that the experience of growth follows a three-phase cycle. It begins with (1) acknowledging the need for some change within ourselves or our surroundings, which evokes (2) a sense of dissonance of dissatisfaction within, which in turn leads us to (3) reorganizing our experience in some way, such as adopting a new attitude towards ourselves or others.
Wow. Reading that was important to me because it gave me a clue (retrospectively, of course) as to what I was going through a while ago when I first starting feeling some dissatifaction with who I was and was desperate for change. I was very lost and confused about my whole life…and no one could help me. Although it was not necessarily something I was expecting at that time or was a choice I made, events leading up to my divorce was the first cycle of change. Now I am in a second cycle of change where I am discovering who I am and who I want to become.
While doing all this discovering, it is important that any decisions I make or conclusions I come to be self-chosen. Otherwise, I will right back into the same patterns. Additionally, before I can decide who I want to become (my ideal-self), I must first honestly observe who I am right now. If I do this, I can truly outline steps I need to make in order to reach my goals – my ideal-self, which should reflect who I want to be, including how I want to be perceived. My textbook says that:
With experience and maturity, our aspirations should increasingly represent self-chosen goals and values (self-directedness) that expresses in a healthy, adult way what we’ve come to expect ourselves.
Moral of the story: If the choices you make are not self-chosen, self-directed, or not ultimately representative of the person you desire to be (as opposed to the person that everyone else needs you to be for them while they drain the hell out of you in the process)…then you need to reevaluate where you are in your life, make some tough decisions, choose personal freedom, and live the REST of your life on your terms.
And dagnabbit, that’s what I’m trying to do.
