Carl Setzer

I was reading an email newsletter sent by my friend and life coach Wendy Kranz , which talked about confidence. Got me thinking: what would I do with more self-confidence? Now, I've long struggled with low levels of self-confidence, manifesting as over-thinking, over-analyzing and over-planning. And I'm now thinking that it's manifested as a sense of dissatisfaction with my career. I've long been an executive/administrative assistant, and the similar roles that flow out of that. And with that a deep-seated "you can be so much more" mentality. Really, though, I've never been dissatisfied with my work, with the things I do, with my contributions. There's something deeper. Once I thought it might be a displaced sense of gender-roles. Being a guy in a typically female dominated role felt awkward at times. Never externally, no one ever said anything untoward about that to me. No, it's internal. Anyway, that doesn't seem so real any more. Esp...

It's so easy to succumb to this desire: be something , something important, impactful, powerful.  Chasing after an ideal "should be", losing sight of who you are; cruel phantoms. So easily we get pulled into career/family/cultural expectations, that when we lose sight of ourselves, we don't easily see the path back. That's assuming there is a path "back". I expect, for many of us, this is a path forward; new direction, new experience. Often, the path of self-discovery and self-acceptance is a journey of deep creativity; true exploration. A journey not started in youth, rather born out of regret and emptiness.

My thought of the morning: I don't think I believe in mistakes. The hedging quality reflects the newness of this notion. It's reflects a rather radical shift in my mind. There's sloppy execution, then there's discovery.  Sloppy execution isn't a mistake, it's a lack of care and diligence. Clearly, more effort/better focused effort would've overcome the obstacles. Accepting a challenge which doesn't go as expected isn't a mistake, either. We learn deeply from those moments. Amazing, cosmos shifting events resulted from unintended consequences. I mustn't let my fear of mistakes paralyze me. This ruins so much joy, limits life's delights. I've seen this, up close and personally. And desire the removal of such life denying scripts from my psyche. Walking that path, slowly but surely, reaching that destination.

Reading email (or most anything) late at night doesn't tend to return me to sleep quickly. Rather, my mind awakens, engages, then wants to learn more. Knowledge is a vibrant engagement for me.