“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung
One of the keys to happiness I have found in life is this: You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to engage with anything that does not serve you. Most things in life are not inherently bad; they usually serve us until they stop. As Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Jung noted, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” What is unconsciously or consciously directing your life? Most of us lead our lives based on the dictates of our social programming, religious indoctrination, unquestioned societal norms, social media pressure, and the shoulds and have-tos. You don’t have to do anything in life, especially if it stops serving you, such as being loyal to toxic family and friends, negative behaviour(s), addictive hobbies, stressors, drama etc.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to change you is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Suppose a situation is not elevating you or taking you to the next level. We all have the agency to do something about it, as our time here on earth is limited. You are not helpless or powerless to change any situation that does not serve your ultimate goal of finding your purpose here on earth. You don’t have to go to school, but you need to be educated. You don’t have to be a people please, but you need to be kind.
Meditations
Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Shine
When we’re growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be. – Elliot Page
We switch between self-hating our inferior selves, and we pretend to live up to the unattainable ideal of what we should be. The “Shoulds” divides us into two selves: an ideal self and a real self. The real self is who we actually are, and the ideal self is who we strive to be.
You have a “real self” (who you actually are) and an “ideal self” (who you strive to be). While it’s important to actualize your potential, it’s also important to recognize when this “ideal self” is holding you to too high a standard that hurts your self-worth.
Unlike Pygmalion, who tried to make another person into a creature fulfilling his concept of beauty, the neurotic sets to work to mold himself into a supreme being of his own making. He holds before his soul his image of perfection and unconsciously tells himself: “Forget about the disgraceful creature you actually are; this is how you should be; and to be this idealized self is all that matters. You should be able to endure everything, to understand everything, to like everybody, to be always productive”—to mention only a few of these inner dictates.
Any person subjected to a tyrannical regime will resort to means of circumventing its dictates. He is forced into a duplicity which, in the case of an external tyranny, may be entirely conscious. In the case of the inner tyranny, which in itself is unconscious, the subsequent duplicity can have only the character of unconscious self-deceptive pretense.
It is argued that a publicly stated behavioral intention commits the individual to a certain self-view (e.g., ‘‘I am a productive person’’) with which the person then acts consistently. Indeed, individuals with a higher need for consistency show stronger public-commitment effects (Cialdini, Wosinka, Barrett, Butner, & Gornik-Durose, 1999).
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