Okay, granted the new year's blog is a bit late coming this year. It wasn't that I didn't keep my goal last year. I did, but it's about how that goal expanded early on in the year also. I wasn't sure how to express that, and honestly, I was wondering what I wanted to state as goals for 2018. I suppose I could have separated them, but truth is I might still be digesting the impact of the 2017 goal. Maybe I'm just going to be extending the goal, but finally I decided that isn't actually a good approach. New goals keep us moving forward. Some goals might take more than a year to accomplish, but the goal should be to get started and create a new mindset, what some might refer to as a habit.
Towards the end of 2016, I had promised that I would quit dating anyone that I didn't really have any interest in. This became a promise for the new year. No more guys that had serious red flags. I had developed a habit of dating someone that was somehow not ever going to be long term--some just by something minor, others by glaring issues. How I developed the habit was because I had always put my boys needs first. Anything that potentially was going to interfere with me being able to care for them always got put to the side. I had a month to myself in the summer, and it was usually when I actually started "dating" someone. After a year, year and an half, I was out. It was somewhat amusing, because I started to realize I was doing this even now with the boys being full grown men. It had practically become part of me at the subconscious level. Last year I read a book on the more recent subconscious studies and findings, and in retrospect, I had been doing the same thing over and over when it came to dating. I thought because I never dated anyone that was similar to anyone else, different jobs, different educations, different backgrounds, et cetera, that I was avoiding a "type". In fact, my "type" had become two main things: Different from anyone else I had ever dated and had a glaring reason to be dumped eventually. I even stayed in relationships that had zero tangible reason to even launch, just because the timeline had become part of my subconscious.
For most people, this sounds like it should be pretty easy. But the truth is that the conscious mind has little to do with what we do. There used to be a scientific belief that most people use less than 5% of their minds, and that even geniuses like Albert Einstein used only 10% give or take. We now know, true but not true. Our minds are actually using a lot more but not the way we would like to think. We are consciously only using 5 to 10%. The rest is all subconscious. That makes sense though. How often do you think about your heart rate, your blood flow, taking breaths? We don't give any of this a second thought, but we don't because our minds, subconsciously, are actually giving it all continuous thought. But more recently they have found the idea that we create habitual patterns that become so subconscious that our conscious is not even making those decisions. It seems obvious if your pattern is dating a physical stereotype. However, mental stereotypes are far more powerful. My mental stereotype was intentionally avoiding any real relationships. I used to joke "I have my stupid conversations with my friends." So I tended to date guys that I felt would add to my intellectual growth. I really had to consciously pick apart what was actually similar, and deciding consciously to stop it. Sounds easy, but it's really difficult. Try chewing a stick of gum. Do you chew with your mouth open, closed or a mix? Now try to chew differently and start watching the television. At the first commercial break you will notice you've started chewing the way you always do. It's a habit. (I chose this example because it works for everyone that stops paying attention to chewing intentionally different.) Now imagine this override is in everything we do--including dating.
The funny thing is I already said this was a success story. I have successfully stopped doing this nonsense. I believe that most of us can break most bad habits in 3 months. I'll admit this has been more of a year long endeavor. Most bad habits, like chewing your food with your mouth open, we can break relatively quickly. But once I realized that I was able to break this habit, then I realized it wasn't just dating where I was allowing toxic people into my life. There are friends that you meet and within 3 to 6 months you know they are always going to be friends, but with others you get that nagging feeling that even though consciously they seem to be a great friend that you'll never be able to trust them. There's an irony here, because most people can only pick out lies less than 60% of the time. The more you are around "good" liars, the harder it becomes for you to discern truth from lies. It's also proven now that most people lie daily. It's debatable though, because you lie when you tell someone you're having a good day when it's not that great. So I look at these statistics as iffy. A lie is relative. It should be okay to tell a busybody it's none of their business, but a busybody will call you an asshole behind your back for being honest. For many of us, it's just easier to not say anything or tell a white lie. So earlier last year, one of these lying types, well, she hit my limit, but I was still maintaining being her friend, although I had realized that she was a user. You know the types. They manipulate people to do what they want and they do tend to be smarter than the average bear, so some people might not even realize they are being manipulated. How do you deal with people that you know are no longer any value add to your life?
Certainly a manipulative person, male or female, has no value to your life. These aren't "good" people because by nature manipulative people are about themselves. You are always secondary to what they want, what they believe they need, and you will never be their real priority. It will always be about what they can get out of you if they do something for you. Arguably, this may be at a subconscious level for them too, but from a conscious level, how much of you are you willing to give up for much less or even nothing in return? When this particular person attempted to get me to change my vacation to accommodate her, it was the final straw. She was supposed to come along on my dime. But thanks to her, I realized I was keeping people in my life that were not value add either. Subconsciously, I was trying to accommodate her manipulations even though I knew she did it, because I was doing the same thing with so-called friends. I would try to give them the benefit of the doubt, not with a timeline, but until they had really taken advantage way passed the acceptable level. All of the sudden, I looked around at the friends I had. Some were value add and some were not. There was no value add having a manipulative person in my life. She had been in an abusive relationship, so perhaps there was reasoning that she was doing this consciously and subconsciously. However, what am I willing to have in my life? Subconsciously, I may be keeping these people, but it was time to consciously start living my life free of their nonsense. We all have enough issues of our own without adding others issues.
Now, I'm not advocating leaving proven friendships that have been value add. We do all have our own issues, but manipulative, users, backstabbers, et cetera? I see posts from a few friends on social media quite regularly about being screwed over again by yet another so-called friend. It's not that we cannot make friends with new people. It's that we should drop the people that are not proving to be value add to our lives. The people who are value add, well, they make up what helps us understand ourselves better. Our honest friends in their hardships help us be better people by allowing us to develop sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Being value add isn't about what we get from the friendships but what we exchange. As one of my best friends said to me the other day, "you make me think and a better person." She makes me think and a better person too. And that is what is real friendship. Subconsciously we might not always pick the best quality of people to be acquainted with, but truly value add friendships make us better people consciously.
So, I said at the beginning, breaking that bad habit of choosing consistently "wrong" dating relationships was a successful effort that eventually evolved into extracting myself from "wrong" friendships. But then I also eluded that somethings might need to be extended, but not really being necessary. As someone once told me, "it's easier to fall in with the wrong people than the right ones." I don't think this is true, but it is something that we have to consciously evaluate whether we are around the right people or the wrong. Plus, right or wrong is relative, but most certainly if you're on social media wondering why you don't have the right person in your life, why you have all these backstabbers as friends, it probably time to evaluate what you choose to have in your life. It's still your choices, albeit subconscious, but still on you. It's on me, and although it was just a goal for 2017, it's a constant life choice, every day, every week, every year. Building a good subconscious habit is only the start, but it's the good foundation that was the goal, the habit of choosing better.
So what about 2018? Maintain the 2017 foundation on being better to myself and surrounding myself with friends that have value add and that I provide value add to their lives. I'm really quite content. I'd say I'll read more, but I already read quite a bit. Maybe next blog...
