Doing it for me

I had a real­iza­tion this morning.

A really obvi­ous one actu­ally, but I can be dense sometimes.

When I do some­thing for me and my own rea­sons, I suc­ceed. When I do some­thing to prove myself, or get approval, or from a sense of guilt, I never get anywhere.

Really sim­ple, but it explains a lot of my life. I’ve been baf­fled for months with the ease with which I can achieve some goals, and the way I only seem to run in cir­cles with others.

I’ve finally real­ized what the key ingre­di­ent is – my moti­va­tions for doing it.

Rejoin­ing an online forum that I adore but costs $400? I found that money easily.

Pay­ing off my credit card because I feel incred­i­bly guilty and silly? Strug­gling to make it hap­pen. No mat­ter what I do, the total just builds itself back up again. No mat­ter what, I’m always hov­er­ing around $1000 in debt. Not a huge amount, but it’s a month’s liv­ing expenses. Big enough to feel insur­mount­able to me.

But what would hap­pen if I changed my motivation?

What if I wanted to pay it off not because “Oh my god, you have debt, you finan­cially irre­spon­si­ble lit­tle girl!” (In my defense, it’s busi­ness debt. It’s not like it’s clothing.)

What if I paid it off because I wanted to free up that energy? Because I wanted to have a fresh slate finan­cially? What if I did it for me?

I think that’d make a huge dif­fer­ence. I’d actu­ally be moti­vated to do some­thing about it instead of just mak­ing the min­i­mum pay­ments. Right now, I’m avoid­ing it because I’m embar­rassed. My par­ents always taught me that you don’t talk about debt, that it’s shame­ful. You don’t tell peo­ple that you have debt, because oh my god, what would they think of you?

Or what about buy­ing a new com­puter? I wanted to get one because I felt so guilty about using my boyfriend’s (and some­what destroy­ing it.) I didn’t want it because it would make my life 8 bil­lion times eas­ier and I could do things like web design with­out crash­ing it, or con­tinue my live stream­ing paint­ing show. I wanted it so I wouldn’t feel so hor­ri­ble about myself.

Do you know how far I got?

That’s right. Nowhere.

And I look at so many other parts of my life and I can see why cer­tain goals – as admirable as they might be – go nowhere because I want them for the wrong rea­sons. I want them for some­one else, or to alle­vi­ate some sense of guilt, or because it’s “what I’m sup­posed to want.”

It’s so easy to fall into that trap, to for­get who you really are, and to not run your life accord­ing to you. To run around after things you think you’re sup­posed to want. To for­get what it is that you really want.

I’m tak­ing the next week off to recu­per­ate from my paint­ing mad­ness, and I’m going to be spend­ing a lot of time think­ing about what I really want. I’m going to be exam­in­ing my life and mak­ing sure that I want things for me, because they’d bring me joy, not because I’ll look bet­ter to oth­ers. (Like get­ting in shape because it makes my body happy and I hurt less, rather than because I’m ashamed of myself and not look­ing exactly like some Pho­to­shopped Victoria’s Secret model. Don’t even get me started on female body image in the media. That’s a rant for another day.)

Do you find your­self set­ting goals for things you think you’re sup­posed to want? How do you remem­ber to set goals for your­self and your needs and not just to keep up with the Jones’s? (Who­ever your per­sonal Jones’s are.)

About the Author:

Sarah Lacy is one of our fea­tured artists and  a reg­u­lar con­tributer here on the blog. She is an amaz­ing young artist who drips wis­dom and pas­sion, for life and art, so much that she clearly is an old soul. She is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the energy, self insight and pas­sion we des­per­ately need in the gen­er­a­tion of artists and cre­atives who will replace us.

Sarah makes “art that reminds you to dream, to breathe, to laugh breath­lessly in the rain”, in doing so she hopes help peo­ple learn “to feel again”.

Sarah’s pas­sion and love for what she does has been chal­lenged by the her con­stant com­pan­ion of Chronic Fatigue Syn­drome. As a per­son who knows all to well the chal­lenges of liv­ing with a debil­i­tat­ing chronic dis­ease I was impressed with her courage, open­ness and unwill­ing­ness to sur­ren­der. She has a lot to tell us not only of art but also of life…

You can find Sarah here:

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