I had some startling realizations yesterday at work and on my way to get some food after my shift ended. One of them was that I still do a lot of people pleasing in certain areas of my life. Another realization may have given me some insight into why that’s still a habit for me. If that’s the case, then it has to do with failure. I’m not afraid to fail at some things since much of what I’ve learned (including juggling, dancing, unicycling, and the limited Spanish that I know) has involved a huge amount of repeated failure. However, I don’t like to fail in front of other people. More often than not, I practice things in private until I get good enough that I can do them fairly consistently whether I’m alone or with someone else.
I think this is because I want other people to perceive me as capable, talented, and impressive in many different areas. Even though I know this isn’t the case, I still have the feeling that I’ll be seen as clumsy, uncoordinated, and lackluster if I can’t do something well in public. When I juggle at the park once a month, I tend to only demonstrate patterns that I can already do pretty well; I rarely work on new things or things I haven’t done in years at the park. I also haven’t unicycled around most of the people I see on a regular basis. I practice with my unicycle in my driveway so that my efforts go unseen and I intend to wait until I can control it much better before doing it around those close to me.
I don’t know exactly what to make of these realizations at this point. This is where I’d usually share a lesson I’ve learned or a plan I have to solve a particular problem, but right now I have neither of those. All I know is that I have to be aware of the things that I’m doing before I can do anything about them. So all I intend to do for the foreseeable future is continue observing my behavior and thinking about what makes me act how I do. Maybe this will give me the insight I need to change some old habits, or maybe it’ll just make me more mindful as I go about my day. Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.