Lyco's haphazard collection of notes

[Lyco]

Here, I like to outline my personal situation.

 

I'm a 28-year old (young ) gent who reached a clear insight that there are areas of his life that need to be tackled.

 

I've got a strong feeling of unsatisfaction with myself, and the way that various parts of my life are working out, right now. I'd like to work on that.

 

One reason why I joined this forum is my need for a support group. I've realized that I've got energy & will to start handling areas in my life, but that it's difficult for me to do so without a supportive environment. In other words, I've reached the conclusion that right now, I don't have enough of a supportive environment to help me improve on my life & my feeling of self-worth.

 

I found this forum on the net today & it appears to me a positive environment with people that are dedicated to helping each other out. I appreciate that & I respect it.

 

The main parts of my life that I'm unsatisfied (or downright unhappy with) right now in my life are :

 

1. Girlfriend/relationships. I've had some brief flings but I've haven't been able to built a relationship up till this point in my life (I'm 28 ). I refuse to believe the reason for that is, because there's something wrong with me personally. I honestly think I've got good qualities as a man and as a person and I make a good potential boyfriend. My estimate is that the following elements play a role : (i) my shyness, which makes me timid regarding flirting and anything that overreaches a friendship relation (girls like me has friends, actually, it's easy for me to have girls as friends, but they rarely seem to consider me as boyfriend material), (ii) my lack of experience, meaning I'm not familiar with the social cues and unwritten rules of dating and getting closer. These two work together to built up hindrances.

 

2. Work/academics. I was able to acquire a position as a PHD student and was able to get a grant. I've been studying on my project for 3,5 months now and I'm not showing many signs of progress with my research, and I can tell this is starting to bother my professor. One element that plays a role, as far as I can see, is my lack of confidence: I don't feel that the ideas I produce are of great quality, and I don't feel much as an academic writer. On the rational level, I know this is nonsense, becaue I got excellent grades graduating as master student and my professor hand-picked me. But on the emotional level the feeling that my work doesn't amount too much and that I'm doing badly is really becoming a block.

 

3. Spiritual growth. I came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that, for my development, it would be important to make it a habit of mine to medidate regularly. This has done me good in the past, but recently I've more and more problems concentrating and being able to keep that habit up. This makes me feel sad and incapable.

 

These are the parts of my life, which working on is the priority for me. What is related to that is that I'd like to work on my physical appearance, because I feel doing so would help me with confidence. (I've been doing sports, but I feel it would do me good to do sports more regularly, and I'd like to work on my wardrobe).

 

So far, so good. What I find difficult about, getting to work on these areas, is doing it in absence of a support group.

 

Now, I realized today that it's quite telling that I'm not comfortable to involve the people that I know into helping me with this (I can think of two or three exceptions). It tells me (i) that I'm not comfortable about opening up that I have these problems with my life (it makes me feel, more or less, as a failure) and (ii) that I have an impression that must people that I consider friends wouldn't be a big help when I come clean with this (I can understand that what most people want a friendship is good fun and not especially helping out a friend seriously).

 

I ask myself : how do I start with these areas ? How do I keep myself motivated ? How can I relax enough so that it doesn't bother me so much all, so I could work on these areas of my life in peace ?

 

I am aware what has hindred me in the past to make earlier progress on these fields in my life is a strong tendency to be harsh and forbidding towards myself (this may be, the root cause of most of problems). I can appreciate myself, but when I'm honest about it, I don't like myself very much. I would like to work on that. But I'm beyond the stage of being happy with people telling me : "you just have to love yourself more." I agree, but what I need is concrete ways on how to work on that (if you're physically feeble and not happy with it, people will not tell you "you just need to move your arms a bit more". They will tell you "Go to the gym, or go running.") That's concrete answers - you can do something with that. I need the same sort of concrete answers regarding on how to work on my self-love.

 

Incidentally, I'm not depressed. I'm a humorous and energetic person. But I'm just getting really, really tired with the things that I sketched above. I realize that if I don't start to work on these things I run a risk of running in a depression later on, and I really don't want that.

 

Now - it was already important for me to write this down clearly. I'll pass some more time today to think about how I could get concretely started with things. I'll certainly make use of the forum to ask concrete questions about life areas (when I look at the subthreads of the forum, it makes me think I ought to post questions in all subthreads

 

Any direct advice is, of course, wellcome.

 

On the side, I wish you all much luck and energy with tackling your own working points

[Lyco]

I've been reading various threads on the forum today & been answering here and there.

 

I find the advides that I find in the threads very useful. Make me energetic and full of ideas