Chapter 10 Stop Juggling and Start Livinig

Ironically, this exercise came up this week.

My post in The Life and Times of the Contessa, titled "90 Miles an hour with my hair on fire" so aptly applies to this particular chapter.

Maybe my subconscious had something to do with it....

This week suggested that most of us juggle and keep a lot of balls in the air at one time. Just imagine Michelle Pfeifer in "One Fine Day".... She describes has life as having all these balls in the air and everything is working JUST FINE, thank you very much, and she couldn't possibly accept help and most especially NOT from George Clooney.

So you get the idea.

Cheryl Richardson suggests that we select one of the following list of balls and drop it:

Trying to please everyone

Trying to have everyone like you

Trying to be the star at the expense of your own life

Trying to do everything perfectly

Trying to do everything

Your reliance on adrenaline

So this week, I chose "Trying to have everyone like you."

Why ? you may ask. Why THAT item. Especially when those who know me know that I have a problem with every single one these balls.

Well it's like domino's. If I take care of "Trying to have everyone like me", I will also be able to better control "Trying to please everyone", "Trying to do everything" and "Trying to be the star at the expense of your own life".

So The next item I have to deal with is also explaining the way it plays into my life. Well, as explained many ways and times in the Life and times of, I am a people pleaser which is generally fueled with needing to be liked.

It's kind of weird that I feel this way because, in general, I am well liked. I have always had no trouble making and keeping friends. I have friends form evey phase of my life from Pre-K to my most current activities. So why is this so important to me when it comes so naturally?

The question should really be, for those that do not like me, why do I care? It has more to do my self esteem than anything else, why can I win over 9 out of 10 people and not the 10th? What's wrong with me that I don't win over the 10th?

So this week, I am going to try focusing on the good friends and people I do have in my life and worrying less about the ones that aren't.

I don't need to find the negative reasons why this person shouldn't be in my life, but I do find that I should look at the negatives as to why we aren't compatable as a reason.

I will give you an example. There is a person I know. Lovely, intelligent, caring, a wonderful and special person, we have so much in common but there's one habit I can't abide by. It bothers me that it was their decision not to continue the friendship, but I would have done the same thing in my own time and in fact, have.

And I see it as a personal failing.

So I am now choosing to look at this situation, not as a failing but more as a success to know who and what kind of people I want in own inner circle.