The flip side to understanding what values drive you, is to understand what pain points you strive to avoid. These can often be much more powerful than the positive values we may wish to embrace. Rather than maximizing our pleasure, we go out of our way to avoid pain. This can be okay, but sometimes our pain values actually prevent us from acting on our positive values.
My big 3 drivers are:
- Fear of Rejection
- Fear of Loss of Control
- Fear of being disrespected
These are all interrelated, and all carry the poison pill that the more you strive to avoid these things, the more likely that you are to experience them.
No one can be in control 100% of the time. Trying to do so just leads to a more catastrophic experience when you finally do lose control. (Which can also lead to a real and deserved loss of respect from people around you and possibly also rejection).
Fear of rejection prevents you from being able to share your true self with others. You have to construct a facade, and too much effort goes towards controlling your image so that you won’t be rejected or disliked.
Fear of being disrespected also leads to the projection of a persona- either of power of expertise so that you have sufficient “standing” that you won’t be disrespected.
Again, failure in one mode leads to failure across the board.
Finding out how to reframe or release negative drivers isn’t easy. The first step is just to be aware of them and when they are driving your actions. Journaling is a great place to record these observations and later look for patterns. This is what I will be doing over the next month as I try to modify my mindset.