Starting a blog and making YouTube videos have been courageous steps for me. Why?
Even though I’m an exceedingly open and honest person, there was one thing I always wanted to hide: my self-centeredness. Not that a person can really hide such a thing, but believe it or not, I spent most of my life trying.
Centered vs Self-Centered
Being centered is a virtue. And, in fact, there is really no other way to be centered than around self. But to me self-centered had another meaning. At a young age I dubbed it bad, selfish, and exclusionary — as in leaving somebody out on purpose (suspiciously like the portrayal of the mean stepsisters in Disney’s Cinderella).
I could be nothing of the sort. In fact, I had to be the opposite, (Cinderella), because that’s what worked to get the prince… or so I thought.
However, through the years I developed a new respect for self-centered behavior by watching children. I even teach that establishing a clear sense of self is a good and necessary thing for a human in order to survive and thrive as an individual who is part of a greater whole.
Self-centeredness creates problems only when kids feel they have to fight for the right to ‘be’ or to prove who they are. When they have established who they are and have a firm grasp on their individual identity, self-centeredness is no longer an issue. They can consider other people’s wants and needs without feeling like it threatens their own. We call this maturity.
Recently a new thought popped up:
“Sandy, if you are still struggling with being self-centered at this point in your life, you must have a very fragile identity — still fighting for the right to be you.”
I got a big nod from myself on that one and knew it was true and important, but I didn’t yet know why.
So I consulted my coach, Eva Sim-Zabka, listener extraordinaire. Her unique validation skills were just what this ‘self-centered’ person needed to figure things out. She noticed right away that even though self-centered and exclusion came up together for me (“self-centered = excluded”), they were not necessarily related.
We looked to my childhood for the source of that collapse.
Since being ‘left out’ has a very child-like, experiential ring to it and ‘self-centered or selfish’ is more conceptual, we looked for where they might have first become associated in my childhood… actually more than associated: collapsed.
That was easy. It was age 8 when I moved next door to this one little girl with red hair, braids, and freckles. She was outspoken and always got what she wanted.
As Eva listened, I recounted the years of our triangular relationships — first with my best friend and then later with my first love where this same girl kept being chosen over me. Eva voiced my years of stifled distress and the pattern became clearer — self-centered was always associated with someone being left out.
It seems that when my best friend first invited the red-haired girl over instead of me, I felt left out and decided that, for her to take my place with my best friend and not care, the red-haired girl was self-centered like the stepsisters. With that decision, I actually turned her into a mean stepsister in my mind, and lost touch with who she really was.
I also tried to be nicer and more inclusive than her at all costs (more Cinderella-like) to get my best friend to choose me instead. I remember being puzzled each time my friend chose her and thinking the problem must be me.
In effect, right there, I excluded me. Of course, the same scenario came up over and over throughout my life.
Over time, I became quite a martyr. I never allowed myself to feel jealousy or hatred. I worked hard to stay friends with the red-haired girl. As we grew older, I even became a mediator between her and the boy I liked to keep them together whenever they had fights because she was who he wanted.
Pure Cinderella… or so I thought. But in giving up the right to express what I liked and didn’t like or what I wanted and didn’t want, unlike Cinderella, I gave up me.
I saw that even though, as a kid, I watched the stepsister strategy work better at ‘getting’ the friend and the boyfriend than my Cinderella one did, time and time again I remained steadfast.
If my identity had really been fragile, could I have held onto it as firmly as I did with the costs as high as they were? No.
As a matter of fact, I couldn’t have constructed a better test than that to gain the kind of proof I needed that my identity was not fragile at all. But until now I couldn’t see it.
Here’s why: saying what I like or want and making choices were off-limits to me most of my life. When I realized that my identity wasn’t fragile, I also realized that I chose it.
What I mean by that is this: I liked my identity. Pure and simple. When I saw Cinderella, I wanted to be like her. It had nothing to do with ‘getting’ the prince after all, or I would’ve changed strategies when I saw it didn’t work for that. It was actually just that I liked Cinderella and wanted to be like her.
And with that breakthrough, two things happened. I instantly got back the image of the little red-haired girl at age 8 as I first met her — smiling and actually looking like a friend, not a mean stepsister. Plus, I finally got to fully claim who I am. I am nice, inclusive, generous, open, and honest because I like to be, not because it works or because I have to be in order to avoid being selfish, but because I choose it.
So now, as it turns out, I find I actually am the kind of person I always wanted to be. I no longer have to fight to protect my fragile identity, I just am me centered in myself. Simple as that.
