The Humbling Nature of Failure...aka Growth

I have been a perfectionist, a pleaser since I can remember the happy feeling of making myself or someone else happy. That joy in your soul from happiness. From getting something right, completing a task, surprising someone with a balloon on their birthday, A's on a report card, being teacher's pet, a science report on solar panels-- it didn't matter. I wanted to make _____{fill in the Blank} happy.

I am not perfect by any means, I am overweight, I am a horrible housekeeper. The secret is I can shut off the perfectionism. But not completely, which is where the inner anxiety comes in. Thoughts or feeling come in my head caused by my failures or even sometimes things I have said or done when  I think I  did not live up to my expectation of what they should have been and this scene will loop until I can calm myself or meditate it away. This is my perfection, This is my anxiety. So I can clean to perfection and make my mind at ease or I can half-ass it and leave my mind to possible be exposed to the dreaded pressuring anxiety to be better.

There are larger scale things that we are expected to succeed in buying houses, marriage, career, having kids, etc. And what if you find yourself failing in one of these categories? How do you rebound? How do you stop and find the growth and feeling like for eighteen years you knew how to own a house or have a career but then poof? Failure. Or actual it's just perceived failure because all fails are actually a place to stop. Literally and take a breath and contemplate, Where am I ? Where Was I? Where do I want to be? How Can I get There? Because with the big stuff we rarely stop and reflect on our progress enough, do we?

But to know you failed, you the person who usually gets things right. The one people go to for answers about that thing. The person who at one time may have even criticized others who were in the position she now finds herself. It is humbling but it's the gift of growth. I am rarely wrong this big. To be wrong on a scale this big means for me to reevaluated on a scale of a real FBI investigation like Nixon years.  

Yet, I cannot ponder yesterday more than a moment in need for knowledge to mold decisions before reminding myself. That I have today. Tomorrow is not guaranteed.  I am happy today. My Failure has brought me back to me and I am happy. Now on to a new volume in Dany's life.

What am I worth? (Synchronicity preview)

Many places in my life in the last few weeks someone has put some kind of value or asked me to put a number value on me as a person. It shook me to the core every time it happened. I am not something to be put into a numeric value. Maybe it scares me to think of myself as a cash cow. Put to slaughter for a price. One was for life insurance and disability insurance our yearly meeting with the same smiling face. She loves me I add more every year paranoid that someone will get hurt or goddess forbid die. I with having Epilepsy I constantly worry about my long term health. It's under control now, but I was told as a child I would outgrow it too. So here was the first place someone asked me to pick my big worth.

As I am applying for jobs or more like browsing the job market. I cannot say there has been much that screams LEAVE WHAT YOU HAVE! yet. But here is another place where they want you to say what you are worth. And it's some weird pissing game, that I don't understand. You don't want to put a salary too low and look desperate but you don't want to put too high either. But some people say over confident does win because it sells a demeanor that the upper management wants in an employee. I am just honest and put the amount I need to leave my current position for that position. I am not a good liar or negotiator. I am better to just put it out there and if you dig my vibe then we can work together. That is how I am playing this, I am looking for my bliss work related and I think it will find me when I find it.

My husband asked me what I thought I was worth for all the thoughts, ideas, jobs, all the potential in me what I could be worth. He had a number for himself and I waited and spit out some random number like $50,000 and I really have no idea where I came up with this number because I was just so taken back by the thought of quantifying my creativity and productivity into a number. Sometime since the birth of my kids, I had the revelation that the real currency in life was time. If we were to give people real gifts, it should be vouchers for our time and we should hold fast to meet face to face with people. Time is our most precious gift; One I have tried to give to my kids as often as they have allowed me. There have been people in my life I have been shamefully selfish with my time and my belly aches over those losses. But I have today. And I have time. I have no other value to speak of but I have time.