I Want To Be Liked
As I start to dive deeper into Be Powerful, I’ve come to a disturbing realization: I want to be liked. I thought I have gotten rid of this pesky neediness. I thought I had placed it in its box, away from where it could do harm. The harm? Well, the “harm” in wanting to be liked means making others bear the responsibility of making me feel wanted, connected, or not alone. Harm = Being a burden to others, reducing their freedom.
Now, I do not believe most people are aware of this “burden” explicitly, but implicitly they cannot help but feel it somewhere off in the recesses of their psyches or, perhaps, in their gut. “Something is just not right about that guy,” I can imagine people saying. This week I described to some friends who I feel myself to be inside, but am not quite able to let out completely. “I’m that guy who others are drawn to, that guy who radiates good humor, comfort, and warmth. People feel good having met me.” That’s who I would like to be. That is who I am striving to become. I am not that guy, yet. I have found one reason why: I want to be liked.
When I take stock of the most intense feelings of dissatisfaction, anger, or frustration I feel during my day, I realize these feelings arise as a result of two moments: 1. people disagree with me 2. people mischaracterize me. Each one of these is amplified in their affect when it involves a woman for whom I find attraction. Though other people’s reactions are out of my control, nonetheless, I feel anger and frustration in these moments.
It seems this desire to be liked is becoming more intense the harder I work to transform myself into “that guy.” This is hard to explain. Here is my attempt. I basically feel like I’m entitled to a “cookie.” You know? I’ve done all this great work on myself, on transforming my life and relations with people in my life, and accepting myself, on taking action, but at the end of the day I can still come across people (women in particular) who react to me as if I were simply wanting something from them. Then, it hit me. I do want something from them: Their approval. I am wanting them to recognize all that I have become. I want them to give me a cookie. I want LIFE to give me a cookie. Then, I realized so much more…
I realized that I am bored. That somehow, even amidst all these “changes,” the underlying motivation remains oriented to get the outside world to change for me. I have not yet truly come to the point where I am exclusively sourcing my sense of power and connection from within my actions. Rather, I’m looking to the world and others to respond to me in some way. This, however, seems to be a matter of focus. I am bored not because I am not living a life in pursuit of my truth, but because the pathways I am using to do so makes the outside world a source of challenges. And, once those challenges have been met, I get bored as I wait for the next one.
As “women” are still the biggest challenge in my life, and under this pathway of boredom, I thus render women responsible for adventure and excitement in my life. I want a woman to save me from boredom. I am turning to everything in my world, its physical content, its relations, and seeing just how REAL I can be in those moments. I take dance lessons, I learn how to ride motorcycles, I apologize to my father, I work hard at work, I go out by myself, I push myself to do all sorts of things in spite of all my feelings of unreadiness, I live my edge. And yet, its like I’m considering “acting” as enough to qualify as being “real.” Being real means much more than this, much more than just giving expression to what I am feeling…it takes 100% effort. In other words, rather then seeing how many people I can be honest with, and in what uncomfortable situations I can get myself into, I’d much rather have the feelings of power and connection I am seeking in those situations be sourced sheerly on how much effort I give to those situations.
Damn, where is “effort”?
Effort has lost its value for me…I rarely even notice it anymore. In fact, I realized this the other day as I recounted how much I accomplished this summer. At first I was proud of what I have accomplished. Then I was a bit dismayed because I realized that all I did was act, that is, it was about meeting the challenges but not really about going further in the moment, not going deeper with my effort. Or, at least, it seems that way. I do know better. But, in the moment, I am literally blinded to the effort I am giving as all my focus is on the “results” of said challenges. And, here, let me be honest, “results” under this focus means the approval of women and that people like me more. In my everyday life, I find myself still waiting for responses…for cookies.
And so…we have now arrived full circle…back to the idea that I want people to like me. I have put a lot of effort into becoming the man of my dreams, but my pathway has been focused on the external and as a result I remain dissatisfied in spite of having really pushed through a number of barriers. In fact, the faultiness of this pathway becomes even more apparent to me when I get so upset when people mischaracterize me. When I meet women who are absolutely convinced they “know what I am about” (and by this they mean what they feel EVERY guy is about), I feel frustrated and annoyed. I have worked hard to not be THAT guy, to be a different guy than the norm. They do not give me my cookie! It is clear that I am not focusing on the sheer efforts of my actions, on how well I am opening myself to others and my life, but on how my actions are building a persona. I’m looking to impress others still, but now it’s by living a more “authentic” life. I have taken what are amazing insights and brilliant hard won efforts of this whole community, and even within my whole life this past year and a half, and I feel like I’m trivializing them, turning them into yet just another trick…..
This is no OK…not OK at all…