For years I’ve struggled with the idea I am not valuable because I produce less than a healthy, employed person.\u00a0 The notion we are defined by our productivity, I’m sure, is rooted in some western capitalistic thought, and it was firmly embedded in me.\u00a0 I look back at my ‘best’ productive years as a disabled person and see I was publishing something every two to three days.\u00a0 In other words, my life was little more than me sitting in front of the computer screen trying to produce things as much as humanly possible to fill some gap inside.\u00a0 I took pride, something rare for me, in how much I made, but these days, I seldom go back and reference the material I produced then\u2014quantity over quality.<\/p>\n
I am someone of strength, as we all are.\u00a0 Mine are Love, Humility, Honesty, Kindness, and Justice. \u00a0I value having close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated.\u00a0 I tend to let my actions speak for themselves, and I don’t regard myself as more special than I am.\u00a0 I talk about the truth, but I present myself more broadly as genuine and sincere without pretense.\u00a0 I enjoy doing favors and good deeds for others.\u00a0 I treat all people the same and give everyone a fair chance.\u00a0 Most of my strengths lie in more passive states of being and less in active forms of doing.<\/p>\n
We are more than our focus.\u00a0 If we ask ‘who are you?’ to someone, we tend to get an answer about what they focus on;\u00a0 we get to know their job, hobbies, or other thoughts occupying their time.\u00a0 I don’t need to focus on Love, Humility, Honesty, Kindness, and Justice; these flow from me naturally.\u00a0 I don’t need to focus on beating my heart; I do it automatically.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 when I think of my idea of self-worth, I do not consider my character strengths because I’ve fallen into the trap of only looking at the narrow lens of focus.\u00a0 I only think about the actions I’ve accomplished or failed.<\/p>\n
It is difficult for me to be productive for several reasons: memory issues, mood instability, anxiety problems, etc.\u00a0 We, as conscious beings, are good at identifying and focusing on problems.\u00a0 We are also adept at giving the negative sides of a situation more weight than the positives.\u00a0 The tendency to disproportionately favor negativity is even higher in analytical people like myself, even though my motivations come from a good place, wanting to be helpful.\u00a0 As we narrow the focus on something, we tend to ignore everything else more successfully.\u00a0 At some point, we forget all else other than our focus, and therein lies the problem.\u00a0 We stop valuing anything not in the narrow cone of focus because we forget it exists.<\/p>\n
My character strengths manifest themselves in several ways.\u00a0 I’m patient, thoughtful, insightful, forgiving, and available.\u00a0\u00a0 However, I don’t sit in front of the computer and produce ‘thoughtful,’ so I tend not to value it as I should.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead of attempting to broaden my focus, I need to redefine the self to include everything that needs no focus at all. \u00a0It’s ok to value the things I am instead of only the things I do.\u00a0 Where we shift our focus to changes constantly, we are a part of something much larger.\u00a0 We are much more than the pile of actions we think about, and it’s ok to value all of ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For years I’ve struggled with the idea I am not valuable because I produce less than a healthy, employed person.\u00a0 The notion we are defined by our productivity, I’m sure, is rooted in some western capitalistic thought, and it was firmly embedded in me.\u00a0 I look back at my ‘best’ productive years as a disabled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[337],"tags":[312],"class_list":["post-28317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-mindfulness-journey","tag-312"],"yoast_head":"\n