What Defines Me
I remember conversing with my wife just a few weeks after we began dating. We were walking after one of our dates when my wife kindly interrupted me in the middle of my sharing and said, "You do not need to continue to sell yourself; I already like you." I will not lie; her comment felt slightly harsh then, but she was not wrong. I was trying hard to show that I was worth being in a relationship with her. When I met my wife, she was an established and successful career woman, a stunning human being who had her life together with a bright future ahead filled with adventurous dreams. I, on the other hand, was beginning my career. After switching careers from a focus on healthcare, I entered the corporate world as an entry-level sales representative. We were at two different points in our careers, and I felt the need to prove myself to her. Experiencing the need to prove myself to others was not an isolated incident in my life. It took me several years to realize the burden I have often placed on myself by over-emphasizing people's opinions of me. This weight comes partially from the more profound need for validation originating, as shared in my previous blogs, from an unquenched thirst to win my parents' approval. My fixation on seeking approval or validation ignited a drive in me to perform and to try to consistently become a better version of myself, often taking for granted and failing to recognize my God-given qualities and traits. To clarify, this was driven more by fear and discontentment than the desire to grow and develop.
I have been on the impossible mission to meet people's expectations for most of my life. I disguised this unhealthy focus with the idea that I was striving to become the best version of myself, which seemed like an accomplishable and honorable task. I just needed to be the best son, husband, father, friend, and leader. Unfortunately, what seemed a virtuous drive led me to live in a constant state of guilt, self-disappointment, and emotional fatigue. For example, when it came to being a great husband and father, I aligned this concept to being able to provide financially for my family. So, I threw myself 100 percent into my career. I gave it all I had with the single focus in mind to provide my family with the finances needed to live confidently and comfortably. However, somewhere along the way, I lost myself in my career, which almost became my everything. I pushed myself to work insane hours for many years, believing I was doing it for my family. There was some truth to it, but I learned that my greatest driver was personal validation. I began to receive recognition and affirmation from my peers, direct reports, and leaders. Although those affirmations seemed to fill my tank temporarily, they left me with a thirst to continue to prove myself more and seek additional validation. My identity was now tightly intertwined with the successes I was acquiring in my career. An interesting phenomenon that also took place along the way was that I grew more fearful of losing my job as I progressed. I had an enormous amount of fear about losing everything, often triggered by the fact that when I was younger and immigrated to the US due to the war, my family lost everything. Logically, this fear did not make sense as I had the experience, innate talents, and gifts that would allow me to bounce back to find other opportunities.
My thirst for personal validation continued to rear its head as I often compared myself to others instead of recognizing the unique value behind who I was and what I had achieved professionally and personally. One example was comparing my level of financial accomplishments against those around me. When comparing, I would experience waves of disappointment and anger as I blamed myself for not achieving higher levels of prosperity. I looked at my past and felt guilty for not having the courage to advocate for myself and allowing previous employers to take advantage by not compensating me at the levels I deserved. I often felt like I disappointed my family, and I thought that if I had been an emotionally healthier individual, I would not have let this happen. Instead of being grateful for what I had achieved, I was often angry at myself.
Thankfully, there has been a change in perspective in my life, allowing me to experience life with a stronger sense of gratitude. A part of my healing began as I began to trust and share my feelings of self-anger and disappointment with my wife and close friends. As I shared my emotions, my wife would remove my misconceptions about what was important to her and the girls with the reassurance of unconditional love and acceptance. She loved me for who I was and appreciated all of my traits, even those that made me different from her. What she wanted was my time and love, and not my ability to provide her with a specific type of lifestyle. Alongside my wife and two daughters (my biggest cheerleaders), God has placed a handful of incredible individuals who have provided me with unconditional support and helped me see the attractive qualities within me, which prompted me to want to learn to see the same. My commitment to begin appreciating the whole of me was a substantial component behind this change. I started to recognize and accept my strengths and weaknesses, love who God created me to be, and not base my joy on someone's perception; after all, I began to choose to focus on what I could control, my thoughts and how I saw myself, and let go of what I could not control which were other peoples' thoughts and opinions.
JC
Husband | Father | Founder at myTOD