Day 201: Classmates or Competitors?

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 199: Exam Nightmares
Day 200: I Don't Do Bad Grades 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created the belief that I 'must have good grades'

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created the belief that I 'must have good grades' within observing my siblings having good grades and this being praised by my parents

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created the belief that 'passing' is not good enough and that one should always aim for a '100%'

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created a fear of bad grades within having been pushed/motivated to 'always have good grades', as others indicated that 'having good grades' will give you the widest variety of options for your future and thus if I have bad grades I am putting in danger my future as I won't necessarily be able to study / follow what I want if/when bad grades limit me

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that my desire for good grades is rooted/embedded within the fear of having bad grades as fearing for my future / having limited career options

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have promised to myself that I will never allow myself to have bad grades because if I do I might end up in a miserable position in the system

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to have questioned my parents or the education system, where it became clear that even though school was a place where I could be with my friends and play during break times -- I was at the same time in a race/competition with the other children in the class, a race/competition for future status in society/the system -- where some will study hard to make sure that they will be able to further their education while others don't or simply can't with the means available and where each child does not look out or look back at one's friends or care about their situation because we all know 'someone has to do the sucky jobs one day' but 'at least it won't be me because I have good grades'

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have gone into a form of tunnel vision, where all I could see was a straight vision to my future / future position in society/the system -- where all I cared about was 'getting good grades' as this was what I understood to be my 'ticket' to a nice life in the system -- where there was no time or space to consider others who may not be doing as well as I was and thus would possibly end up in less favourable positions in society/system -- but where instead of helping/assisting them I only went further into fear as I 'cannot waste any time on them' and must 'take advantage' of their shortcomings as this puts me 'further ahead' in the race

Related articles

• Day 156: Competitive thoughts - part 2
• Conquering The Contest Of Survival - Day 388
• I Really Want You To Fail - Day 386
• The Things We Do To Feel Good About Ourselves - Day 387
• Day 338 Self Interest is Ignorant to consideration. Part 3
• Day 191: Reacting to Futility, and to WTF I've Done.

Day 200: I Don’t Do Bad Grades

I was looking at this exam point some more and two memories popped up in relation to having an emotional attachment/connection to this point.

The first one is when I received a test back for geography, and I either almost failed or failed the test – and was absolutely flabbergasted by this. I just couldn’t believe it – I couldn’t believe that this piece of paper with such a bad grade had my name on it – there MUST have been a mistake. I, Leila, DO NOT GET THESE GRADES! Lol. All around me people had the same grade or lower and they were pretty ‘cool’ about it, meaning, they just saw the grade, had a little sigh but then they were over it. I was trying to play it cool but on the inside my head I was going insane – I had never been faced with the such a low grade and I didn’t have any reference on how to cope with this, so I was just like a bouncing ball bouncing in all directions inside my head with emotions and feelings bouncing along with it, trying to find out ‘how to feel about this’ and what to ‘make of it’. My whole day after that was completely fucked, I felt completely worthless and useless and was completely depressed by the time I got home that day.

Then I have another memory, where I am about to go home, school’s almost over and I have my paper with me with all my grades which were all just *perfect*. I was really chuffed with myself and when I got my mom had tears in her eyes. These were my last grades as I graduated from high school and it was like the epitome of my ‘academic achievement’ all throughout school – from primary all the way till the end of high school. My grades had always been great, and I had managed to end it off with ‘perfect’ grades.

And then I remembered that one bad test and how I had experienced myself. And I remember my friends who had to deal with bad grades all the time and how they did seem to be ‘overthrown’ by it the way I had been, and how jealous I had been that they could just not put so much of themselves into ‘a grade’.

And I could see how stupid it was to get so emotional over a bad grade, and I could see how stupid it was to be ‘so happy’ about a good grade – but it was like I just couldn’t ‘help myself’ – it was so automatic, so ingrained, so deep.

I remember get my first grades while studying here in South Africa, and I got my list and it was so awkward and weird – because usually, I would immediately go and take the piece of paper to my mom, that’s who the paper is for. But my mom’s not around here, she’s not involved in my studies. And so I was sitting there with the paper, looking at it, and it was just so ‘freeing’ that I could hold it without having to move and having to ‘show it’ to anyone. The paper with the grades was here for me, and me alone. I could share it with other people but I didn’t have to – because that was no longer what it was about. It was just a piece of paper giving me feedback on how I’d done on my subjects, so I could look at it, take in the information , fold the piece of paper and put it away – and that was that. It was so freaking awesome lol

Related articles

• Day 199: Exam Nightmares
• Does the Education system Prepare the Children to Face the World - Day 337
• Day 342: The Psychology of the Grading System
• Stepping Beyond The Fear Of Failure - Day 376
• How Fear Controls an Overachiever - Day 373
• 364.Education is a Human Right |Equal Money

Day 193: Giving up on Myself - The Quick Fix Cycle

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 190: Giving up on Myself - The Spoiled Brat Syndrome 
Day 191: Giving up on Myself - My Life is so Rough (Part 2) 
Day 192: Giving up on Myself - Happiness Drone (Part 3)

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not care about other people and other life forms and thus I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I am better/ more important than other people/life form

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see the hypocrisy/evilness of not caring about others who are not as well off as me while knowing that I would want to be cared for if I was them with all my heart

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to care for and respect others as me

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I have no right to live the life of comfort I have if I am not willing to live the life of others that make possible the life I live

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not want to give up my life of comfort which takes place primarily in my mind as a drug induce happiness experience for the sake of making other people's lives actually physically more comfortable

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that what has become of me/humanity is a ruthless, principle-less monster that stands against anything of value within life

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to just 'want to do nothing' after going through a regular day from the perspective that the life we live and how do things in the world is not cool / enjoyable but a drag and where within that point of 'just let me be' and 'I don't want to do anything/contribute' I am actually only further perpetuating the problem and creating / maintaining what I don't like within this world/reality where I only care to balance out the negative with some positive so that I can 'recharge' myself for another day without in any way whatsoever changing what is actually causing me to not like my life so much and keeping the cycle going for myself and everyone else -- where if I only looked at the problem and that which is not cool from a starting point of 'Prevention is the best cure' -- I wouldn't need to constantly shift myself from the negative to the positive to 'be okay' but could simply be here, stable

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not care but actual solution but to only care about my personal/happiness experience - where I did not care about how the world is set up and functions as long as I can get some reward/positivity to compensate for the bad stuff -- not seeing and realising that this may have been manageable for myself and my life but not on a grand scale where many have to live in constant negativity to uphold/maintain and substantiate a life of 'positivity' for others

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I wouldn't need 'a break' and to 'zone out' if the problems that are existent within the world today weren't in place -- and so it is not acceptable/enough to just 'zone out' and 'take a break' once in a while as this never changes anything but to look at why i need a break/escape from reality in the first place and deal with it hands on

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to rather go for a ‘quick fix’ in quite a literal way, where I rather go for a quick ‘feel good experience’ rather than moving myself to bring about an actual change in my world which would eliminate the need for a quick fix in the first place

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to complain about reality but not willing to take the necessary steps to change it and thus I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I had no right to complain

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that it was my ‘quick fix feel good’ experience/desire that is in fact creating the problems/shit in the world that I then go and compensate for within my quick fix – where the positive perpetuates the bad and the bad perpetuates the good – keeping the cycle in place and growing

Related articles

• Day 192: Giving up on Myself - Happiness Drone (Part 3)
• Day 191: Giving up on Myself - My Life is so Rough (Part 2)
• Day 206: The Suffering of Others

Day 184: When Food is no longer just Food

This blog is a continuation to Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thought - Part 1

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deliberately generate and participate within thoughts which are non-supportive to my physical well-being

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have forced myself through my mind to turn on myself within composing, generating and participating in thoughts which I knew did not match reality – but did it anyway because I wanted to deliberately make myself disordered

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have practiced having non-supportive thoughts to my physical well-being in relation to food and my body, where I would deliberately over analyse foods from a knowledge perspective and create a relationship with everything single piece of food in my environment as to ‘twist’ its nature – where for instance a banana was no longer a banana but had x amount of calories and was not good for this and that and has so much sugar and it’s a BAD FOOD

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have deliberately manipulated and twisted my relationship with food by labelling foods from a starting point of ‘what will make me fat’ – without actually understanding how fat is produced in the body and how my human physical body really works in anyway whatsoever – but just go on ‘hearsay’ information about ‘bad’ and ‘good’ foods and create a whole food religion

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself have deliberately manipulated and sabotaged my relationship with my human physical body – where I was previously quite fine with my body as it’s just kind of here and does what it does – to deliberately meticulously starting to observe, analyse and investigate my body and start labelling and marking all the things that are ‘wrong’ with my body – again based only on ‘hearsay’ information while having no clue what and how the body works and why particular points are manifested within a particular way within only caring about how my body ‘looks like’ and being completely oblivious/ignorant as to the actual workings and process of the body

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have deliberately repeated the same thoughts and thought patterns over and over again until I actually believe them and automatically just ‘pop up’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have ignored knowing that what I was doing was fucked up as it was clear that I was sabotaging my well being both mentally and physically for the sake of looking a particular way

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to within moments where I could see what I was doing have gone and delved deeper into thought manipulation as to ‘cover up’ what I saw and throw a bunch of garbage on top of it – where I threw so many thoughts of judgment and manipulation at myself so that I would “calm down” and continue with depriving myself

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deliberately re-shape my perception of myself as to make it easier to abuse myself – to justify it and ‘make sense’ out of it so that I would not have to stop for a moment and question my behaviour

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have brainwashed myself into an Eating Disorder