Day 202: Personalizing Bad Grades

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 199: Exam Nightmares
Day 200: I Don't Do Bad Grades 
Day 201: Classmates or Competitors?

 I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to access fear of failure whenever I am studying within accessing the 'race'/'competition'-point, where I fear for myself and my future just thinking of the possibility of bad grades

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have connected 'the end of my future' / 'the end of the world' to 'bad grades' within an emotional attachment of fear

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created and attached an emotional attachment/layer to 'bad grades' as in 'grades just above passing' or 'failing grades' -- wherein I react to it in fear and despair instead of practically analyzing what feedback these grades give me and how I can change/adapt things to 'improve' them

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have connected 'failure' to 'bad grades' where I believe that only 'failures' do 'bad grades' and that 'bad grades' is a bad omen for 'future failures' / ensures 'future failure'

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take bad grades personal, where instead of practically looking at how I got to have bad grades, I am worried about my image and reputation, whereby now I don't only fear 'the end of the world' as my 'future being in jeopardy' but also the 'end of my image' and 'end of my reputation' -- where I believe I have to keep my bad grades hidden/ a secret so that no-one can find out that I don't match the image/reputation I try to uphold

I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that this has got nothing to do about 'others' but only myself -- where I am the one investing energy and placing value in the idea of 'not having bad grades' -- where I may just as well not invest energy and value into the idea resulting in me not having issues with bad grades, and simply working through the necessary steps/procedures to correct this point -- within this I forgive myself that I haven't accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that it is my emotional attachment / view of grades that is keeping me /hindering me from practically working through the correction of improving myself, as I am being blindsided by emotional outbursts, preventing me from seeing to the point

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be so invested in a miniscule point like grades, where my whole being will shake if I see the sight of bad grades -- but where if I later that day see the news with people being bombed I will feel nothing in comparison -- indicating to me how our value systems have become completely warped and have lost all perspective about what really matters

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• Day 200: I Don't Do Bad Grades
• Day 344 - Kids at work.
• Day 321 - Falling behind on daily Blogging, getting up, moving forward
• Day 338 Self Interest is Ignorant to consideration. Part 3
• Father to be - Day 332 Part 6
• Facing The Sins of the Father to Be - Define Father Part 3 Day 328
• Father to be - Preparing the way Day 330 Part 4
• Day 345 - Prioritizing my Time.
• Father to be - a new way Day 331 Part 5

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
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• 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 199: Exam Nightmares

The beginning of this week as I started studying ‘for real’ for my exams, I had two exam nightmares in a row. In the first one I had started doing the exam and was pretty much writing down and selecting whatever as I hadn’t really studied to have a ‘good grade’ but just to pass. After a while of doing the exam I got distracted and started doing other stuff (for some reason I was doing the exam in Belgium in my parents’ house where I used to live, so I could leave the room and do other things). Then I suddenly realise that my two-hour time limit is about to run out and I run back to the exam papers to finish them, and then I realise that I wasn’t supposed to write the answers on the exam papers themselves, but on separate sheets. So I’m going ‘Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Shit, Shit, Shit’ and I quickly start copying over what I wrote. Because time is running out like really fast, I am writing at superspeed and notice that my handwriting is barely illegible. More ‘Shit, Fuck, Shit, Fuck’. As I am copying and thus re-reading my answers, I suddenly realise how many of my answers aren’t straight but just ‘circling around the question’ where I say things without really saying anything. So now I’m really freaking out because I am both running out of time and it’s becoming evident that even if I had time to write everything down – I’d probably still fail.

Then I see that there are old notebooks lying around from my brother on the same subject ( a subject I haven’t even heard about in my ‘wake life’ and so don’t even have this subject this semester), and I peak at what is in the notes and see that he has given completely different answers to some of the questions and I go ‘Oh oh’ because it’s clear that I won’t be able to pull off ‘pretending I know the material’ because I can see the answers are quite specific and its obvious looking at what I wrote that I don’t have a clue what I am talking about.

At some point time runs out and I wake up. I’m covered in sweat and freaked out.

The second dream/nightmare was very vague and wasn’t me doing an actual exam but was only about the exam schedule and preparing for the exam and gathering notes – but the main stressor was the schedule, just looking at the days and the times made me nervous. This one also played out in Belgium.

So what I found quite interesting in both these dreams is that the play-out takes place in Belgium – and not in South Africa where I am currently having exams. This reminded me that most of my exam stress and worries took place where I grew up. I can see there is a difference studying for exams, here, now, compared to how I used to study exams in Belgium. But even though there’s a difference in situation, simply because there are some symbols and variables the same –all those memories from the past get reloaded right back and come interfere with what I am doing now. It’s like the mind is going “oh oh, ‘exams’ and ‘schedule’ --- I know this one!!!” and then proudly goes and digs into the archives of the past and digs up old records containing thoughts, feelings and emotions and starts playing the record to make everything feel like ‘the good old times’.

So within the next couple of posts I want to investigate my relationship towards studying, exams and grades to remove the garbage from the past so I can study in peace lol.

Related articles

• Does the Education system Prepare the Children to Face the World - Day 337
• Day 338: Later, Later
• How Fear Controls an Overachiever - Day 373
• Day 318 - Reactive Character, Road to success Part 4
• How To Stop Feeling Like Crap - Day 375
• Why Do We Fear Giving Up The Fear? - Day 370

Day 198: What is going on Inside me? - Part 2

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 196: Irresistible Urge to Resist and Rebel
Day 197: What is going on Inside me?

When and as I see myself react in response to someone saying / asking me something and where I do not immediately understand/know what to do with the experience and react to it within interpreting what I *think* is going on – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I am reacting and rushing instead of breathing and investigating and so I commit myself to stop, let go of the reaction and have a look at what happened / zoom in into the chain of events to identify what happened so I can give myself and the situation direction

When and as I see myself react within fear and confusion to my experience when sensing something is ‘off’ when someone says something – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I am faced with a point that I have not yet investigated for myself and so I commit myself to slow down and investigate the point for myself

When and as I see myself going into backchat after having had a particular experience that I did not entirely understood – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that back chat is the result of thought accumulation and so I commit myself to trace my steps back and see where I missed a point that required direction/correction that was left untouched and give it direction

When and as I see myself wanting to immediately distance myself and object/protest/rebel against someone after they say / ask something without really knowing why – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that there is a point for me here to look at and that its never advisable to just ‘follow an inclination’ simply because it is ‘strong’ and so I commit myself to stop myself as I feel the urge, breathe, let go and investigate the chain of events

When and as I see myself ignore/brush away an experience within the assumption that ‘I’m probably just projection’ from the starting point of wanting to get this experience ‘over with’ – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I am merely trying to give myself an answer for the sake of ‘moving on’ without actually, effectively moving/working with the point and so I commit myself to stop, breathe and investigate instead of assume

When and as I see that an experience keeps re-occurring no matter how many times I try to stop it – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that my approach is not working and thus commit myself to find a different way / alternative as to how to approach the point

When and as I see myself starting to take out my frustration and irritation internally unto another – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that this indicate that the point has already gone to far and way off track and so I commit myself to stop, breathe and trace back the steps to identify the point of origin and correct myself within Self Forgiveness and Self Corrective Statements

When and as I see myself invert an experience in relation to another where I overanalyse and interpret the experience instead of talking/speaking as the experience emerge – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I have left experiences to ‘wander around’ in the past where they were left to grow and compound with no direction and so I commit myself to speak as it emerge and open up the point unconditionally

Day 197: What is going on Inside me?

This blog is a continuation to:
Day 196: Irresistible Urge to Resist and Rebel
 

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react to my experience when hearing another person speak where I did not know what to do with the experience and instead of looking directly at what is gone, went into fear and from there interpreted what ‘must be going on’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to react within fear and confusion to my experience when sensing something was ‘off’ when someone sad something instead of seeing and realising that whatever goes on inside me IS me and thus I should be able to see, assess and direct what is going on

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to breathe effectively when noticing the experience coming up inside me, where instead of being here, seeing and acknowledging I reacted and went into fear and confusion and interpreted what was going on which from there merely accumulated into further interpretation and back chat

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself within not understanding what is going on, to immediately want to distance myself from the person and object/protest/rebel against what it is they said without even really knowing why

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to immediately want to object/protest/rebel/do the opposite of what the person is saying or asking without understanding why and without looking at whether it makes any sense at all to act this way

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not take a moment/breather to investigate my experience but instead in wanting to ‘get over with it’, brushed it off as ‘oh it’s probably just me / I must be projecting’ without actually investigating it, just so as to be able to give myself an answer to my confusion so that I can ‘get on’ with my day

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not investigate the experience and within this passiveness, allowed this experience and my reaction to it to just keep ‘swimming around’ within me without any form of direction where it accumulates and kind of goes ‘hello, heeeelllooo, HEEELLOOOOOO’ desperately wanting my attention to acknowledge its existence and give it direction where each time the experience would come up I would just kind of ‘No, go away – what are you doing here’

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that if my method of dealing with an experience is not working as in stopping it and ‘brushing it off’, where it keeps on coming back that obviously I need to change my method/approach and try something else

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to let my experience of frustration accumulate within not knowing how to deal with this experience wherein I started to misdirect/misguide this frustration/annoyance/irritation with myself and my inability to deal unto the other person where I started creating new layers/dimensions to the point and making things more complicated instead of stopping, and tracing back all the steps aaaall the way to the beginning and really see what is going on

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have created the tendency to invert all my experiences in relation to other people where I overanalyse and interpret them instead of talking/speaking/expressing as it comes up – where I leave the experience to wander and grow instead of opening it open and directing it

Day 196: Irresistible Urge to Resist and Rebel

I’ve been looking at a point where someone will say or ask me something – and where the words they speak ‘make sense’, but it just feels like something’s ‘off’ about it – and I immediately want to protest/rebel against what it is they are saying or asking – not because of the words spoken but simply because of the ‘vibe’ or ‘energy’ it carries. And the reaction is like immediate, like NO, I do NOT agree/ I DO NOT want to do that – as a reaction to kind of “shake” the energy off of me, like it’s disgusting lol.

It reminds me of when my mom would ask me to clean my room. It didn’t bother me that she asked me to clean my room – that made sense, but it would be the way she asked, like you can sense there’s something hidden behind it which was just all off and it didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Back then I thought I was merely ‘rebelling’ towards my parents as ‘authority’ but I actually didn’t have a clue why I experienced myself that way and why I was reacting and just DID NOT want to do what she asked me to do lol.

So I got now that when people talk, there’s a lot more information crossing the room besides just the words spoken – there’s a whole resonance/energy component that I had previously never look at or considered – which was what I was picking up on whenever I would react to my parents demands. It was not because they were not being rational that I would not want to do what they asked, but because I could sense that their starting point was not cool. And this can be pretty confusing because all you know is that there’s something ‘off’ about what someone is saying to you but when you try to pinpoint what it is that’s exactly off about it, you’re kind of grasping at air and that would leave me wiggly/unstable – because I have this experience inside me but I can’t explain it and I have no ‘proof’ so to speak that I can put forward to explain why I do not want to comply to the request.

So this started happening recently, where someone would ask me something simple to do and I would get like a buzzing feeling where for some reason I don’t want to do it. I got confused because I looked at the words and the words made sense – so why was I experiencing myself this way? I brushed it off, thinking that I must be projecting something unto the other person and should just disregard the experience and work on ‘not wanting to do things’ or something like that. But it didn’t stop, each time the same person would ask me something and it would have that ‘vibe’ to it, I’d buzz – and I’m like what the fuck??!!! What is going on??

This would happen over and over again, buzz by buzz and in the end I would actually end up getting seriously annoyed with the other whenever this happened.

So then I looked at how the person spoke the words, the energy it had to it and put myself in the other person’s shoes. If I’d speak/ask something that way with that ‘vibe’ with it – what is creating that vibe? So then I got that if I would be speaking/asking things this way, that there was a point of morality/fairness involved – where I would ask someone to do something not because it makes sense, but cause of some idea of fairness/morality and where I do not even know that I am participating within fairness/morality because in my mind it ‘makes sense’. So even though the message makes sense, the starting point is off – and because it’s coming from an idea of fairness/morality which has been justified through “reasoning” – it’s hard to catch that there’s something off about it, because from the outside looking at it, it makes sense .This was then later also confirmed where this point opened up in a conversation where the person could see they where coming from a fairness point in how they would do certain things and I was glad to know I wasn’t going crazy lol.

So what was interesting with this whole experience is how little we know about ourselves, communication and how to deal with particular experiences. I mean, as a kid I had the exact same experience, and the only thing I could do that somehow made sense was to resist, protest and rebel without really even knowing why – it just ‘felt like the right thing to do’. But what happens then is that you’re just playing a reactive game where say my mom is being reactive within how she asks me to clean my room and then I react in protest and rebellion which in turn she can use to justify why she is reacting the way she is and strengthen her belief point to which I will then react even more and before you know it you’ve got a little snowball turned into a massive ball of snow causing an avalanche of reactions – because both sides just feed it and feed it and feed it to no resolve.

So this was now also kind of happening where because initially I did not know how to deal with my experience, I would internalize it and basically make a mind point out of it as I didn’t know how to direct it so it was just kind of stuck inside of me and then I would start back chatting about it and then that’s how the annoyance would grow. Where in the beginning I would brush it away but the experience kept re-occurring and the irresistible urge to just not comply/rebel was getting seriously huge. So now I know that if I experience myself this way to simply ask like ‘Hey, why are you asking me this way’ and to open up the point and if I am just projecting cool, then I know and sort myself out and if not then cool, it’s out in the open and I don’t have to sit with this experience that has got no-where to go and who knows the person might find some assistance in it.

Because I was more and more leaning into the not complying/rebelling point but I saw this also did not make sense because this will also just strengthen any already existent reaction within another / give them more reason to do what they are doing -- but I also saw that I could not just ‘do nothing’’ -- which is why I decided to write this blog to get some clarity and it did lol.

Self Forgiveness and Self Corrective Statements to follow…

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