One question to discover your values quicker
My crises are not midlife, yet. Most of the times they are full moon crises, I am on my period crises, I just talked to my dad crises or I just remembered an old mistake crises.
You can imagine that with this great number of crises there must also be an equal number of opportunities and ways to discover me. Every time I feel I am going down I get back to myself, my safe place and most of the times revisit either old blog posts or pictures. But my favorite way of spending my time — badly — is by taking dozens and dozens of tests regarding values, personality and everything linked to them.
When procrastination and lack of motivation make a connection and… okay, I’ll finish now with the rimes. The idea is that in those times my mood fluctuates in inexplicable manners. Maybe that’s why in a Myers Briggs test I went from introvert to extrovert personality type in a week. Add another one and I was in a whole new paragraph of personality types.
Over the years I was put in front of many moments to help me discover my values. Some of them were great and some were purely therapeutic. One of my most beloved exercises goes something like this. Take 10 minutes and go outside with this question in mind:”What is happiness for me?”. Take those 10 minutes and let your mind wander. When you come back you need to come with an object of your choice. I can not say what kind, shape or anything. It will awake something in you and you will know. But I will stop now with this and maybe talk another time about its magic.
Like any well-put-together adult that pretends to know what she’s doing, I have a good wine-friend for all the moments I am sick of pretending I know how to treat life and live. This wonderful friend made at one point a critical mistake. Something that did not exist in my vocabulary of reactions, something that I could not forgive and certainly not from her, the person I was so often looking up to.
What was that mistake? She dared to tell me that she’s staying in a relationship even though there is no love left. God. All the mythical creatures that existed before and after Zeus. Everything from thunders to storms to rains was in my mind and for a moment I started trembling and my eyes were fixed on her. Another sip to prepare my mouth for what was going to be a few days of shouting at her.
Now, watch closely for my reactions, both physically and mentally and before you realize you’ll know the question you need to ask yourself.
Started slowly, of course, but after that, I began shouting. It’s not hard for me to remember those words since I still believe in them. I was asking her how was she able to fuck the only beautiful part of our lives, the one we were able to dream in the one that should be the sweetest and full of beauty for both partners? — of course, I did not include in my speech all my beliefs about how much work is needed for a relationship to work. I was too… caught up.
There is no point to mention the speed at which my heart was pumping blood in my veins and getting my hands all warmed up to choke this irrational and ungrateful human being in front of me. I was feeling betrayed, hurt, like something that was of greater importance than any human was laughed at and walked over on. Like… my values were not respected?
Evrika! So this was the magic question!
I was telling myself after two days or arguing with the poor girl, some bottles of wine and not enough sleep.
What is something you can’t watch people destroy?
For me it was love. Love all the way, from the beginning. I just needed a good fight with an even better friend to find out both the question and the answer. Not in this order.
** Art yourself, The Lady