Why Am I Doing Things I Don't Want To Do?
Learning to make the choice that’s right for me. | REWIND📼Day 3
June 5, 2011:
“I’m never sure if I’m doing the right thing. I feel like I always have to say or do the right, perfect, timely, thing. I’m scared of making the wrong decisions. I always say that I’m someone who does what I have to do, not what I want to do. Now I don’t know what to do.”
I now understand why grownups laugh at little children, even when they’re being so sincere. Because adults are so far removed from what it’s like to be a child and see the world with young, naive eyes. And hindsight can be truly hilarious.
I definitely chuckled at little Jolie reading this entry from 13 years ago, when I was 19 years old! (God, I can almost smell my life back then, I wore so much lavender shea butter!) At the time I wrote the entry above, I’d just had an interview for a job I didn’t really want. It seemed sketchy and I didn’t really like the people there and it wasn’t in a field I had any particular interest in. But they seemed to really like me and want me to work for them and I was stressing about what I was going to do.
I was beating myself up in my own journal for feeling like I was “too good” for the gig. It wasn’t that I was too good for it, it just wasn’t right for me. Yet I was struggling with turning it down, it didn’t feel like the “right” thing to do.
I don’t know if there ever is a right or wrong way. There’s just the way we choose.
Reading back, I can see how frustrated I was and how much mental turmoil I was going through, trying to make the right choices for my future. I laugh because I didn’t understand then what I know now as my addiction to people pleasing. I thought something was wrong with me and my inability to make decisions. I thought something was wrong with me for wanting to make the choice I wanted to make! My journal entry goes on and I wrote about how I was self-centered for putting my needs first and I need to “humble myself” (shaking my damn head at past Jolie).
My idea of what was right was based on what others expected of me. Choosing myself was, in my eyes, selfish. And that was always the wrong choice.
How many times between then and now have I made choices not based on what I actually wanted, but based on trying not to hurt someone’s feelings or trying to meet someone’s expectations?
I also laugh because I still deal with this today. I still have times when I end up doing things that I know I do not want to do. I still struggle with seeing myself as selfish, even overly confident, just because I say “no” to something or someone. I still have moments of panic and distress over whether I’m doing the right thing.
I don’t know if there ever is a right or wrong way. There’s just the way we choose. And life keeps happening after the choice is made. I’ve definitely made choices I regret. Have some of my choices panned out in ways I didn’t expect? Yup. But regardless of what I do or don’t do, life keeps going, life moves on. There are new choices to make.
FYI, I didn’t end up taking that job (that job and that company don’t even exist anymore). And guess what? Life turned out to be okay.
I’m still overthinking and trying too hard to “do the right thing” almost 15 years later. But if I’ve learned anything from my past self, it’s that even when you don’t do the thing that’s expected of you, everything turns out to be okay.
This entry was written for DAY 3 of the Finding the Right Words August Challenge under the theme “REWIND 📼.” Use the graphics above and write your own story. Follow Finding The Right Words on Instagram and share with me using the tag #FTRW.
There’s no wrong way to journal. You just gotta find the right words. Happy Writing!
I swear "humble yourself" is instilled in us from birth to the point that people-pleasing is born. I'm a lifelong people-pleaser, who often does things I don't want to do begrudgingly. I hate that. I've been working on saying, "No" but the guilt that follows that no? I wasn't ready for that!