Burn the Boats... or up shits creek without a paddle!
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” C. G. Jung.
One of the best things I feel about having a platform is that it gives me a space to explore the challenges life presents – in real time. Yes, I admit that this offers an avenue for exposure, a sense of vulnerability that would make a lot of people uncomfortable. But, for myself as I have referenced to in earlier posts that experience in itself is one that I personally find to be extremely powerful.
Although thrashing out your inner most conflicts in a public forum offers various experiences within itself for me the Publish button adds a level accountability that could only be matched by a scouse matriarch – a close second to an Irish grandmother.
Last night I embarked on a task that I often use to justify my means for not tackling something with a little more importance – or procrastinating in short. Now this normally is a behaviour I deploy when I have reached some form of a psychological barrier, or block to something that I have been working on. I call it decluttering, as all my systems are linked – a magic I simply will never fathom.
I will, every now and then, unplug and take the laptop to bed. Then guilt free I will gorge a full pack of chocolate digestives (other brands are available) and ruthlessly delete, or in fact hide in an obscure file location, anything I deemed to have sat on my screens for far too long.
However, amidst this episode of frantically reviewing the 45+ untitled word documents that litter the desktop and dragging a plethora of mammoth teamed pictures to the desired location, I came to realise that this level of rumination, although on the surface is aiding in bringing clarity to this angle of my life – it is most definitely distracting me from addressing something considerably more important.
Life is multi-faceted, and often you will hear various narratives that aim to discus the idea of identity, it’s something that you will hear a lot of when walking the halls of any institutional setting – especially within the educational environment. Now for a lot this may be where you would switch off but please bare with me on this one as I promise you, I am not about to approach that discussion within this article. I play reference to it simply as it opens that directional sense of contemplation for what I hoping to affirm by this piece.
For this I would like to present the fact that in “Identity” I am referring to our individual perception of identity, although I do not deny the importance of all the complex social and cultural components that play a significant role in the structuring of one’s identity, these simply don’t hold relevance my use to the word at this time.
Don’t panic if you are still looking for the hot cinders, their coming!
My reasons for such a level of procrastination are I feel valid. We often talk about “life altering decisions” when really if we strip it back, it’s a little decision that is clouded by a normative human response in reflection, coupled with an inherent defensiveness – a sense of doubt or fear.
Yesterday I was personally presented with what one could most definitely describe as a “life altering decision”. Now sitting here twelve hours on and having made my choice, I currently feel like I am about to light the match on the last year of my life. A flame that once lit will have a knock-on effect to life as I know it, not only effecting myself, my family, this platform, but all that goes along with it.
Spot the reference? let me elaborate on it somewhat. When I started this platform itself speaking honestly, I didn’t really know what I wanted from it. Actually, the journey into this space itself was a fumbling of ideas which has, in turn led me to be sat here today. I throw my hands up, the ideas of the human condition was not exactly front and centre when I signed on to an online L2 counselling skills all those years ago. My aim was to gain a L3 certificate, something I needed to aid in an application for the police. Yet here I am approaching middle age and embarking on my second year of a psychotherapy degree – adorning “trainee psychotherapist” as part of my identity.
My aim here has never really been one of financial thought, yes, I understand that money plays a vital role in all that we do – and I certainly helps to have it. However, I did not enter this to eventually exit into a role working as a counsellor. I stress that there is an importance for the roll itself, it is just for me this was always more of a personal mission. This said the plan was to carry my studies on along side my little job at the local primary school, an environment that often offers much more case study than the therapy room itself. Although I’m often caught huffing and puffing at the inconvenience of a late-night hover session this current arrangement offers a little security and stability whilst I study and inevitably build this platform.
The combustion — well it comes to my attention, that although the field of psychotherapy for me holds validity, I fear it may also offer limitations!
In making this realisation I reached out to my university (tracked down the psychology leads email) to discuss my concern, an action that has added an awful lot of fire works to the hull of my hypothetical ship.
Well, what I thought would be a gentle back and for the of possible directions following my second year has emulated into an offer of acceptance on to the institutions Psychology program.
Yes, I see it as an achievement, actually I take it as a complement, a recognition to the efforts that I have already inserted into this process as a whole. My whole perception of education has taken a radical shift over the past couple of years – as has my views assigned to my ability to navigate the environment. Ten years ago I would of quaffed at the idea that I would be attending a first year of a foundation degree, 12 months ago I would never of seen that now be sat here putting a match to the last years studies and starting year one all over again.
Not only will I be starting year one again, this time will be different. The obvious being I am a year closer to middle age, and I already have years on half of the lectures walking the halls.
This time things will be really different, you see this is “full time” study. It involves giving up my job and attending university as a full-time mature student – that scares the shit out of me.
Not only for the impact on my usual routine but also for those very real and serious concerns relating to finances, and the obvious pressures this may have on myself and my family. Add to that the years of doubt that I've aloud to accumulate, and although, yes this platform and past year of the foundation has relived this somewhat, its one hell of a decision.
I guess for balance it will be helpful to offload a few positives, I mean its not all pending doom – also this is where it plays into the ideas of identity. You see for a while now I have manged to maintain a little anonymity behind the wonderful concepts of talk-therapy, a practice I fully endorse – and really believe in. Yet this has aloud me to sit dormant on a few concepts of my own, I reference them at times, a little reminder to myself almost that these sit in the back of my mind and I should really set about working on them.
Admittedly, and honestly I would be lying if there wasn’t doubt, fear – a lack of faith almost. But, I do think with a little work I may just have something that would offer benefit, if not to other at least to myself.
You see this pivot will offer me a chance to actually run with these concepts, build on them, and indeed bring a little science to the equation. Something that I hope to bring to the Mammoth Alliance, explore through the platform – hopefully offering a little value for any supporters along the way.
It forces my hand somewhat to throw full conviction behind not only myself, but this platform as a whole. It means swapping my little collage campus for the halls of an inter-city complex, similar to a European province the site itself sits on the outer quarter of the city and offers the full university experience.
I wont lie the idea of throwing away a years studies sits uncomfortably – this obvious in the language that I am using to describe it. Almost feeling like I have wasted some of the little time I have left at this back end of my life.
However, with reflection… lots of reflection, I have come to accept that this is not exactly the case. The past few months have been an investment if nothing else, yes I have committed time, made sacrifices, and for what?. Well for the skills, the relastionships, and most importantly the experiences. The lessions learnt from this will forever present me with value, and although this may be a chalk line on moving further down this exact path, I step of it assured that those skills and relationships will still evolve – possibly even strengthening by the fact my new expreances will offer more value.
Posing these worries to the course lecture he decided to reply via the means of a research paper, aptly titled “Comparisons, mental models, and the action effects in judgements of regret”. Now if you perceive this to be an attempt to persuade me further you were wrong!
In-fact, the data showed me quite the opposite. I wont seek to break the paper down here as I need to investigate it a little further, however the paper offers two slightly different scenarios and explores the ideas of regret from “action” and “inaction”.
This word regret, you see this has featured in almost every conversation, it brings me right back to this burn the boats moment. For those not familiar with the story its often accredited to Hernan Cortes, a Spanish conquistador who spotted a sense of hesitation within his men. Upon landing on the shores of the New World, he ordered his men to burn the ships – this leaving them no option but to push forward.
This feeling, and one little quote “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” (C. G. Jung), has almost sealed the fate of my flotilla.
For me the idea of leaving this down to fate simply is not an option, I have spent far too much of my life leaving things in the unconscious, hoping that it will simply figure itself out.
I can hear my late father in my ear “trust in yourself”, “If your going to do it then commit and put the effort in” and “its not going to sort itself out”. God I wish he was here now, and honestly, I wish he was here to see how far I’ve come with it already. I often look back at the last words he sent on text “proud of you”, not words simply thrown around in our house.
I spent my life telling him I was going to make it through one of my many investments over the years, horse racing, crypto, forex etc… He would normally entertain the conversation somewhat and then tell me to come see him when its in the bank. In his departure he kindly blessed us all, and I have been wondering to what mad scheme I could place it – one with a good return!
Well dad you will be happy to know that I am going to invest it!
Its just
I’m going to invest it in myself… and there it is, I have said it out loud!
I have brought the unconscious in to the conscious, like we can trust in the data, we can look at all possible angles and come to the conclusions. We can ruminate on the regret and spend days stuck in loops of reflection that serve to us no benefit – but how many of us can say we will ever really trust in our ideas… Light that match! Ka-boom!