Where I Am, How I Feel
I have been reflecting a bit about where I am in life and if I should assess myself using models or not. I noticed some residues from the past that are corrupting my view but also some trues that I have been experiencing:
I have much more difficulty assessing myself using models compared to before. This is a feeling that has been increasing since a few months now.
I found myself living more between the paradox of knowing and not knowing.
In recent days, I have been experiencing a bit more states of being a complete observer. I have been much more aware of my actions, thoughts, and emotions.
I have been experiencing more clarity of mind.
I had a sleepless night recently where I experienced what I think we can call an ego-death experience. It wasn't the first time that I experienced that, but it's always the same thing when it happens. What happens is that I feel that I'm losing my ego but it feels extremely scary and when it happen I reassure myself by repeating my identity like this: "Ok. It's Ok. I'm Raphael, I was born on March 27, 1997. I exist, I exist.". When these moments happen, Raphael feels more and more illusory and it's very frightening to experience. I choose to let go only one time in the past and I experienced no-mind for a few minutes and felt very light.
I have some stage Blue shadows related to organization and discipline.
I feel some stage Orange shadows within me that originates from a toxic phase that I had when I was 20 - mid 21. I have some unresolved traumas here.
Some parts of me feel very developed, some essential parts feel under-developed.
There's a part of me that feels retarded.
About Assessing Myself and Being at a Level of Personal Development
I noticed a pattern within me: when I have an insecurity about something I always have a denial and projection phase followed by a phase where I put myself as being above others which end up by admitting to myself that I'm actually below.
This pattern appeared recently when I was reading posts about psychological models on this forum. These three phases happened:
I denied myself.
I made some posts where I claimed that I was transcending models and knowledge. A tiny side of me does feel that way, but most of my psyche is far away from being there.
I'm currently admitting that I'm not as advanced as I portrait myself and that I have issues.
If I'm honest with myself, I felt a pretty huge insecurity when reading these posts where people were assessing themselves. It's pretty ironic that after people use these models to assets themselves I make a post to explain that I'm having more and more difficulties using models and that a part of me is transcending knowledge.
Anyone with a minimum of intelligence is conscious of that and they are many intelligent people on this forum. I perfectly knew that but regurgitated obvious truths that Leo already mentioned in his videos. My ego felt insecure.
This is coming from below because I felt it. I felt some fear while reading these threads, I felt a sense of competition within me. I wanted to put myself as above because these posts triggered my insecurities.
I am not transcending models and knowledge, it's quite the opposite actually: I am not using models properly and I am not consuming and applying knowledge properly. I consumed a lot of knowledge since the last 6 years mostly from Leo, but haven't enough walk the talk. I haven't been taking properly calibrated actions. I tried to show myself as being better than others on this forum by mostly staying in the journal section and creating "practical" journals. Now... things aren't black and white here because I did take actions and grew and these journals reveal that... but I'm ashamed of one particular journal: Let's get practical #2: Deep Work & Organization . I created this journal for two reasons: 1) I was mentally unstable and had to track myself to not spiral down in despair. 2) An ego in expiration, more precisely a stage Orange neurotic ego who wanted to brag as he was exhausting himself. I didn't work properly on improving my organization and discipline, I just pushed through things like a mule without a proper organization system.
Here's the main distasteful truth that I am admitting to myself: my approach to personal development lack structure, organization, planning, and seriousness which is why I'm currently taking some coaching to improve all that. I haven't planned and prioritized properly my personal growth and I feel some deep shame because of that. I could have grown much faster if I had a proper structure and was more conscientious. Some people have told me in the past that I was a very organized, conscientious, and disciplined person, and yes I had some periods like that, however, this is far away from how I have been most of my life where I had to be serious. Most of this is just an image. I'm alone most of the time, the part of me that people see is a very tiny part of who I am. I'm a very private person and my private life is very chaotic, much more chaotic than I can appear to be.
I did personal development in a neurotic way for years. I had issues in my mind and if I would think about them I would try to fix them, if wouldn't think about them I wouldn't fix them. I lacked a serious organization, I didn't use models and knowledge properly, I have been neurotic. I lacked intention and direction and therefore got much lower results than I would have got if I did that.
The advantage of a chaotic life is that it makes someone very creative, original, and surprising. The disadvantage is that basic practical goals and long-term goals become difficult to attain. I would already have a successful business that would generate more than 10000 $ / month if I was more conscientious. I would have already fixed my issues regarding dating if I was more conscientious. I would have already been much more comfortable with people if I was more conscientious and accepted to follow my intuition. I would also have much better confidence, self-esteem, assertiveness, and boundaries if my approach to personal development was more conscientious.
I'm not as advanced as I thought and it hurts my ego. I might be at Yellow intellectually, but some essential elements at Red, Blue, Orange, and Green have to be worked on. There's a part of me who feels retarded... like... really retarded. This is why I feel dumb and smart at the same time. I feel smart because I know that I have all the capacities inside me and because when I start to do things everything gets fixed very quickly. I feel dumb because I lacked organization, planning, because I didn't prioritized properly, didn't track myself properly, and didn't do things more seriously.
But it's never too late and I'm currently improving all that.
About My Stage Blue and Stage Orange Shadows
Let's go back years and years ago when I was between 17 - 22.
During these years I taped into multiple ego development stages:
The Achiever: I seriously taped into the Achiever two times in the past. I taped into it when I was 17 - 18 which allowed me to graduate as the top student, then taped into it when I was 20 - 21 where it went toxic and where I almost killed myself.
The Pluralist: I've always been a bit in the pluralist because I was exposed to multiple cultures pretty early but I went deeper into it around mid 18 when I had an existential crisis, started to question everything and entered a nihilist phase.
The Pluralist: I've always been a bit in the pluralist because I was exposed to multiple cultures pretty early but I went deeper into it around mid 18 when I had an existential crisis, started to question everything, and entered a nihilist phase.
After my nihilist phase around mid 18 - mid 19, I wanted to sort my life out and started to work on the base: stage Blue and stage Orange. I started to become much more concerned about organization, discipline, and productivity... and I encountered a lot of resistance from my external environment + I had some traumas related to work because of my dad.
When I was 20, I had an internship in the UK for a few months so I was living there and... shared the same house with 7 other guys. We were all living together because of a lack of resources. I remember that I was the only guy who was trying to sort his life... but got shamed for it. I was shamed for being organized, disciplined, for taking care of my health, for not letting myself "live life". It was a bit painful to deal with but at the same time, I refused to listen to the other guys because these guys were disasters: they weren't taking their internship seriously, they had completely irregular schedules, they weren't taking care of their health and were eating garbage food, and they were spending a lot of their free time playing video games (I'm not saying that's wrong but if someone spends most of his/her free time like this, this is an issue). I grew a lot from this experience but I had a bitter taste in my mouth.
After that, I entered the job market and encountered resistance again. I got made fun of for being disciplined and for being organized especially because the culture around me isn't that much organized compared to the culture in Europe or North America or some Asian countries (China, Japan, etc.). People criticized me for being on time, for being too much work-oriented, some people told me things like: "Why do things have to be so much clean, so much organized?". They were a bit of truth in these criticisms to be honest because I was a bit too much in the extreme. I became very perfectionistic around 20 - 21 and picked on small insignificant details and was critical of others. I had a pretty low self-esteem, these criticisms hurt me and I reacted against them by being even more perfectionistic. I got very strong reactions from one particular manager where this manager was himself one of the most disciplined, organized, perfectionist, and stubborn person that I met. I hated this guy because of how close-minded he was and I hated him as I hated myself and because of that developed some shadows related to organization and discipline. During this period I was also dealing with traumas related to my dad. My dad was always obsessed with work but in a neurotic disorganized way, he criticized me enormously for not working as hard as him. I knew that he was working dumb, but even if I knew that I absorbed a bit of his neuroticism and become obsessed with work to a point where the trauma exploded as panic attacks. A lot of this work trauma got released during this period, but I still have some of it into me. After this phase, I basically become disgusted by notions such as discipline and organization and became a complete disorganized mess, but then started to switch to a healthier place.
I often time asked myself in the past if something was wrong with me for doing what I was doing, if something was wrong for being organized, disciplined, for taking care of my health, for not drinking alcohol nor smoking, for meditating, for trying to sort out my life, for trying to find my purpose. I felt that way because nobody of my age was doing this around me (and it's still the same thing now), I felt like an alien. After a point where I hesitated a lot, I wanted to experience what it was like to be like other guys: I became a light asshole and started to not care about anybody and throw out anger and bitterness and was disrespectful of authority especially when an authority wouldn't agree with me... and it didn't go well because nobody likes assholes. Being an asshole is useful in some situations, but living life entirely like this doesn't work.
So was I wrong for doing what I was doing and trying to sort out the basics of life? No. No, I wasn't wrong for being organized. No, I wasn't wrong for being disciplined. No, I wasn't wrong for taking my health seriously. However, I did take things too much to the extreme and did judge people who weren't like me and I think that it explained why I experienced so much resistance. This is also why I exploded when I was 21 and got traumatized by aspects of stage Blue and Orange: organization, discipline, work, productivity, etc. Because of that my integration of these lower stages isn't complete and I have to go back to them.
This is what I'm doing now. I recently started to build an organization system using Notion and honestly, it was pretty easy, I just procrastinated my entire life before doing it. In just a few hours I created a healthily organization system that works for me. Same thing for my work ethic, I'm currently developing a much better work ethic and starting to work in a much more conscientious way, in a way that is much more balanced and much smarter.
To help my recovery from work traumas, I recently choose to change my priorities regarding healing: I was working on body-image issues, but I'm going to prioritize work-related traumas now. This is the basic, by sorting out my work-related traumas I will be able to have a much healthier relationship with work and it will be easier for me to fix my issues.
Things take time for me, things take time, but I'm getting there. I'm doing the best that I can.
So Where Am I ?
From the Spiral Dynamics lens my higher self is at Yellow with even some very tiny elements of Turquoise and from the 9 Stages of Ego Development lens my higher self is at The Strategist with a few tiny elements of The Construct Aware.
What to improve from a Spiral Dynamics perspective:
Red: I have work to do on assertiveness and taking faster actions.
Blue & Orange: I'm currently improving my organization and this is already working much better for me, I will continue doing tweaks here and there in the future. I'm getting to a healthier place regarding my relationship with work. I still have to work on my discipline. I'm currently doing some research on how to plan better, strategize and make action plans. I think I will be able to get to a healthy place here before the end of this year because I already have been very productive and organized at some periods of my life. I just have to clear my work-related traumas, tap back into it and refine it so that it is healthy. I also have to let go of the part of me who wants to compete with others.
Green: I have to work on being more open and vulnerable, take time to listen more to people, emphasize more with them, give support. I have to work on my relationships and being a bit more people-oriented. I also have work to do when it comes to dating, attracting women, and creating an intimate relationship.
Yellow: My intellect is there but when I'll integrate much better the previous stages, I'll get deeper and deeper into it.
I have a lot of hesitation to put myself at a center of gravity. In a sense I can say that I'm Yellow because I have a long-term vision, see things from different perspectives, try to be as objective as possible (even though my biases may take over) but at the same time I have things to solidify at previous stages. In another sense I can say that I'm Green because I do some meditation, breathwork, and healing work (even though I'm still a newbie when it comes to healing) but at the same time I didn't think that much about climate change in recent years because of life circumstances. In business, I can put myself at Orange/Green, but I still have difficulties putting myself at a center of gravity and I think the reason behind that is because I have things to solidify at Red/Blue/Orange/Green. When everything will be solidified, I'll put myself at mostly Yellow because this is what Yellow is. Solid Yellow is the integration of all previous stages so that at any time an individual can activate a "mode" and adapt depending on the situation + it's about have complex non-biased thinking, knowing how to create meaning, and much more.
What to improve from a 9 Stages of Ego Development perspective:
Conformist: I have some progress to care less about what people think of me.
Expert: I have a bit of progress to do on doing the right thing. I may have some tiny shadows here when it comes to accepting other people's ways of doing things. I have some feeling of competitiveness to let go here.
Achiever: I currently have to tap again into it because of business necessities. I have to learn to trust people better when it comes to getting things done. I have to learn to let go of this small feeling of wanting to do things fast and achieving enough.
Pluralist: I'm a bit of a dreamer many times, so it needs to be improved. I currently have to self-analyze myself more to heal my traumas. I also have some inner conflicts many times.
Strategist: I have progress to do when it comes to emphasizing with others, tolerating their difficulties, and helping others grow. I have to "walk to talk" more.
Again, I also have difficulties putting myself at a center of gravity for the same reasons that I expressed with Spiral Dynamics. In a sense I can say that I am at the Strategist because I'm making a lot of changes and strategizing for a long-term vision. I have an overall view of the things that I need to work on at lower stages and I know some steps that I will have to take in the future. I'm conscious of the complexity that it entails and for that I'm currently changing my life system. I can see through the layers of thoughts and emotions, and I'm developing better and better emotional mastery. However, I have things to solidify from other stages so things aren't that easy.
I think that I experienced some shame when I saw people assessing themselves because I still haven't fully integrated lower SD stages or lower Ego Development Stages, but this is normal actually. It's very rare to be solid Yellow or to be a solid Strategist, most of the time even if someone is at Yellow or at The Strategist he/she will still not be perfect and have things that can be improved by taping into lower stages.
