Your Story?

[Life with joe]

Hello everyone!  

 What's your life's story? The reason I am asking is because I believe looking back on our past once in a while and reflecting on it can make us grow strong if we do it in a positive mindset, what do you guys think?  This is my story.

  When I was 5 I was put into foster care as my dad murdered my mum. That was hard to write..

In care I was beaten and at one point hospitalised with severe laceration to my leg from being strangled and dragged over a barbed wire fence...

I was then adopted were I was continually critised by my arrogant twat of an adoptive father with out going into to much detail I eventually at21 moved out of his house and became dependant on alcohol in my own flat. 

Years down theline, I have 2 beautiful children a wife, ran my own business and now I care for people with severe learning disability and epilepsy. Self  motivation self help and a belief and passion for the paranormal got me were I am today. 

What's your story?  Let's prove to the people in a dark place right now that it can be done and never to give up  

[Davo124]

A human gave birth to a human and named it David

[Christopher Cant]

Wow@Life with joe , you've certainly seen some dark places.  I'm glad you've done well.

My own father commit suicide when I was 21.  This reduced me to a very low point; I felt worthless, and as an example, I didn't have sex or get any employment for the following 5 years.  I hid in solitude.

However, through that I have grown into a very skilled painter, and can create art that I would never have dreamed for myself.  The last couple of years I have been tackling a lot of my neuroses, and growing in many other areas.  My vision has awakened, so to speak.  I am pursuing financial independence, in a way that feeds my vision, and that I believe in.  I'm undoubtedly the happiest I've ever been.

I've begun to see the low points in life as beautiful opportunity, to grow.

Edited February 11, 2016 by Christopher Cant

[Life with joe]

Hello Christopher can't thankyou for replying and reading, my god you've been through a lot mate, it's amazing that you have come through as strong as you have. The more people comment and share there story s ( no matter how hard they are)  the more we can stand together and prove it can be done. Keep well mate   

[Christopher Cant]

@Life with joe thanks for starting the conversation

[Davo124]

Perhaps what I wrote sounded arrogant to whoever disliked my comment, but that is all that happened, the story is just a big lie

[Guest]

@Life with joe I like your story. And now it seems you will be evolving it further.

Joy

 

[Guest]

@Christopher Cant You have learned much.  This is of great value to an artist.

Artists can be the soul of a culture.  Enjoy your journey.

Joy

 

[Matej]

My story isn't as emotionally strong as some of what I read but this is my life.

My parents devorced right before I was supposed to start going to elementary school so it delayed for a year. Several memories that most likely determined my personality. There was no violence as far as I can tell but still at this age it is an impacting experience. After that I stayed with dad, seeing mom every second weekend. She's all into new age spirituality and health, which thought me to open my mind to many things. Everyone percieves the world different. As a kid I was really quiet and I still am. To some degree I have the feeling that nobody really cares about what I was about to say, so I just remain silent. Couple years down the road my uncle gave me an album of Rammstein. That made me infinitely curious about all genres of music. Mostly hard and heavy. Choosing uni was easy because I wasn't very good student, I just followed the easiest paths, so I picked something that I can manage without an effort. Building and constructions. I couldn't care less about that but I finished as one best. During summer hollidays I helped out on my aunt's child camp as a supervisor and later on a squad-leader. After school I failed to find some worth-while job, so I ended up at McDonald's. After about a month or so I said to myself that this is not possible to carry on and I decided to save some money and go to England. So I stayed working there for about half a year, saved almost everything I made and now I'm here. In Manchester. Two years, since I arrived, changed about ten different jobs and now I found out that I'm not happy here. It's impossible for me to stay on a place like this for the rest of my life because it doesn't feel like home. Many foreigners get used to the feeling of alienation and separation, whenether it is language barrier and cultural differences. So I'm comming back after 25 months. Meditating for seven months daily and pondering about life for about a year.

All this lead me to seeing some really important things, that are missing in my life. I don't know who I am. I spent lots of money and time in all sorts of creative hobbies, all without carrying on after learning some skill. Drawing, programming, playing piano, playing guitar, ukulele, harmonica, translating comics to my native language, web-design, storytelling, analogue synths, circuit-bending and many more. At every one of them I felt like that is the right way to express myself. But then I learned the ways and I didn't know what to express. So I stopped. At the end I found satisfaction in learning things. Anything. Psychology, phillosophy, languages, all the stuff mentioned earlier, music and games. I don't play games but I love to learn things about it all.

I don't know who I am and what to do. So I meditate. Because that feels like the right thing. Like I might understand what is going on. I might understand what to do. I'm returning home with many skills and knowledge, personality changed a lot but I'm still lost.

Self-actualization is my attempt to find out.

[Guest]

@Matej You have many talents and abilities.  You don't know who you are.  OK.  Most of the people in the world do not know who they really are.

You have a great advantage to begin with.   The things you have done demonstrate that you can put your attention on a particular thing to accomplish,  and you do it, and you learn something by doing it.   You learn about that particular thing, but also and more important,  you learn something about yourself.  For example: you learn how you are thinking,  you learn how your skill comes from your observation, your attention to details and how you organized your thinking to do these things.  You are always learning about yourself. 

This is good.  This is step number 1.  Learning about yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, what you like and do not like, what you need to learn and what you already know.   You learn these things about yourself.   How you get along with people.  Can you talk pleasantly with them? Do you listen to others?  Are others interested in what you say?   Why?  Why not?  These are all things you learn about yourself.

Now with this learning alone you can begin to develop the self that you think you are, based on all these little things you learn about yourself. You can change how you listen to others, how you express kindness to them, how you do not react when they say something that you do not like to hear, and so on.  There are many little things you can observe about how you behave and start to change them, a little bit every day.   Now you are building or "designing" a self that is starting to feel meaningful to you, and maybe you start to feel better as more and more of your interactions in daily life become more pleasant; you feel good because you are becoming a different character.

Sooner or later you will discover that building or designing this new "you" character was OK, but you still feel there is something more, and you have to find out.  This is passion, desire to know.  You really understand now that you do not know, maybe anything in terms of reality.   There is like a burning fire in your mind.  You must find out.  So now you are ready for real self-actualization work at the higher levels.

You are already meditating so that is good.   You are familiar with sitting quietly and just looking - no judging, no planning or thinking - just looking.   You start to look and ask "Who is this person that I think I am?"   You ask inside your head - not really thinking the question, but feeling how lost you are about your true identity.   If thoughts appear, or judgements then  just look at them.  Never mind what they say.   The answer for who you are is not going to come in words.   Words are only more thoughts.  But there may be words that sort of "point" to something, like a hint.  You feel like "Am I missing something?  There is something there."  You will continue meditating as usual.   This process will naturally begin to bring different feelings into your life every day.   You will just feel differently about various things that are happening in your experiences. This is the beginning of a "flowering", an opening up to life.  You are life.  It is a mystery how that can be.  But you can feel it.

This is the beginning of finding out who you are.   This is enough to begin your journey from the place where you are today.  Be gentle with yourself.  Be kind to yourself and others.  Expect to discover new things about life.  Accept what life offers.  Do not fight it.   Feel grateful that you are alive to experience this world.  With this calm approach a certain grace will enter your daily life.  Life is always whispering to you. Listen...

You may already know all this, and are far beyond what I have put down here, so please excuse me if I jumped in unnecessarily.

Joy

 

Edited February 16, 2016 by walt
typos

[Matej]

@Guest Amazing. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, it's very inspiring.