@Plinco I am not sure what to say at this point. Everyone leads their life, by their own decisions. It is not my place to say I know better than you, with regards to what you are choosing for yourself. Having the experiences yourself may be important and perhaps what you need, in order to be able to see things differently, grow, and move forward. I am not here to say what is right for you. As if you were a good friend, I will share, what is in my heart with you. That is concern.
What I experience with you is disharmony and incongruence. What does that mean?
When I say I experience disharmony with you, I get the sense that you are not comfortable in your own skin. Maybe you experience that as a low level anxiety that is always in the background or even foreground for you, or maybe not at all. To me. it feels like you feel ill at ease being you.
When I say I experience incongruence with you, I can read how you lay yourself out on paper with your goals and such and how it reads and how it sounds. My experience is that your true goal is actually different than your stated goal. To me I get the sense that you want it to read in a way that is more acceptable to you or maybe others. It seems, underneath it all, you are chasing something different and something that is not resolvable with the action plan you have laid out. I feel incongruence in that. To me I feel concern as I see the potential of spinning yourself in circles, for years, expecting resolution, only to never find it, with the strategy you have laid out for yourself.
That is a lot of potential time.
It is not for me to say what is right or not for your life experience.
I will share where I see incongruences or things that concern me.
I see you, as feeling like you were excluded from the college experience/s that you wished you would have had. I see you as feeling like without those experiences, you will always be/feel incomplete somehow. As if you are walking around with a big gapping hole in you, that everyone else filled in college, but you. Now, you feel, the only way to reconcile and fill it, to relieve that constant feeling of anxiety, is to go back in time, or the best imitation of that, in order to catch up, and have the experiences now, that you didn't have then. All that is with the hope to finally feel more whole or peace inside yourself. I think you have labelled that as finally feeling confident in yourself, because popular, high-valued, college kids accept/ed you and treat/ed you as one of them. That is what I see.
My concern again comes from the fact that I don't think the resolve you are seeking will come from that experience. You may need the experience, to learn that yourself.
From my perspective, you are looking to feel comfortable in your own skin. More than that you want to feel highly confident and even proud of who you are. You are not there right now. You have these lingering feelings, of not feeling accepted as one of the cool and popular kids. You feel less-than. As I see it, your "logic" tells you that if you are able to interact with popular high-value, college kids now and get them to like you, admire you, and accept you, that in some way you will finally feel healed, of your old hurts from before. That you believe you will "finally" have repaired the self-perceived "broken parts" of you and then be able to go forward into writing your book and selling your material and being in the world with full and true self-confidence.
My concern is that I think your "logic" is off. I think you want and expect it to work the way you perceive it and have designed it for yourself. There are aspects, to me, that are incongruent with that.
The first is that one's self acceptance is not gained by the receiving the acceptance of others. It is independent of that. It may make it easier. It is still independent. Believing strangers somehow hold the keys to your self acceptance and self confidence is also a huge error in thinking. That is where I previously spoke about the importance of choosing to take your power back, being a big key for you.
Another is the fact that you will be presenting yourself in an unauthentic way, seeking acceptance of that inauthentic presentation of you, and then expecting that to transfer over, and affect your own acceptance, of the authentic you. The authentic you will still be hidden behind the current facade you will presenting. In the end, I think you may actually feel more disconnected and isolated rather than more. You will have proven that the fake you can be accepted but that the real you still needs to hide. How meaningful is it to have a fake you be accepted and looked up to? What does it say about your authentic self, to feel the need to do that?
So, there is the authentic you that is 35 right now. You want to heal up and fix the 20 year old in you. Even supposing that were to work as you hope, there is still you right now that is disconnected and just as unaccepted, by you as well. I guess in some way, what I am adding in is that running to your past will not necessarily take care of the present. As I see it, your discomfort exists, as much in the present, as you perceive it does in the past.
I think you have set up goals to circumvent your attention away from facing that. As I see it, your discomfort and disharmony will still be there, until you are willing to face it fully, in the present.
I think that is all I have right now. I realize that aspects of this may resonate or not at all. I realize your inclination will most likely be to continue as you are. I am not at all attached. You determine what is right for you. I felt moved to share what I see, in the event it helps you, shorten your learning curve. That is all.
I wish you the best,
LYD
