Mastery/Fear of Failure

[workinprogress]

So, I suffered a heart attack 3 weeks ago tonight.  I can't work for at least another 20 days, so I am doing everything I can to get a new/better perspective and direction in my life.

I started reading Robert Greene's "Mastery".  I have to say that it is a fantastic book.  It covers many things that I have tried to teach my kids, have a higher calling, follow your passions and interests, don't listen to anyone else. 

So, I am looking back at my childhood to rediscover my interests as recommended by the book.  I am finding a great deal of anxiety when thinking back to what I loved as a child.  It is buried deep inside of me.  In a way, I feel that my heart is somehow protecting myself by not revealing to me what I loved to do.

I can recall my first few loves, reading, music, and martial arts.  I am thinking that somehow I am protecting my self from my controlling/perfectionist parents. 

My earliest love was martial arts.  I remember Kung Fu Theater with Bruce Lee and the TV Series Kung Fu.  My soul yearned to learn martial arts.  Not so I could go and kick people's butts, but something about it called me to it.  Something about the self-discipline and self-control that it took.  My parents absolutely refused to allow me to learn martial arts.  They forced me to do a million other activities that I hated, but they would not allow me to do what I wanted.

With music, I recall listening to music all the time.  I loved the Beach Boys "Good Vibrations" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as a kid.  My dad would make random rules, such as, "no more music."  I would have times that I was forbidden to even to listen to the radio.

Lastly, I loved to read and create stories and little movies.  At one point in my teen years, I wanted to write.  My parents hammered me about it.  "You'll never make any money.  You need a job with benefits."  They thoroughly discouraged me from following any interest that I had!

So, now I'm trying to revisit this stuff.  I just can't believe the anxiety I feel when I think about what I loved as a child.  Instead of feelings of pleasure and joy, I feel a gnawing at the pit of my stomach.

So, I guess I have to gradually allow this anxiety to fade away and continue to dig.

One plan I do have is to start some light Tai Chi work outs from youtube or something.  Something heart friendly.

I already started doing some yoga since I can't lift weights anymore.

I can't understand why my parents made everything in my life such an ordeal.

[eeks]

My parents hammered me about it.  "You'll never make any money.  You need a job with benefits."  They thoroughly discouraged me from following any interest that I had!

The control in my house was more subtle, but ohhh I can relate to this!  When I turned 18, and it was time to make decisions about post-secondary education, I remember thinking to myself, "I'm 18, I'm an adult now, and adults make sensible decisions for the future".  Which of course did not include anything creative, artistic, social sciences/humanities.  Nobody said those words to me... .I think I just absorbed the message.

One plan I do have is to start some light Tai Chi work outs from youtube or something.  Something heart friendly.

This makes me happy that you are finding a way to do martial arts even though you have some physical limitations 

And... .you know that tai chi isn't just senior citizens in the park, right?  I did a tai chi class a few years ago... .I was going to a student acupuncture clinic (reduced rates) at a traditional Chinese medicine school, and one of the students who treated me invited me to go with her.  I don't know how much you know about the philosophy of tai chi, but the master would often show us the martial arts application of the moves we learned, and he explained to us that it is about yin and yang... .that if someone comes at you with a lot of force (yang), rather than meeting that with force of your own, you would yield to that force by becoming "empty" (yin)... .the best I can describe it is, receiving and redirecting. 

I can't understand why my parents made everything in my life such an ordeal.

Based on what I read in If You Had Controlling Parents by Dan Neuharth, I would guess that they have unresolved trauma of their own (or their parents did).  Not all parents who are trauma survivors try to control themselves, life and other people, and not all controlling parents are trauma survivors, but there's a correlation.