Delusions
Delusions
Recently, according to the social media trend, whenever a person desires more than they can afford, we call it delusional (delulu).
To term dreams as delusions is to rule out the likelihood of their manifestation even if the required work is put in.
It is delusional to want things you would not work for and assume they will come to you. However, when they are things you can work for, are willing to work for and are already working toward, they switch into visions and goals.
High achievers are known to suffer from impostor syndrome quite frequently — doubting if they are worth the opportunities and results they get. It sounds noble to be this humble, but it is also one of the most sabotaging things to give in to as you grow.
Impostor syndrome has made people miss opportunities because they feel they are unqualified. On the flip side, some people have worked themselves to the bones, never rested, always have a new goal, and are constantly on a treadmill to prove they are enough.
When is it a dream or a delusion? Do we not all look delusional when we first begin to dream? Of what use is a dream that barely stretches our imagination and capacity?
Growth modifies your tastebuds.
A few years back, I went to my mentor (a counsellor) complaining about ways I had changed and how it made me feel vain. When I was done, he asked me an existential question, “Did you become vain or real?”
I mulled over that question for days to weeks in shock at my growth — I had evolved enough to ask for what I wanted, even if it made me feel crazy.
Recently, I spoke to someone amazing who had a career opportunity in an industry they had transitioned out of and there it was — guilt!
Why do we feel guilty for growing out of good places? Why do we feel the need to stay tethered to places that no longer take us towards our goals? Why do we minimize our dreams or even blackmail ourselves with them?
Our taste buds changed. This means we must relearn how to feed ourselves — confronting the biases we never knew existed.
When I first launched out, I thought I was running an NGO. After a year, I realized entrepreneurship was my route — that was when I knew I had a problematic relationship with making money. It meant I had to work on my biases.
Are we undermining our dreams and renaming them delusions because the work requires us to strip ourselves of our superficial coverings and confront the wounds we did not know we were managing?
Perhaps self-undermining is a chaotic attempt at coping with certain forms of traumatic experiences. After all, if we do not hope for too much, we cannot be heartbroken.
Yet, that could be our biggest problem — reaching for less than our capabilities and feeling grossly underutilized because our lives lack adventure.
If we can convince ourselves that what we want makes us delusional, then we have successfully avoided the responsibility to reach for it, alter our present reality and become different. That is a win on a surface level until you realize that nothing stays the same. This means that you carefully chose regression.
Taste buds
According to Cleveland Clinic, “Taste buds are cells on your tongue that allow you to perceive tastes, including sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Taste buds regenerate approximately every ten days, which means injured taste buds usually repair on their own.”
If your biological ability to taste changes in a couple of days, why do you hold yourself hostage at age thirty based on your preferences at age fifteen? Why are you not allowed to evolve in how you dress, date, work and connect with others?
The real delusion here is that you expect yourself to stay the same.
If your natural taste buds can perceive and adapt to a range of tastes, why do you feel the need to box yourself into one type of experience?
The problem is not the change but how you perceive the change.
Confronting your biases
You are biased in your assessment of yourself — you are either more damaged than you are or better than you are. Either way, you are not the most objective person to assess yourself.
At the same time, other people are not the most knowledgeable about you — they see what you do as they cannot tell why (emotions, thought patterns, experiences…etc.) you do them.
This puts us in a conundrum about who will be most objective — Nobody!
This is why psychological assessments are created to be fixed and not tweaked. Yet, we do not have psychological assessments for everything. This means you use what you have while confronting the bias in each result.
Assessing yourself
To assess yourself, you must be willing to receive whatever darkness or light you find without judgment. There will always be something you are not proud of when you look at your life — give yourself as much grace as you give others.
Ask questions: the answers you are yet to find are in the questions you have not asked. Do not just assume this is how you are — ask questions.
Recently, I heard this question, “Who am I uninterrupted?” which I sat with for days. When I finally wrote the response, I knew I had no time to keep explaining certain things to people who were not contributing to my journey because each explanation was an interruption.
Track your responses: journal therapy exercises are great for asking and tracking your responses to the same questions over time.
My who I am response is different now than five years ago. Keeping a journal meant I got the privilege of seeing my evolution and the places I previously lied to myself because it made me feel comfortable at the time.
Review your responses: during physics practicals, you ensure the environment for the experiment is the same as in the instruction manual. If you decide to change the environment, rest assured your result will change. The same is true when creating culture in a biology lab.
Reviewing your responses means checking whether you were honest or if external environments influenced you. For example, if you feel your partner would read it, you will not mention how they contribute to your stress.
When you review your response, you look for the lies, the half-truths and the unspoken truths.
This is where we come to know if you are delusional or if you want more at this phase of your life. In the words of my mentor, “Did you become vain or real?” If you have evolved truly, then it is time to assess what you need to adjust.
Act on your responses: this is the right time to stop holding yourself hostage to the past. What actions are required for your life (externally and internally) to come into harmony?
Do you need to stop dating and heal so you can stop choosing toxic people? Do you need to take a course and switch careers? Do you need to hire a matchmaker so you can focus? Do you need to block that toxic relationship? What physical action is required?
If you know the right thing to do and you do not do it, you will experience more internal conflict because the data becomes glaring once you have seen it.
Delusion is seeing the data and acting like ignoring it will change the facts.
Allowing others to assess you
This is usually scary because we fear judgment, but the right people in our lives will help us know what biases no longer serve us.
When I made a significant change at Liza Express by cutting off unnecessary discounts, it was not because of me but because other people helped me see I was treating the business like a not-for-profit.
On my own, I will have a logical story that explains why the business was not making it to break even.
Unquestionable data: this is usually provided by a professional. A psychologist will use assessments, a business analyst will use demographic data, some will use algorithms…etc. However you look at it, this data will be irrefutable globally or locally.
For my business, it took seeing the data for how many businesses failed and why they failed. When we juxtaposed that list with my business practices, it was impossible to deny the obvious.
Stories and testimonials: this is when your people review you based on first-hand experiences.
I remember asking people what they liked about me and how they thought I could improve — people told me how helpful I always was. However, I also had people who told me they never knew when I needed help until I burned out. Aha!
Energy projection: this is less objective but can be reliable when many people confirm it. This reviews your carriage, tonality, body language and demeanour.
I started working at fifteen and was used to being the youngest during projects. To avoid being looked down on, I always had the don’t-disrespect-me vibe. Interestingly, that was associated with married women who did not want to be asked out.
Before I turned twenty-two, most of my students thought I was married and had kids. If I wanted to date, I would have been sabotaging myself. I would never have known if multiple people did not mention it.
I dare you to ask your community to review you. By all means, remove the undue criticisms. How to know the undue criticisms:
- Reviews that come from people who are not present in your life
- Reviews that come from people who only want you to make them comfortable
- Reviews that come from people who cannot fight for you
You want to be careful that they are reviewing you as a person and not merely projecting on you.
You are not delusional simply because you want more; you are delusional when you want more but pretend you can manage without.