My 11th Commandment

Thou shall please all of the people and all of the time.

On a cold February morning, I actually pulled it off.

No, not that.

What’s wrong with your mind?

LMFAO- when did people stop using LMFAO, or that stupid one I could never get right ROTFL or something stupid about rolling on the floor.

Much preferred the profane one.

I hate it when people say “fricken”.
It’s pure cowardice.

Nobody is fooled by false profanity — by going halfway.
It’s like Max, a black pampered pug.
He was the showroom dog in my first job.
He was dressed in a red knitted sweater which covered his upper torso and legs.
It stopped just before his dick and balls, his modesty undone by a bright red beacon screaming:
“See owt you fancy?”

Proof that less really is more.

Where was I?

Oh yes, pulling it off.

I’m talking about pulling off a miracle, not my willy.

I’m talking about purposely sitting in the discomfort of being judged… well… if I’m being honest, I probably wasn’t being judged at all.
The fear of another’s judgement was more than enough to send my heart racing.

“Sit with it,” I’d heard many times on my meditation journey.

So I did.

I entered the warzone of my own mind, and there were endless horrors waiting for me.

“He’s gonna see you as stuck up.”
“Scared to get your hands dirty?”
“Ooooo, cold steel on your poor little ,weak, girly hands — pussy.”
“Call yourself a man.”

I somehow believed in my innate ability to read minds.

“Who do you support, mate?”
“Errr…” as I remembered my rehearsed line.

“Liverpool, mate.”

I had that ready to preserve my manliness, but please, don’t talk about the team, or their performance, or ask me where they are in the league. Jeeez, I don’t even know if they’re still in the first division — shit — it’s the Premier League now, isn’t it?

I hated football, but he’d think I was weird or gay if I didn’t support anyone.
Admitting you don’t like football takes more balls than I had at the time.

“Lazy.”
“Lazy bastard just sitting there watching me do all the work.”

Ouch. That one. Lazy.

The stick I’d beaten myself with my whole life. From without for sure, but nowhere near as many times as I’d whipped myself from within.

LAZY!!! The word I’m pretty sure all my fellow ADHD crew had been battered with.

You see, I could have done what I would normally have done up to that point.

Opened the door.

“Do you want a hand, mate?”

Praying with all my might that he didn’t come back with, “Yeah, grab that, will you?” Pointing to something back-breakingly heavy which would highlight my weakness, or one of the scaffolding poles which would highlight my clumsiness as it teetered on my shoulder, exposing my inability to do anything remotely manly.

Reverse a car into a tiny space? No chance.
More man points deducted.

And if he did ask me to help, what if I had to pick up something that had a spider waiting for me underneath?

I don’t know which I feared most: the spider, or him seeing me run when I saw it.

Of course, not a single thing written thus occurred in real life.

Sure, the builder was there unloading, but his thoughts were only real in my mind. They were only prototypes in the catastrophe factory, they were never put into production. They were all Papanca — the Buddhist word for mental proliferation. The things that might happen.
The things that might happen.

And the things that might happen are always worse in the mind than they are in the world.

It took the poor guy the best part of an hour to unload the lorry.

And I sat through the whole thing.

I sat so ruthlessly, I didn’t even offer him a cup of tea.

It went against every self-protective principle I’d manufactured to make my world work for me.

But it didn’t work.

I didn’t own the space I inhabited.
It was owned by people with potential opinions of me.

Hours of meditation had brought me to this: the strength to sit in struggle with the 11th commandment carved on my heart at birth:

“Thou shall please all of the people and all of the time.”

I have a terrible case — or should I say had a terrible case — of people pleasing.

It comes from something called RSD, rejection sensitivity disorder, and it’s a comorbidity of ADHD.

If you tell me to do one, or make me feel I’m not included, you punch a hole out of me.

I need you to like me.

And most people do, to be honest.

I’m likeable. I’ve practised being so.

“He’s sound, your mate Chris,” would be reported back to me after meeting mates of mates on nights out.

I had mastered attraction.

Although, thinking about it, I had something magnetic about me. I was born with it. Even at five years old, I had my pick of friends.

My mates were always the top boys. I was never bullied despite my physical weakness and weirdness.

Again, ADHD. This time, the upside.

Possibly linked to people pleasing? I don’t know.

ADHD people do have a magnetic quality about them. Something about their differences, their energy and imagination lures people in.

Maybe it’s the way we’re constantly coming up with new ideas. We’re exciting people to be around… sometimes… when we’re out of situations where conformity stands its ground.

My mates had a nickname for me: “Sayer and not doer.”

I was always planning exciting things… but before I could firm them up and get everyone organised, I’d be hit by another idea, then another, then another, then four more spin-offs of the last idea in under a minute.

I found myself exhausting.

Most of that’s still with me… my brain is hardwired to create.

Locked in the default mode network. The field of dreams in the brain. The place that’s overgrown with weeds in accountants.

“How did you come up with that?” accountant types always ask, amazed that I can pull something out of nothing.

“How do you actually just sit down and complete something?” I’d think, wondering how easy it must be to live in a world made for you by your kind of people.

So I’d worked within deeply, drawn to meditation for the gifts it showered upon every inch of my life.

I’m still a people pleaser.

I’ve already read this twice to make sure I don’t make you hate me.

My fingers hovering over the delete button on the self-aggrandising piece I wrote about my creativity and magnetism.

Just for the record, that’s not me — it comes with the ADHD territory.

Oh fuck it, I’m being falsely humble.

I admit it.

I have a gift.

Eeeeek. I’m so taking this last line out.

Anyway.

I have a million more examples of my war with my 11th commandment, but I’ll save those for another day.

What has this post been about again?

I did go on a bit.

Oh yeah.

Sitting with it.

Sit with it.

If you sit with it, it will, one fine day, surrender.

If you don’t sit with it, you will be its slave for life.

If you want to learn how to “Sit With It” and keep your herart open, I have created a free 5 day video course on youtube.

Come try it and let me know how it’s going.