Confusion Is the Doorway to Your Next Version
Photo by Natalya Ukolova on Unsplash
The Comparison-Confusion Cycle (aka your most authentic versions’ death trap) is a self-perpetuating loop.
This is how it goes:
Your growth makes you feel confused about who you are.
Your confusion urges you to seek out answers.
Which leads you to stumble across anyone's online version out there.
Which then makes you compare yourself to them.
That comparison makes you even more confused about who you are. The more confused you are, the more you compare. And the cycle never ends.
Let’s dive into it ↡
CONFUSION
You don’t know who you are anymore.
You’re changing, growing, shifting, and who you’ve been doesn’t feel accurate anymore.
But you don’t know who you’re becoming either.
Nothing feels right. You’re confused as hell, and you don’t like it.
You feel like a walking fraud.
The number one issue in this step of the cycle is that we don’t know how to sit and live with that confusion.
It’s uncomfortable, even painful at times. So we run away from it, and we try to change it.
But some things are meant to be understood only with time. Only after navigating certain situations. Only after processing certain wounds.
And others are not meant to be understood by the mind, but felt by the heart and integrated by the soul.
You haven’t been taught that, though. So what do you do instead?
EXTERNALISATION
You go seek out clarity.
Outside of you.
Like you’ve always been taught how to do.
And you find that temporary relief that feels so good.
It almost feels like you’re putting the puzzle pieces together, and clarity will finally find you once you complete the puzzle.
But those pieces that you’re putting together are not your pieces. You’re taking everyone else’s truths, traits and tiny parts of their identity to try to complete your own. To try to make sense of who you are.
INPUT
And since that temporary relief and clarity are driving your actions, you don’t realise that all those things that you’re taking from the outside world are shaping the perception you have of yourself.
The void you feel within you is being filled, but not with your truth. Just with everything you’re seeing and agreeing with.
There’s a big risk when you come across someone’s online presence and don’t get to know them personally.
Because the person you’re seeing is just a version of themselves they’re willing to show online, not the full spectrum of who they are.
Usually not the shadows, not the unwanted, not the socially unaccepted aspects.
COMPARISON
And suddenly, it’s all of you vs. part of them.
That’s when the comparison game gets real. And really muddy.
You don’t see the confusion in someone else. You don’t see the sorrow, the grief, the void or the pain. Not unless they want you to.
And our mind creates the idea that that’s how our life should look as well. That’s who we should be as well — making us seek an illusion.
Instead of finding more answers, you just got yourself more enmeshed with everything you’ve engaged with, consumed and interacted with.
And the loop continues, but this time with you feeling more confused than when you started.
I’ve only found one way to break the loop, and that’s to sit with the confusion AND limit consumption.
Do exactly what we try to run away from in the first place. And stop the temporary comfort.
The confusion shows up in these 2 ways.
A big part of it comes because the amount of input that we’re getting on a daily basis doesn’t let us hear our own voice.
We consume so much content and information that our system is flooded with other people’s energy, our mind is filled with other people’s noise, and we reach a point at which we don’t recognise what’s ours and what’s not.
We gotta get out of everyone else’s world and be with ourselves. Reconnect with our own energy.
The other part of the confusion is a natural process of being in between identities. You’re not doing anything wrong.
Allow yourself to feel the discomfort of being confused.
Our minds try to find a solution instantly, but when you’re in this liminal space, and you’re growing and changing so much, confusion is part of the process. Because you’re not who you used to be, but you’re not who you’re becoming yet either.
We gotta learn to allow ourselves to be confused, without needing to change it.
Sit with it, feel it and don’t try to make sense of anything.
Clarity will come as you keep shifting. The more you accept your current reality, the more easeful the process will be.
This is the struggle of continual becoming.
Not feeling you at any point throughout the day.
Knowing that who you’ve been is not accurate anymore.
Knowing that you’re becoming that new version you can tap into.
But having no idea who you truly are right now. Or how to fully make that shift happen.
Whatever you do, don’t outsource.
You can’t become your most authentic self or your future version or who you know you’re meant to be if you keep getting lost in other people’s worlds and identities.
Everything you’re feeling is part of the process.
Don’t try to force clarity; that’s what’s going to block it in the first place.
Accept the confusion, be with it.
The more you feel it, the more you’ll shift out of it.