Update #1

In this episode: I update you on goings-on in my growth, I get called "papa" by nice Hispanic people, and I get to an interesting conclusion about the root of some of my issues.

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Hey gang, I know I said I'd post a blog update every week or so, but life has been hectic. I've finally made some time to sit down and collect some thoughts from the last few weeks, and here they are. They're not really organized and may not even be coherent but here goes anyway!

The last few weeks have been really enlightening in just learning about myself and continuing to grow. Now I just want to make a disclaimer that nobody's ever really done growing, but seeing as how this is kind of the beginning of my ownership of my own growth, the incremental changes are more visible and seem to be happening at a quicker rate and will probably taper off to show smaller changes, at least as they're made apparent to me.

So life has been pretty good, alhamdulillah. I have a lot of downtime this summer, so I've been volunteering two days a week at my local masjid's food pantry, and it's been really awesome. A big part of what I want to grow into is being a more active member in the Muslim community. I had to donate a bunch of stuff to their thrift store, and when I was there I talked to the person who runs the store to ask if I could volunteer. She said to come by when I have time and help out how I can. She said something that made me sad, and that was that she felt that Muslim Americans don't always want to help out and participate in the community and its resources. I know that there are small groups of people who help out a lot, but it just made me sad that people who manage these resources feel overlooked by the community. I get it, people have work and they're busy with their lives but I feel like if everyone chipped in just a little, it could make a world of a difference. Now, I know that it's easy for me to say this because I'm on summer break and have absolute oodles of free time, but once I start working full-time in a few weeks, my involvement is something I hope to sustain as a habit. Originally my goal was to go three days a week, but I lowered that just so I could have some time to detox from college before jumping into the workforce. Call me lazy.

Anyway it's been a lot of fun, and it's definitely given me a sense of belonging and fulfillment. It's really humbling to see how grateful people are when you can help them out, and a lot of people that come in are really funny and nice. There's a big Hispanic population that comes to the food pantry, and the term of endearment they use is "papa," which I like just because I'm usually younger than them and it's funny. I like it though. Another reason I like working there is because it's continuing to help me come out of my shell and refine my interpersonal skills. I consider myself a shy and sometimes socially anxious guy, and being put into the throes of customer service work has been a good way to work through it. It's not my first time dealing firsthand with customers, but it's I like it because it's a different challenge of working with people who don't always speak English, which allows me to work on being patient (and work on my amateur Spanish skills...claro?).

One thing I've also been chipping away at in my growth is just journaling a lot to get to the root of some of the emotional issues I've had in the recent past. I want to get to the bottom of them so I can really understand who I am at a fundamental level. Now obviously I can't and am not doing this 100% on my own, although I'd like to eventually get to a point where I can mostly examine my issues from as objective a standpoint as possible. I've been doing individual therapy which is helpful in getting me from the surface level of emotions and thoughts to the base level reasons behind those thoughts and behaviors that hold me back. Basically I've been reflecting on my thoughts, emotions, and actions that I feel hinder me from being more mature and confident in my abilities. Following each session, I go home and just write all my thoughts in my journal, and then a day or two later I'll come back to analyze the things I've written and see where I can recognize patterns and major themes that come up. The biggest thing I've come away with from these exercises is one theme that really didn't surprise me when I thought a little bit more about it: inadequacy. I had thought this in the back of my mind for some time, but I never really knew why. So I kept just dumping thoughts and creating diagrams in my journal (it's legit starting to look like Charlie when he's trying to find Pepe Silvia) and came to the conclusion that it was due to low self-esteem.

This is what I look like and my accompanying jourrnal

That realization actually surprised me a lot, but it made sense. I never felt too badly about myself, but there are many occasions where I feel myself feeling as if I'm not good enough, whether that was academically or professionally or in my personal relationships. So that's where I am right now. Where it comes from is still under investigation. But it was a revealing moment nonetheless. My goals for growing through this are to find the roots of this low self-esteem and to practice positive affirmations everyday to help lift me up. I hope that these will be robust and sustainable solutions that I stay committed to. It will take some time, but I'm excited to get closer to the truth.

What do you guys think? What do you think are some of the underlying sticking points for you that you can identify to improve on and grow? Leave a comment!