Monday, October 11, 2010

Entitlement update

I can't quite seem to muster up a proper blog entry today, so I thought I'd update you on how my Entitlement is going. (If you're just tuning in, here's what I mean by Entitlement with a capital E in the context of this blog, and here's why it's so important.)

The most interesting thing is the extent to which being aware of Entitlement - what it is, why it's important, how it helps, being able to recognize it in others - makes it easier to do. I'd say in this case knowing is about 80% of the battle. My Entitlement behaviour increased sharply the moment I realized this was a thing I needed to start doing. It's quite surprising. Usually changing my own behaviour is an epic struggle against my very nature, and changing my own thought patterns is completely outside my control. But with Entitlement, just reading an explanation with examples that I was able to independently relate to real-life examples of behaviours and characteristics I admire in others was enough to make me...just start doing it, to a certain extent. I think I owe Malcolm Gladwell huge.

As an added bonus, the concept of Entitlement came into my life around the same time as I started facing some increased responsibilities at work. So I'm in a situation where I have to act with Entitlement, because otherwise stuff isn't going to get done. This has made me less deferential and more casual in my dealings with external people, which, oddly, gets better results.

One weird thing is whenever I try to explain the concept of Entitlement to someone verbally, they always confuse it with the generic - and this despite the fact that I always start my explanation with "not entitlement in the normal general sense of the word, but it's rather this very specific concept meaning..." I did manage to explain to my boss what I was doing by describing it as an attempt to be more pro-active because I'm naturally disinclined to be pro-active, and that was effective and has helped smooth out any rough edges resulting from the fact that I'm doing what should be basic social skills on an experimental basis. I think that's how I'm going to explain it to other people in the future if it becomes necessary.

I also just realized something awesome. In my awful making-an-ass-of-myself-in-front-of-Eddie moment (for which I'm still kicking myself), I was looking him in the eye and talking to him!! Yes, I was talking stupidly, doing far worse than someone my age should be able to do, reflecting poorly on our whole group and perhaps our whole city, but eye contact and reasonably articulate speech! I was literally incapable of that 18 months ago. I could not have maintained (and perhaps not even made) eye contact, and I would have been showing anxiety rather than fangirl giddiness. But now, not only have I done eye contact and talking, but I'm 100% certain I could do it again and better (even if not yet objectively well) in the future, even though I'm now carrying this having-made-an-ass-of-myself baggage. And it wouldn't be a massive effort. There would be nerves, of course, but the eye contact and talking would just be part of the natural way things turn out. Take THAT, middle-school bullies!

Of course, it's not going perfectly. I still fail to show Entitlement an average of twice a day - it's still extremely easy to just not do it in areas of life that are invisible to others. (If I don't email that client about that one thing, people at work will notice. If I don't make an appointment for a beauty treatment, it's inconsequential.) I'm still getting stupidly nervous about stupid things at stupid times. I'm still not 100% sure of the doctor situation. (I could handle it if I had some genuine illness, but I'm not there yet for something as elective and emotionally loaded as sterilization.) But, so far, my baseline for Entitlement behaviour seems to have very easily risen significantly higher. We'll see what happens next.

3 comments:

laura k said...

Que brava! Best news of my day.

I wish you'd leave yourself alone about the Eddie meet, but recognizing what you did well is excellent anyway.

impudent strumpet said...

Persistence of memory is not something over which I have control.

laura k said...

Yes, of course. Nor I. I mean how you frame the memory to yourself.