6 Comments

I sympathize. I had an experience like this recently with a couple pieces I submitted somewhere.

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I'm a fan of Gretchen Rubin, too. I'm an obliger but with a not-inconsiderable streak of rebel at times. Her rebel's motto has stuck with me: "you can't make me, and neither can I." Lol

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LOL at that motto!! I'm chronic obliger. If someone else isn't cracking the whip, I'm not doing it. It makes things hard. But recognizing it really did change my life - knowing I need to work with it, instead of saying "I have no willpower" and feeling useless.

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Yes. I really like the approach of understanding myself better rather than using these labels to define myself. So now I can recognize when my inner rebel is reacting to something, and I can *think* about it and take my you-can’t-make-me tendency into account. Instead of feeling that rebellious feeling and assuming it’s 100% justified.

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This is one of the more inspiring posts I've read in quite a while.

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This is a trove of emotional intelligence! I've just had some epiphanies making sense of some things I've noticed about life in other contexts.

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