The first point that came to me was how as the eldest child I have been raised up to be a serious and obedient person that does what parents instructs me to. And in our family my father was the most influential figure since he due to his low self-esteem and loosing his father when he was very young constantly search for recognition from others and wanted to be a good provider. He managed to be successful at that by being a very creative and innovative and pleasing others by positively surprising them. When me and my younger brother became part of our family I can now see how he in a way desired for his children to be provided for in the best way he could manage however at the same time my brother and I became a threat to him since we represented a riving party and started to compete with our father for attention and recognition. This is why I think jealousy developed within him and started to suppress us.
When my father started to develop our family sign-making and screen-printing business and we after completing the secondary school became his employees, such relationship got a whole new dimension. This is because I worked in the initial stage of pre-press and graphic design and when I made a mistake at visual design my brother would then print it on not so cheap products and would result in a lot of costly damage. I was pressured to work fast and my father would come onto me with extreme emotion of anger any time I made a mistake. And I also was not allowed to express myself creatively since all what matters to my father was that the products were printed as fast as possible and the quality of my visual graphic design did not matter at all. Often when I did some design he wanted me to change it to something that I did find it appropriate at all. This is also why I eventually decided to stop working for him and started my own business of creative graphic design where I had the opportunity to express myself creatively.
However even when working for my own clients his criticism remained deeply rooted within me as self-criticism in form of the back-chat in my mind that created a fear that my clients will equally not like my designs and will want me to change them. And also during the years of being an employee of my father I was pressured to work from morning to evening and started to burn out. Thus while working for my own clients I always hurried to finish the order immediately and then enjoyed my free time. Because of all that I feel that I have become conditioned to enjoy free time and wait for someone to tell me to do something and then I would execute that order precisely as instructed in order for others to be satisfied with me, to pay me fairly and then I would again just enjoy life and wait for the next order. Thus I like to complete the tasks as fast as possible and this reflects in checking my emails and social messages several times per day and making sure that my inbox is always empty. Equally when I cook, I immediately wash, wipe dry and tidy the dishes. My kitchen and my office desk are always clean and ready for the new projects.
I realised that I have become very sensitive to being pressured and that I do not allow anymore to be pushed and bullied anymore. So if someone wants me to do something and pushes me too much or if the instructions are not clear enough or if I do not get payed fairly and especially if I am to compete with others a strong resistance emerges within me. I am rather having a relaxed life with less money than earning a lot of money while being under stress all the time. In last several years I also participated in several international projects where there was a potential for me to earn a lot of money but all those projects failed to perform and I ended in some debt. This is also why I became mistrustful towards projects of others where I do not have significant control about the outcome. I learned that easiest way for me to earn the money is to work directly for the end client who respects my work and pays me fairly.
But then I started to ask myself if such life in the comfort zone is good for my personal development and I concluded that it is not. What I came to realise is that I have been living a quite elitist life where my father provided for all my needs and much more and that I took all of this for granted. Yes, I was under pressure by him but I did never ask myself how he has managing to successfully provide for our family and what kind of personal struggles he went through. Of course he also did not want to share his bag of tricks with me even if I expressed my curiosity about it. Thus in some way I tend to play a victim in order to show him that he did not equip me for a successful independent life because he wanted me to live in his house indefinitely. He never planned for me to move out and when I told him that I met a girlfriend and that I will move in with her to our own apartment he threatened that if I leave then he will never again want to see or accept me again.
Now after living on my own for almost 20 years I have started to ask myself if I am any better than my father. Because at least he managed to raise two of his children, maintain a successful business and I am at age 43 again single, without any kids, in debts and on unemployment support. I justify this by believing that I am instead of wanting to provide only for my family focusing mostly on contributing with changing of the global system so that every single living being will eventually be supported unconditionally. Yet I wonder what my impact actually is and how good of example I am if I do not take care properly for my own basic financial needs. Thus I decided to restart some of my previous business activities and then challenge myself in creating my own organisation where I will employ others. I see this as something that I need to do in order to break out of the limiting patterns that I copied from my father and also from those that I created by myself as the solution to cope with the pressures of my father.
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