the thin line between manipulation and motivation

It's thin line between motivation and manipulation...and it's painful when a person you trust crosses that line.

In her excellent essay for Hard Copy Media, writer Ariella Steinhorn shares her experience "Fleeing the Con Man's Sinking Ship" and how it hurts to get wrapped up in another person's dreams.

https://www.hardcopy.online/career/fleeing-the-con-man

Some of the intimate thoughts and feelings that Ariella shares start out as the heady stuff of new opportunities:

➡ I peppered him with questions, time melting around us, and then we speed-walked around Madison Square Park so he could smoke a cigarette. He laid out his dreams and vision for the company. I felt an exhilarating momentum in my bones, and I started to fantasize about the future.

And then bewilderment:

➡Betrayed, broke, jobless, and walking the streets of Columbus Circle alone, I felt that my insides had been excavated, hollowed out. Maybe I was not special. I considered that he never had any plan, at all–that dreams are for fools.

And self-reflection:

➡There is a thin line between an unrealized vision worth chasing, and a fraudulent delusion of the future. When does a dream become real?

And finally, determination:

✨We do not need to be players within someone else’s dream ✨

Have you ever followed someone else's dream?

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