Zaid Ismail
@zaidie@zaidismail.com
Author, life coach, and mental health activist. We need to change the narrative from disorders, illnesses, and survival to accountability, understanding, and thriving.
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Bitter sweet arrogance
Arrogance is a result of insecurity that is presented as unwarranted confidence. While it’s easier to focus on the harshness that results from such behaviour, it’s more important to remember that only an insecure person will have a need to demand significance through arrogant behaviour. Arrogance serves as a distraction from our harsh self-judgement. If…
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Patiently persevere
Life has never been simple, and only threatens to become more complicated with each day that passes. Sometimes I flirt with the idea that perhaps I was destined to struggle with so much so that I can learn the lessons that need to be learnt to share them with others. But my gut says that…
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Own your failure, own your growth
Why do we feel accomplished and proud of our efforts when things work out, but we blame fate or taqdeer when we encounter trials or failure? The reality is, given our ability to reason and to choose how we respond to what we are faced with, both good and bad, we’ll never have certainty as…
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Enabling abuse
We often believe in others the way we wish they would believe in us. Sometimes, when we give up hope in someone believing in us, we find it that much more difficult to believe in others. It’s these same emotional commitments that drive us toward making excuses for bad behaviour from someone close to us.…
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The courage to own your life
The courage to own your life will pay dividends long after you’re gone. It’s an investment in the generations to come. In the same way that we look back on our predecessors or great grandparents and feel a sense of awe about their achievements, or their way of life, generations from now, someone may be…
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Is it worth the effort?
Much of life is wasted exhausting yourself in claiming your rights from others. Whether you have a right to be treated a certain way or not is not going to influence the one who chooses to ignore your rights. They believe they have good reason to deny you such rights, in the same way that…
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Afraid to hope
If fear is what shapes your view of what lies ahead, you’re focused on everything that could go wrong because of what went wrong before. That may seem like a natural response to protect ourselves from being hurt or betrayed again, but it also means that we’re focusing on everything that appears as a risk.…
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The death of critical thinkers
Critical thinking is lost when we strive to belong at all costs. When our need for inclusion overwhelms our objectivity, we give up what we stand for in favour of what the group stands for. If that group is driven by a collective victim mindset, we’ll buy into it while finding strength in being around…