Category: Appreciation

  • Own your misery

    Own your misery

    Miserable are the ones who compete with their companions, and then go searching for companionship among those that will ruin them.

    Self-pity and self-loathing are the marks of ingratitude that turn your greatest supporters into your greatest distractions.

    All because you think that they see the inadequacy and shame with which you view yourself.

    That’s why at times, when someone believes in us, we convince ourselves that they’re simply trying to humiliate us.

    Such is the seeds of ingratitude and self-loathing, that we end up taking advice from enemies, and discarding advice from those who care most about our success.

    Your self-loathing is your ingratitude for who you are.
    Stop blaming the world for you getting in your own way.

    It always starts with you.

  • To know…

    To know…

    When you take out the murder weapon and gently and lovingly caress its edges, knowing that it disembowled the most dedicated soul that breathed joy into you, after they left you for the bitterness that sullied their miserable soul.

    When you can still pick up that blade and treat it with tenderness, and stare emptily at the one who raised you to be beautiful beyond that. Belligerent. Uncaring. Unflinching. Unapologetic for the impact of your actions on him.

    When you find yourself cocky enough to present yourself as this beacon of hope for your generation to make something of their life without feeling like they owe anyone anything.

    When you feel like you are here to take, and anything you give is a generosity of spirit on your part.

    You are no less calloused a soul than the scum that spawned you. You’re window dressing for the same delusional generation who thinks that no one has it worse than them, while benefiting from everything created by those before them, and feeling entitled to every comfort and unearned privilege that empowers the stench of your claims of entitlement to the world.

    But here you are thinking you need a break because you’re the generation of hope. You’re the generation of entitlement. Jope only features when a whimsical wimp inserts such a tough on your head because you lack any true understanding of the gratitude for who you are. You don’t know who you are without your social media validating you.

    You are a generation with a lost identity and a fairytale future blaming the past for a present that you have done nothing to improve, but everything to consume.

    And the last of the conscientious ones bare the burden of awakening this arrogance to the abdication of their humanness. Blaming the system for everything but having no system of their own to do better. Pawns doesn’t get to whimper about the Kings, until they’ve gathered the courage to stand toe-to-toe with the Kings. Until then, they’re just fodder for validation from your social circles.

    ,

  • Wow! Look at me now…

    Wow! Look at me now…

    Of all the things that test our resolve, the acquisition of knowledge is the most important.

    It’s easy to get lost in the praise and social elevation that accompanies achievements such as professional qualifications, religious standing, or even business success.

    And because each of it demands a lot of personal sacrifice and discipline, the feeling of entitlement to its rewards takes root without much effort at all.

    Especially since there are many who would treat us with privilege because of their need to be associated with such social standing, or success.

    However, that’s when we lose ourselves to the trinkets and luxuries that accompanies such success.

    That’s when we lose ourselves to the power and influence that such social standing offers.

    That’s when the true tests of our convictions and our value systems present themselves.

    Not only does it matter how we treat people after enjoying such accomplishments, but more importantly, how we utilise the resources that we have access to, including the social structures of privilege that we belong to, that determines the true value of our accomplishments.

    A healthy self-esteem is the only grounding point to prevent such erosion of values or ethical standing.

    A healthy self-esteem, not an inflated ego, is what will keep us focused on how much more good we can achieve, or value we can create for those who cannot benefit us, so that we don’t squander our success or opportunities on self-enrichment or extravagance of lifestyle.

    The sweetness of life lies in the upliftment of others.

    It’s the only accomplishment that doesn’t leave us chasing for validation or acceptance.

    It’s rooted in gratitude for who we are and what we have.

    Without such gratitude, we forever chase opportunities to subdue the fear of inadequacy.

    It always starts with you.

  • Gratitude is more than an attitude

    Gratitude is more than an attitude

    An attitude of gratitude is not gratitude, because gratitude is not about attitude. It’s about a way of being.

    Too often we confuse appreciation with gratitude.

    Appreciation is what we express for favours or gifts, or the ease that we experience in our lives or with others.

    We appreciate the absence of problems, the presence of happiness, or the good fortune of wealth, etc.

    We appreciate such things because we know how much more difficult or challenging life would be without it.

    Gratitude, I believe, goes beyond such acknowledgements of blessings.

    Gratitude is reflected in how we nurture, protect, maintain, or leverage what makes such blessings possible.

    For example, if we have the ability to create good, but we restrain ourselves because it’s not our job or our responsibility, then we’re not grateful for that ability.

    That ability is merely a tool that we use in a transactional way.

    Like having a car that we appreciate because it enables ease of movement, but we don’t take care of it because the thrill of driving recklessly is more important than the blessing of having a car.

    By its very nature, gratitude increases the benefits and blessings of what we have and are capable of, whereas mere appreciation for it only maintains the status quo.

    It may seem like a play on words, or a philosophical debate, but the moment we connect with gratitude for who we are, rather than just appreciating what we are or what we have, we’ll find opportunity to be of benefit in every sphere of our lives, rather than waiting to feel appreciated before we create the value that we’re capable of creating.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Reclaim your worth

    Reclaim your worth

    Peace is most ravaged when we convince ourselves that we were treated badly by others, or by someone we trusted, because we weren’t good enough for them.

    A betrayal of trust, no matter how noble the person, reflects cowardice on their part.

    We only betray the trust that others place in us when we feel burdened by that trust, or we avoid accepting the responsibility that it demands of us.

    Either way, it’s a shortcoming on the part of the betrayer, not the betrayed.

    Sometimes we’re so focused on getting even with those who betrayed our trust that we fail to notice how that fixation distracts us from fulfilling the rights of others, which in itself is also a betrayal of trust.

    Understand the internal struggle of those who treated you badly, so that you will realise that they were simply incapable of being better than that in that moment.

    It may not take away the disappointment or the hurt, but that is part of your humanness.

    When that disappointment overwhelms your joy in life and steals your enthusiasm for the future, it’s no longer because of how someone treated you,it’s because of how you see yourself because of how they treated you.

    It’s that easy to give up your power to influence the outcomes and the happiness that you experience in life.

    You do so by believing that how you were treated by troubled souls is a reflection of your worth.

    That’s simply ingratitude for who you are.

    Misplacing your trust in someone is a mistake made from good intentions.

    Discard the mistake after learning from it. Don’t discard the good that inspired that good intention.

    It always starts with you.

  • Are you grateful for you?

    Are you grateful for you?

    Trying is something that you do when you’re unsure of your ability to do it.

    Trying relates to the process of developing the skills or understanding to accomplish something, and not to the outcome itself.

    When we try to do something, it means that we don’t believe that we’re capable of doing it yet. Otherwise, we’d just do it.

    This is true when it comes to accepting who we are.

    If we’re trying to, it means that we don’t.

    If we don’t, it means that we’re rejecting parts of who we are, or sadly at times, it means that we’re rejecting the whole of who we are.

    That’s what happens when we live our lives by comparing ourselves to what we see in others.

    Rather than admire them as inspirational, we judge ourselves as inferior.

    That’s when illness sets in. Illnesses of the heart, and of the body.

    Chronic illnesses result from a sustained rejection of what we dislike about ourselves, or what we believe is not good enough about who we are based on how others treat us.

    That rejection that we feel towards ourselves or our life is an indication of the ingratitude that we hold within.

    Ingratitude is at the heart of unhappiness because it focuses on what we don’t have, and diminishes the value of what we do have.

    When we find ourselves in such a space, it’s time to introspect about what defines how we feel about ourselves and the life that we have.

    It always starts with you.

  • Empty apologies

    Empty apologies

    “Hey, I apologised. If you don’t accept my apology, that’s your problem, not mine.”

    Did someone say this to you after offending you or treating you badly?

    Maybe you felt you had reason to say it to someone else that rejected your apology?

    The moment we demand that our apology must be enough, we’re not interested in the hurt or offence that we caused, nor the trust that we may have damaged. We’re only interested in preventing the other person from having reason to be displeased with us.

    As we know, apologies mean nothing without sincere remorse, or a change in behaviour.

    And if we have sincere remorse about what we did, we won’t expect others to be OK with what happened just because we think they should be OK.

    We’ll focus on sincerely understanding why it affected, or continues to affect them, and we’ll put in the effort to reestablish the trust that we broke or tainted.

    If we don’t, it means that we’re stuck in self-pity rather than appreciating the impact that we have in the lives of those around us.

    This is yet another way in which self-pity prevents us from realising our significance to others, and vice versa, because we’re so fixated on how bad we have it, or how we feel unappreciated, that we lose sight of how much we take them for granted.

    It always starts with you.




  • Ingratitude starts with you

    Ingratitude starts with you

    We most often only realise that we’re ungrateful for a blessing that we have when it’s too late.

    That’s when regret sets in and either spurs us on to improve our awareness of what we should be grateful for, or it makes us bitter for the loss that we experienced.

    Gratitude is something that no one can instil in us.

    Others may be able to give us something to be grateful for, but they can’t insert that gratitude into our hearts.

    Gratitude is therefore something that we must connect with through our own way of valuing what we have.

    But, valuing what and who we have in our lives becomes difficult, if not impossible, if we believe that we’re entitled to what they offer.

    If we reduce the contribution of others to simply bring their duty, or the expectations of the role that they fulfil, we’ll inadvertently diminish our own value to simply being one of duty and responsibility as well.

    We see ourselves through the same lenses that we use to judge the contribution of others in our lives.

    When we regret the loss of something or someone because we took it for granted, we need to pause and reflect how much of who we are do we take for granted.

    What do we recognise as cherishable traits or attributes about ourselves that we must nurture and protect from contamination?

    Or do we take who we are for granted because we’ve grown so accustomed to trading and transacting with those around us?

    This happens when we believe that what we do for others deserves reciprocation because we need something from them.

    That’s how we lose sight of who we are, and the value that we are capable of creating in the lives of those around us because we want them to experience that value, and not because we need something from them in return.

    You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s why ingratitude towards others begins with ingratitude towards yourself.

    It always starts with you.