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How much are you worth?
When your behaviour is driven by how others treat you, the good times become dull, and the bad times become dreary. It might seem endearing to focus on how others treat you so that you can return the favour if they’re being sweet or kind, but that means that you are not being true to…
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Conviction or distraction?
From The Egosystem, a reminder that when you are pursuing something new, don’t expect the people around you to understand or to buy into why you are passionate about it. Most of us are surrounded by people who live safely. Who fit in as best as they can. When you threaten to disrupt that safe…
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Confidently you…and only you
The question is, do you know yourself well enough to have an informed opinion of yourself? When we rely on others for more than just feedback, and instead, we allow them to validate who we are, we essentially give them the power to define how we feel about ourselves. Listening to what others think of…
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Defending myself into misery
Defensiveness is driven by a belief that you’re under attack. Hence the need to defend ourselves when someone tries to correct us. The defensive response on our part confirms that we assume their intention to be other than genuine concern for what we’re experiencing. We also assume that we must be right to feel a…
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Are you who you think you are?
Most people see themselves through someone else’s eyes, without ever realising it. Without exception, whenever we judge ourselves harshly, it’s because we’re measuring our worth based on what we think someone else will think of us rather than what we think of ourselves. That someone else is most often a parent or significant other. And…
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Are you there for you?
We’re more inclined to recognise the needs of the weak, than we are of the strong. Without meaning to, we diminish the humanness of those who persevere without complaint, because they often make it look so easy. When we’re the strong ones persevering without complaint, we risk diminishing our own humanness as well, because we…
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Destroying peace to find peace
Rage is a destructive demand for significance when we believe that who we are is not enough to be important to those we love. The anger that spurs on the rage is a defence mechanism to protect ourselves from becoming invisible. We try, in our own little futile ways, to be enough without being able…
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Do you matter to you?
To be of consequence, or to feel significant, lies at the heart of our inspiration to accomplish anything. When we connect with conviction to the significance of who we are, and what value we add to the lives of others, we achieve a sense of peace and contentment. But, when we doubt this, we set…