Category: Life

  • Your intentions are never enough

    Your intentions are never enough

    There is often an unintended entitlement that sets in for those who are trying to make up for the impact of their behaviour on others.

    The entitlement comes through in how we expect our efforts to be received.

    If we apologise, we expect it to be accepted.

    If we comfort, we expect them to feel comforted.

    If we hug them, we expect them to hug us back.

    The one who causes the offence does not get to decide how the offended must forgive or understand.

    Until we connect with this reality, we will continue to downplay the impact that we have on others while believing that they just don’t understand or don’t care about how difficult it is for us.

    When we caused harm, it stops being about us and starts being about those we harmed.

    If we are sincere in our convictions to make right what we did wrong, we won’t feel entitled to our efforts being accepted. Instead, we’ll be focused on being more effective in our efforts to make things right.

    That test of our conviction is what many fail, resulting in the offenders parading as victims and the offended being painted as unreasonable or cruel.

    Check yourself when you apologise or try to make up for something you did wrong.

    If you don’t, you will sour important relationships for all the wrong reasons while blaming them for your actions.

  • What if balance is what bores us to search for life?

    What if balance is what bores us to search for life?

    When we focus on the gift, we lose sight of the giver. Similarly, when we focus on the kindness that we need, or the privilege that we claim, we lose sight of the human expected to provide it.

    Harshness and brutality are meted out daily in ways that appear non-violent and even passive. But it is cloaked in emotions and customs. Cultural norms have destroyed divine wisdom, and divine instruction has become the corporal punishment of cultural compliance.

    The most vile behaviour always attracts the most attention, but simultaneously offers the greatest distraction. For those who wish to get away with murder, sensationalism about anything else serves them well. The distractedness of the masses in their militant vocalisation of every injustice that they encounter feels like protest or like fighting for the cause of justice. Tragically, they don’t realise that they are simply tools to enable the distractions that allow the brutality and true oppression to charge on without meaningful resistance.

    Our distraction, fuelled by sincere conviction in everything that we believe is non-negotiable feeds the cycle of control that plagues us. Rebellion must be focused if it is to yield justice. Otherwise, it simply replaces one injustice with another. But mobs don’t yield to discipline. Thus, the one who spurs on the mob is the one in control of the agenda.

    The contemplation of reality aimed at making sense of at least some of it has been a tiring and often futile endeavour. It has coloured my canvas with whimsical hope and unreal fancies that imposed an expectation on some who had no idea that I existed beyond the words that I shared.

    Too many take comfort without considering the comforter. Sometimes I wonder if we aren’t all equally distracted, some focused on the distractedness of others while not realising that such focus distracts them from their own purposeful convictions.

    Balance is an ever engaging plight. It requires a cooperation between souls who seldom see each other equally, either in plain sight or in understanding. Love is found and lost in such moments. Seeing beauty in another while they see it not in themselves. And if they have such blindness of the self, how are they ever to see the beauty in the one who beholds them?

    Life is a relentless pursuit of creating order out of chaos in the hope of finding a peaceful fulfilment that feels divinely sublime and intriguingly connected.

    Faith is contradicted by its very endeavour because its endeavour spawns fears of failure which counteract faith. Yet another elusive balance.

    Perhaps life is imbalance. What if balance is what bores us to search for life?

  • Good intentions are not enough

    Good intentions are not enough

    Believing in the universe waiting to serve you is no different than believing that the world revolves around your every need.

    Good intentions do not automatically result in beneficial outcomes. In fact, it too often results in harm.

    There’s a reason for the popularity of that old proverb that says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

    Understand why your methods may not be effective in achieving what you intend to achieve, and you’ll find yourself less reliant on whispering to the universe and more confident in owning your life.

    Good intentions are never enough.

    Never have been enough.

    Never will be enough.

    Until you are willing to own the methods, the behaviours, the actions that you carry out to fulfil your intentions, you’ll always have reason to believe that life is working against you, or that others don’t appreciate you. Etc.

    Own your life before it owns you.



  • Do you remember your dream?

    Do you remember your dream?

    What will you be when you give up?

    Sadly, too many live their lives this way resulting in them imposing their expectations on their children to fulfil the dreams that they abandoned.

    Every generation complains about the generation before them and loses sight of such behaviour giving the next generation reason to complain about them.

    We’re a strange bunch.

    We distract ourselves with emotions and abandon practicality, then distort our practical efforts to reclaim our emotions.

    If you lose sight of what is magical in the present moment, you’ll eventually convince yourself that you’re just a dreamy romantic when you find yourself speaking longingly of all the amazing opportunities that you sacrificed to create some life for others.

    Meanwhile, it was an effort to protect yourself from failure or rejection that caused you to sacrifice your dreams, and not any purposeful duty.

    Dreams will remain dreams if there is no purposeful conviction behind it.

    It’s possible to integrate your efforts towards your dreams with the practical life that you must live.

    In fact, it’s essential. How else are our children supposed to experience such conviction about the value of this single life that we have if all they ever witness is the drudgery of labour and duty?

    Can you even recall what dreams you abandoned in favour of acceptance or validation from those around you?

    Strike a balance before the imbalance ravages your peace.

  • Procrastination is not a mental illness

    Procrastination is not a mental illness

    For the sake of your sanity, do not buy into this extremely flawed way of thinking.

    If you were to believe the mainstream tripe about mental health, you’d be running back to your childhood for everything and blaming your parents for all your failures in life.

    The irony of this claim about procrastination and laziness is that they both have a very simple, yet easy to overcome root cause.

    You either believe in the value of what you’re doing, or you don’t.

    If you don’t, the only reason you will do it is because there will be unpleasant consequences if you don’t do it. That’s why we leave things until we have no choice but to do it when we approach it as if it’s a punishment for living.

    It’s this same reason that inspires us to look forward to our day, or to drag ourselves out of bed, regardless of how much sleep we got the night before.

    The reasons for struggling to see the value in doing something requires self awareness and mindfulness.

    But given that both are lost when we blame our past for our present failings, we further sabotage our efforts to connect with life in a more meaningful way.

    Please, for the love of sanity and common sense, stop buying into the mindless crap presented as research about mental health.

    Give yourself a fighting chance by simply understanding why you have good reason in your own mind to be averse to doing things that you know will be beneficial for you.

    We’ve overcomplicated life and then reframed that complexity to be mental health.

    We need to reclaim our humanness and the very real human experiences that give us reason to feel emotional duress from time to time.

    It’s all part of being human.

  • Reclaiming Peace: A Rabbit Hole of Reflection

    Reclaiming Peace: A Rabbit Hole of Reflection

    Reclaiming yourself in a vacuum of support is probably the most challenging part of mindfulness. I say mindfulness because it demands a focus on what is, rather than what should be, or could be, or must be. That, I have found, to be the most deflating distraction of all.

    The thoughts and the lamentations of everything that you have a right to, everything you deserve, and everything that is fair but is absent from your life or your relationships with those you value most denies you the composure or the absence of distraction needed to be mindful. Thus, the struggle for mindfulness is exacerbated by the struggle to quell the distractions. It therefore demands that it not be a struggle but instead, a quieting of the mind. But what quiets the mind?

    The regrets of the past that fuel the angst of the future occupies the mind in the present. Mindfulness is therefore the result of reconciling the past so that it does not prompt fears of the future leaving your mind blissfully unoccupied in the present except with which you choose to busy yourself.

    The test of self-worth is revealed in how you treat yourself when you are being neglected by those around you. Self-deprecation becomes an unhealthy expression of need in the hopes that someone will want to save you from yourself. If that someone is unfamiliar with your journey to that point, approach with caution.

    I’ve found that naivety has exacted the heaviest tolls on my life. Moments of blind trust, maybe optimistic trust, resulted in tears of regret and struggle because of the residual mess left behind after trusting the wrong people. Sometimes, that residual lasts a lifetime, although it doesn’t have to. We choose what we value, including the value that we place on what has been and is no longer true. Understanding why we willingly surrender peace for what is no more further peels away the layers that reveal the source of our self-loathing, or our discontent.

    To prevent a dulling of the spirit in the face of such upheaval, we must sharpen our resolve for what we claim is important in life. Clichés about life being short reveals the hypocrite in us when we use that short life to lament the past, or to exhaust ourselves in trying to demonstrate to others how badly it still affects us. Too many place life on hold while waiting for their struggle to be revered. They are the ingrates. The ones who chant about appreciating the beauty of life while being defined by its bitterness or its losses.

    Poetry is most often written by the broken hearted. The rest of the time it is written by the euphoric victim who never expected goodness after their last torment. I have not seen poetry written by one who is content, because the contented ones have no need for such expression. It is only the forlorn or the euphoric that have such desires to be heard, or seen. This I have found to ring true of my experiences too.

    Mindless meandering leads to pointless prose, akin to romantic poetry that calls out to the life we court, but rarely reflects the life we have. The journey through life is not life itself. Perhaps life is what is created by that journey while we presume to be pursuing life in our struggles during that journey. It’s a conundrum that the meek think to be obviously uncomplicated, but the troubled see it confounded beyond comprehension.

    The philosopher in me has been dulled by the elusive balance of reaching into the hearts of those dear, while accepting that such reach is not mine to have. In that, I believe, is born the struggle that we value long after it no longer holds promise because the values that we live by dictate that such struggles cannot be abandoned. My ramblings isolate me further in the space in which is thrive. It seems that a journey like this holds only the promise of fascination but not companionship, nor an understanding gaze from one who believes themselves to be too simple for such contemplations. If only they saw themselves through my eyes, perhaps they would see beyond the horizon of their despair.

  • Find your peace

    Find your peace

    Gratitude lays the foundation of the home.
    Respect builds its walls.
    Love and compassion provides the roof that protects you from the storm.
    And passion gives you the windows to allow your soul to breathe.
    As for faith…faith is the door that opens the path to all of it.

    Virtues have limited effect or value if practiced in isolation.

    It sometimes has a detrimental effect when one is practiced in excess compared to the others. Balance, as always, is what leads to harmony.

    Harmony is the throne on which peace resides.

    Find your balance.

    Find your peace.

    Your peace.

    Not what works for someone else.

    What works for you. For those who have rights over you.

    That’s the harmony you need to find.

    A balance between their rights, your responsibilities, your dreams, and your practicalities.

    Don’t wish away the not-so-good parts of your life. That will only create stress over things that are out of your control.

    Instead, find a way to incorporate it into the life that you have, so that you can consciously and deliberately mitigate the impact that it has on all the good that you have in your life.

    Live purposefully, not fearfully.

    The rest will take care of itself.

  • Save your sanity

    Here are a few highlights from my long overdue pilot episode of my podcast titled Tough Discussions.

    If you don’t question what you take from the mainstream mental health mill, you could lose your sanity thinking that you’re trying to find it.

    If the mainstream approach to mental health was so effective, why is it that we are experiencing a worsening global mental health crisis rather than becoming better humans?

    Everyone has good intentions, but that doesn’t mean that our methods or our understanding that informs how we act on those good intentions will be beneficial. In fact, a poorly informed decision is more often harmful than it is beneficial.

    Question what the pervasive ignorance teaches us about the human experience if you hope to salvage what little sanity remains in this world.

    You can find my podcast on Substack or YouTube under the handle @coachzaidismail.