Category: Self Worth

  • Don’t serve to be seen

    Don’t serve to be seen

    Don’t only serve others when there’s something in it for you.

    That’s not goodwill or charity, it’s a path to hypocrisy.

    Uplifting others should be done because you want to ease their journey through life.

    Theirs, not yours.

    Not because you want them to worship you, or celebrate your praises.

    To contribute, support, and enrich other’s lives willingly is the root of joy.

    That is what gifts us a night of restful sleep even if spurned by those whom we serve the most.

    When you withhold your service because of the absence of gratitude from them, you step on that slippery slope that will one day lead to you being equally ungrateful for what you have in your life.

    Withholding of service must only ever be done if such service enables its recipient to harm others.

    Like supporting one in times of need who then uses such support to justify their reasons for ill treating or being abusive towards others, or denying the rights of others.

    There is an important line to be drawn between supporting one who is in need of support versus enabling one to avoid accountability for the state in which they find themselves.

    When we need validation for the support that we offer, we are more likely to enable such self-imposed hardship because our need to be of service is what drives our motives to support them.

    That’s how hypocrisy sets in, and how our efforts to improve society become a contributing factor towards the selfish decline of society, leaving us hopeless and exhausted and giving us reason to believe that we’re the only good souls left.

    Be mindful and purposeful about why you are offering assistance, and what your assistance is enabling or else you may end up causing more harm while believing that you’re doing good.

  • Be blessed, not entitled

    Be blessed, not entitled

    Appreciation is simply an acknowledgement of what we feel blessed with, while gratitude is reflected in what we claim to appreciate.

    The secret to contentment is found in gratitude.

    But not in an attitude of gratitude.

    It must be more substantial than that.

    Gratitude must be a meaningful connection with what we truly value about ourselves and our lives, and not just appreciation for having more than others.

    Gratitude allows us to focus on what’s good, and realise how much worse things could be.

    It encourages appreciation for what we have instead of envy for what we don’t have.

    Most importantly, it recognises the blessings that most take for granted like good health, free time, youthfulness, good relations, and peace of mind.

    When we lose gratitude for these things, we take it for granted and stop doing what is needed to maintain it.

    That’s when we lose it.

    And if we still don’t recognise our ingratitude at that point, our difficulties become a trial rather than a reminder leading us to believe that we’re cursed or being tested by divine decree.

    Live with gratitude. Always.

  • Raging into oblivion

    Raging into oblivion

    The rage that we hold within us feels like a justified protest or demand for justice or fairness from those around us.

    But rage is a master of distraction.

    It is born in moments of legitimate duress, but continues long after.

    The rage of being unheard in one moment leads to harshness when we feel misunderstood in a totally different moment.

    Rage is the intensity of our demand to be treated with significance or respect, while not realising that rage undermines both, our significance and the respect we need from others.

    Rage only ever achieves compliance from others while they may fear us in our moments of rage.

    The moment those around us no longer fear us, rage becomes a tool that destroys what we’re trying to achieve, and isolates us from the ones who we wish would see us more clearly.

    But we only rage because we don’t see ourselves clearly.

    And that’s the greatest distraction that rage offers us.

    It convinces us that we’re right and that everything that we see is wrong with others is good reason for us to rage.

    And in those moments, we lose our connection with reality and replace it with a focus on who is taking our pain seriously while not realising that we’re causing pain, leaving them to see nothing more than a brute rather than a hurt soul.

    Beyond the release of the anguish we hold within, rage offers no value at all in securing the peace or harmony that we want with those who matter to us.

    Don’t only try to restrain your rage.

    Instead, seek to understand why you feel that rage at all.

    Otherwise your rage will grow to define you while you may think it’s defining your battle cry to the world.

  • Are you sure you’re not enough?

    Are you sure you’re not enough?

    I often see people needing to remind themselves that they’re enough.

    Some even print out posters proclaiming “I am enough” and place it on their fridge or at their workplace, or on their mirror.

    Enough for what? For whom? In what? To achieve what?

    We have to convince ourselves that we’re not good enough before anyone can make us feel that way.

    When you focus on whether you’re enough, you lose sight of the fact that you’re literally reducing the entirety of who you are to what you think is enough about you in only one domain of your life.

    That’s usually in our social spaces.

    That’s how we become defined by what we think others think of us, or what we think of ourselves through our self-criticism.

    You are enough of whatever you choose to be, but first you need to see yourself clearly.

    See yourself realistically, not through rose coloured spectacles, or affirmations of things you know is not true but want must be true.

    The problem to solve is not to be enough, it’s to understand what you’re doing that may be counter productive to who you want to be or what you want to achieve.

    Start there. Start by observing the effectiveness of your approach, your effort, your strategy, etc.

    Then do something about those parts that are not as effective as they need to be.

    Now you’re solving the right problems.

    Being enough was always just a distraction.

    Own your life.

  • A bitter end

    A bitter end

    Holding on to bitterness for a past betrayal is like drinking poison and hoping that your betrayer will die.

    Bitterness eats away at your peace while you hope that the intensity of your bitterness will somehow influence the karma of the person who treated you poorly.

    If you had that much power, you’d have been able to enforce  justice with them already.

    The longer you hold on to the bitterness, the more harm you cause for yourself more than any harm that they may have imposed on you.

    When you fixate on your reasons to feel bitter, you prevent yourself from considering whether your assumptions about their intentions or motives are true.

    You also prevent yourself from seeing the impact of your bitterness on those around you who had nothing to do with that betrayal or hurt caused by someone else.

    Sometimes people betray trust because their own fears are stronger than their convictions, and not necessarily because they deliberately wanted to use or hurt you.

    Anger in the face of betrayal, even hurt, is understandable.

    But just because it is understandable doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

    Own how you feel.

    Understand what you can do to handle such situations better in future.

    Move on.

    Life awaits.

  • Dreamer or doer?

    Dreamer or doer?

    The absence of balance is stress. Emotional duress. Lack of joy. And so much more.

    The fear of not having, not coping, not achieving, or not thriving is what drives most people to exert themselves in what they think is a good effort towards a fulfilling life.

    Unfortunately, fear never inspires sustainable outcomes.

    The craziness about fear as a motivator is that it simply pushes us to do what we we’re already capable of doing.

    Think about it.

    Fear never creates ability or competence. It only gives us reason to act on the ability and competence we already possess.

    But it’s not what you think ability and competence looks like.

    The only true ability that matters is our ability to figure things out, followed by our courage to act on what we’ve figured out.

    Fear is what gets in the way of acting on what we know or believe to be true or what is needed.

    Understand your fears and you’ll find balance.

    React to your fears and you’ll either be a dreamer or a doer, but you will struggle to find peace or harmony, or even fulfilment in anything that you achieve.


  • Are you owning it?

    Are you owning it?

    This is a painful truth for many.

    One of the most prominent trends in people’s lives when things go wrong, is that they surround themselves with those who make them feel better about where they’re at, rather than those who push them to step up and own their life.

    You won’t ever grow beyond your current challenges if you constantly have people telling you how brave you are for living with it.

    Cherish those who hold you to a higher standard, not those who pacify you when you’re wrong.

    Of the rarest of creation, I believe, must be the sincere advisor.

    Too many offer advice because they think it’s good advice and not because they genuinely understand or are invested in supporting or uplifting the one who is experiencing difficulties.

    Such advisors regurgitate advice that worked for them, meaning well, but not realising that they’re making it about them rather than focusing on what you’re grappling with.

    If you find a sincere and credible advisor (emphasis on credible), cherish them, because their commitment is to your upliftment, and not to their own ego.

  • The path to peace is gratitude

    The path to peace is gratitude

    The path to peace, internal peace, is to see yourself clearly through the muck and the mire of the world around you.

    Peace is found in being true to who you are in the midst of a maddening crowd.

    It’s found in knowing that we can only ever choose how we respond to life, and learn from the effectiveness of those choices each time that we are required to make them.

    Peace is found in being content with what we understand to be the reasons for our poorly informed decisions so that we can learn from it, rather than shackle ourselves to our past because of it.

    Peace is found in not creating fragments of ourselves in different carefully hidden spaces of our shame or our sadness, but seeing it as intricate parts of who we are in our entirety.

    Peace is found in resisting the labels and the judgements as defining attributes of our being, but rather using those as input into informing the paths that we choose to follow in our journey of figuring out how life works.

    Peace is found in building on what holds goodness rather than berating ourselves or others in what resulted from poorly informed decisions.

    When we live life towards honouring the life that we have rather than lamenting the life that we don’t have, we find gratitude.

    And gratitude is the antidote for every illness of the heart, and every ache of the soul.

    Gratitude and accountability are roommates, and anger is the unscrupulous landlord that evicts both.