Category: Self Worth

  • Judging bad behaviour

    Judging bad behaviour

    I have yet to meet someone who behaves poorly when they feel appreciated.

    Yet, we’re most often focused on the poor behaviour instead of their feeling of insignificance.

    The same is true for us.

    Our anger, bitterness, or rebellion is simply an expression intended to reclaim our significance when significant others treat us as if we don’t matter. Or when we feel like we don’t matter to them.

    This doesn’t excuse the behaviour, but hopefully, it prompts us to be more understanding rather than judgemental when we find ourselves faced with unacceptable behaviour from those around us.

    It’s easier to judge others when being kind or understanding feels like weakness on our part, or if we’re afraid of condoning their behaviour.

    Both those assumptions are based on our assumptions about what their intentions are behind their bad behaviour.

    Consider that the next time you become aware of how you’ve chosen to judge someone.

    Are you judging their behaviour because of what you don’t want to be associated with? Are you judging it because you expect them to be better than that? Or are you judging it because it undermines your role in their life?

    Whichever one it is, judgement should be reserved for the courts, and understanding and compassion should drive our interactions with those around us so that we can encourage the best in them, rather than judge the worst in them.

    And if you want to understand why you’re driven towards assumptions about what drives your behaviour, or the behaviour of those around you, get a copy of my book, The Egosystem.

    It answers exactly such questions so that you might be able to find that elusive peace that you need within your soul.

  • Are you waiting for permission to be who you want to be?

    Are you waiting for permission to be who you want to be?

    Note, who you want to be, not what you want to be.

    We’re so focused on what we want to be, what career, what achievements, what social standing, that we lose sight of who we want to be.

    That’s how we become defined by what we are, or what goals we are pursuing.

    Who we want to be refers to the kind of human we want to be.

    It sounds simple enough. Everyone wants to be kind, generous, understanding, compassionate, benevolent, and so on.

    There isn’t a single person that will say that they don’t want to be those things, and many who think that they are already that.

    So why then are we not experiencing others the way that we all claim we are conducting ourselves?

    It’s because we wait for permission to express kindness, understanding, and all those other beautiful attributes.

    That permission comes in the form of needing others to behave a certain way, or to treat us the way that we want to be treated before we’ll be good and loving and understanding towards them.

    That permission is what we get when we want to feel appreciated before we show gratitude, or we want to feel loved before we express affection. And so on.

    When we wait for such permission, we become defined by how we are treated, and thus, we become part of the harshness or coldness that we experience in our lives.

    So, who do you want to be?

    Are you who you want to be, or are you waiting for permission to be that person?

    Your life is yours to claim. It always starts with you.

  • Allow your children to be their own person

    Allow your children to be their own person

    We always have good intentions when we strive to give our children everything that we didn’t have.

    Often, this includes protecting them from the hardships or difficulties that we experienced.

    Unfortunately, when we do this, we end up protecting them from reality, and in the process, we deny them the very life lessons that taught us to appreciate what we have.

    This is one of the most common reasons for kids growing up to be timid, entitled, or disrespectful…or all of the above.

    Hardships and difficulties are character building experiences.

    Find a way that strikes a balance between allowing them to experience it, and providing guidance and support as they navigate their way through it.

    Too many assume that hardship is a denial of a good life.

    It’s not.

    Allow them to earn their privileges so that they’ll experience gratitude and fulfilment when they achieve it.

    Lastly, when you shy away from something that weighs you down, or you try to hide it from them, you’re teaching them to feel ashamed of getting things wrong, or failing at achieving goals.

    That’s how we raise them with a value system that conflicts with the kind of humans that we want them to be.

    Be mindful of your rule as a parent, but more than this, be mindful of your contribution as a human being.

    It always starts with you.

  • Are you aware of your legacy?

    Are you aware of your legacy?

    Sometimes, when we’re faced with disappointment about how we’re appreciated by those dear to us, it’s easy to find reason to give up on what we wish to leave as a legacy for them in life.

    So, we withhold our contribution, or pull back on our participation in their lives, assuming that we don’t matter.

    Whether that turns out to be true or not doesn’t mean that we didn’t leave our mark. It just means that the mark we left was not truly a reflection of who we are.

    Giving up on what’s important to you just because it wasn’t as important to someone else means that it wasn’t truly important to you to begin with.

    What was more important to you was the anticipated appreciation or celebration of your contribution, and not the value that you wanted to create for them.

    When we lose sight of this, we also lose ourselves.

    Hope and dreams are most often abandoned because we waited for others to validate what we believed to be valuable in life.

    Regardless of how it plays out, your legacy will either be one of a passionate pursuit of achieving what you believed in, or an abandonment of hope because you were not accepted the way that you wanted to be.

    Either way, you leave a legacy. And if you lose sight of this, you’ll end up blaming the world for what you withheld in your contribution towards it.

    That’s how you feed the very cycles of life that broke your will to pursue your dreams.

    It always starts with you.

    Connect, with conviction, to what you want to add as value to the lives of others, and you’ll find fulfilment in that even if they don’t immediately connect with that value.

    That’s how we have less death bed regrets, and we leave a legacy worth celebrating.

  • A life full of things…except happiness

    A life full of things…except happiness

    While there may be truth in the saying that money doesn’t buy happiness but at least you can choose your misery, we need to consider if we really want to be choosing our misery or experiencing happiness?

    It all starts out with good intent.

    Earn some money to improve your quality of life, or create a home environment that is welcoming and comfortable for those you love, and hopefully in the process, feel appreciated for your efforts.

    But what happens when that appreciation is not as forthcoming as you need it to be?

    Sometimes, we look for that appreciation in a specific shape and form, and if it doesn’t appear in exactly that way, we assume that we’re not appreciated.

    That’s when our relationships become transactional as we start comparing who does how much to maintain the standard of living that we’ve grown accustomed to, while dismissing the efforts and intentions of the one doing all that.

    Valuing yourself comes before any expectation or need to be valued by others. If you don’t value yourself, you’ll look for that validation or appreciation to be served up in a specific way by others, thereby holding them accountable for how you feel about yourself.

    That’s how you end up having a life full of things, but a heart that lacks contentment.

    It always starts with you. You teach others what is important to you by how you treat them.

    And when you value yourself, you’ll realise that when others don’t value you, it’s because they’re struggling with their own self-worth and not because they don’t appreciate you or your efforts in their life.

    Own your life, and your emotional wellbeing will take care of itself.

  • Eat more humble pie

    Eat more humble pie

    It only tastes like humble pie when we feel humiliated after being corrected.

    Arrogance is the belief that we’re better…humility visits us when we realise that we’re not.

    The root of arrogance is insecurity, but that’s a discussion for another day.

    If we’re sincere about wanting to benefit others or wanting to create good for those around us, when we get it wrong and we’re corrected, we’ll appreciate it.

    In such cases, we’ll eat gratitude pie, not humble pie, right?

    So, when it feels like we’ve been made to eat humble pie, we need to consider what our intention was behind what we did before we got things wrong.

    On the surface, our intentions always appear noble.

    But it’s that appearance of nobility that distracts is from sincerity.

    When connecting with or checking your intention, be sure to dig deeper than what you experienced in that moment.

    It’s only when we connect with our intention, our true intention, that we’ll be able to recognise how others are not deliberately malicious or selfish in their actions.

    Instead, it will allow us to connect with empathy to the emotional needs that they have.

    That’s how we break cycles of unhealthy behaviours.

    Perhaps if we eat more humble pie we’ll discover gratitude? 🤔

  • Who controls you?

    Who controls you?

    Sometimes, we’re so focused on reacting to the disrespect that we receive from others that we don’t realise how we give up our self-respect in the process.

    If we continue in reaction mode for long enough, we’ll find ourselves not only returning the favour by treating them the way that they treat us, but we’ll also find ourselves blaming them for our response.

    That’s when we go beyond losing our self-respect and we begin losing ourselves completely.

    Strangely though, we’re unlikely to do this with everyone.

    We’ll often encounter total strangers or mere acquaintances who will treat us badly, but we’ll ignore them and continue focusing on what is important to us.

    Therefore, the answer lies in how much significance we place in those relationships to which we lose ourselves.

    The more significant that we want to be in their lives, the more we’ll convince ourselves about their significance in ours. That’s how we become emotionally invested in being treated with respect by them.

    The less respect we receive, the more intense our emotional experience, resulting in us fighting fire with fire. In other words, giving them a taste of their own medicine.

    That’s when respect becomes optional. When we convince ourselves that treating others the way that they treat us is in fact justice, when the truth is that it is returning their bitterness with our bitterness towards them.

    That’s how we give up the good of who we are.

    The greatest tragedy in all of this is that when we lose ourselves, we also lose sight of the struggles, or the low self-esteem that they’re experiencing which causes them to treat us badly.

    Instead of breaking that cycle, we feed it, and in the process, harm ourselves as much as we believed they were harming us.

    When respect becomes optional based on how we’re treated by others, we give them the power to define how we feel about ourselves.

    To whom are you giving your power today?

  • What are you waiting for?

    What are you waiting for?

    I’ve often advised someone about something that I truly believed them to be capable of achieving, and the response I received was, “Not everyone is like you!”

    Henry Ford said, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

    Sadly, too many think that they can’t, and then blame the world for the state in which they find themselves.

    But why would someone willingly put themselves down, or sell themselves short?

    Did I hear you say fear of failure? No. That’s what we see, and often what they feel on the surface.

    Dig a little deeper and you’ll realise that failure is such a threat because it threatens to reduce our significance among those who are important to us.

    It’s the threat of insignificance through being incompetent or unsuccessful that fills us with the fear of failure.

    But, we must always remember that fear is only the response to what we’re assuming is the probable outcome of our efforts.

    In other words, when we’re convinced that we won’t be able to accomplish something, or we have doubts about achieving it, the assumptions that we’ve made is what we’re focused on. Hence the feeling of dread or fear when we contemplate the future outcome.

    Hence the fear of failure.

    The important question to consider is therefore not if we’re capable of achieving that goal, but rather why is our feeling of significance as a person defined by our level of success?

    And before you say it’s because people judge you as a failure if you don’t accomplish things the way you’re expected to, the next question you should be asking is why does the judgement of others define your self-worth more than your opinion of yourself?

    People’s opinions will only weigh you down if you give them permission to do so.

    Talking about permission, when was the last time you gave yourself permission to learn from your failures instead of judging yourself for failing?