Category: Self Worth

  • Reverse Engineering Life (Take II)

    The previous post feels like I over complicated a really simple concept, so here’s my second attempt at clarifying it.

    It’s really as simple as this. If you wish to understand someone, look behind their eyes, or their actions, and embrace the vulnerability that is required to see in them what you know to be true of yourself. If you see them angry, remember when you were angry in a similar context in your own life. Then seek to understand yourself in that moment, so that you can establish a basis on which to understand them, or at the least, attempt to.

    When we take this approach we benefit in two ways. Firstly, we stand a better chance of understanding them and therefore being able to meaningfully engage with them. Secondly, it allows you to benefit others from the struggles of your life, instead of just feeling as if it was a personal growth cycle and nothing more.

    If life is really too short to make all your own mistakes, and I believe this to be true, then the only way to live more than you otherwise would have would be to avoid pitfalls by learning from others. But that has to be reciprocal in a healthy society. So the more you hold on to the insecurity of others seeing your flaws and using it as a basis to judge you poorly, the less likely it is that you’ll be able to either learn from them, or allow them to grow from your experiences. Why would it prevent you from learning from them? Simple, the more you protect yourself from being discovered as a whole person with warts and all, the more you’re inclined to believe that your personal struggles are so unique that no one could possibly understand them.

    So the more you allow yourself to open up, the more you’ll realise that in opening up, you actually solicit sources of wisdom that benefit you, rather than weaken you. You’ll also reveal a side of your humanness that will attract the compassionate and tender-hearted ones that you most likely wish to embrace in your personal space. But none of it is possible if you keep everyone at arm’s length because of the mistaken belief that your weaknesses are not shared by others.

    We’re all so great at putting up facades that we’ve even convinced ourselves that no one else has them. Like I’ve always said, your assumptions about others are a true reflection of yourself, rather than them. However, such a reflection is inversely proportional to the reality of your self-image. So chances are that those that judge themselves to be weak assume that others are stronger, while those that embrace their weakness, see others as equally flawed, but not necessarily weak. I guess this is one time when the mirror cannot be trusted, because the eyes always filter what the heart needs to feel. Unless we stop to test the assumptions that the eyes make, our hearts will always be nourished by a tainted diet of reality.

  • Holystic Healing

    It’s so interesting (read ‘entertaining’) to note how people convince themselves that everything is solved through faith and struggle. It’s probably one of the cleverest disguises of feigning strength that I’ve come across. You see, the moment we profess to be answering to a higher calling in our efforts to rid ourselves of our demons, people are automatically obliged to show reverence for our beliefs, which puts any criticism or analysis off limits. But even that is not the most important part of all this because what lies beneath, as always, is what really counts.

    Most people I meet are so proud of their ability to cloak their true emotions that it’s become a source of strength for them. The irony is just, astounding. We find strength in reinforcing our weaknesses! Just the reality of that statement forces me to pause and consider how much else do we do that is this destructively self-serving. It’s as if we focus on finding a sense of composure about our current state, and presenting an image of contentment or confidence about it. Once that is achieved, we assume we’ve triumphed. Until the next wave of tribulations that strike, which forces us into defence mode, once again driving our focus towards building those walls so that others don’t see our pain or vulnerabilities.

    Fortunately, that is not sustainable. Those that persist beyond the realisation of how unsustainable and damaging it is, commit suicide through self-inflicted ailments that the world has convinced them is an attack from outside their body. And so they become martyred heroes from being such successful victims. And yes, I believe that the realisation does enter their consciousness at some point, but usually at a point when the validation and compassion that their established defences solicit is too great for them to want to reveal the truth behind their misery.

    We long for moments that we didn’t quite enjoy when we were in them, but they appear so much more appealing later on when what we have is considerably worse than what those moments offered us. This reminds me of the lyrics of that song by Gladys Knight where she reminisces about memories, and wonders if time has rewritten every line. I think it has. I think that failed relationships of the past seem to hold more appeal when the shortcomings of our current relationships cause those to pale in comparison. But this is not only true for relationships, but instead it is true for everything we do or experience in life. Nostalgia can be quite the selective spouse at times, and it is this very same sense of longing for what was that defines our perception of what is, which ultimately robs us of what we can be.

    And so in our efforts to hide from these awkward truths, we present the ultimate defence, faith. But even that is not an entirely bad thing. I’ve often considered whether or not psychosomatic relief is a valuable remedy or not. I’m inclined to believe that it is. If the objective is healing, rather than how one is healed, then by all means, draw on the healing effects of faith through identifying token markers that shift our minds towards that healing cycle. However, unless we reflect on those conversations we have in our heads and have the courage to honestly pick it apart, we’ll always be subject to the presence of those markers to heal ourselves, which will most likely result in the destructive behaviours persisting, which eventually leads to a rot beyond repair.

    It’s the same old analogy of the car once again. Driving the hell out of it wears it down, and no matter how many times you rigorously service it, or how much love and attention you smother it with, eventually the result of the on-going abuse will cause it to fail beyond repair. That is when death overtakes us, leaving us bewildered at its approach because the defences that served us so well for so long suddenly appears to be deserting us. No. We deserted ourselves long before that moment. We deserted ourselves each moment we chose to indulge our fears to feed our ego, instead of facing our fears and suppressing our ego.

    There is nothing in this world that is wholesome if applied excessively, and faith is not free of this flaw. The world only remains in balance if we apply moderation in our lives. Be it spiritually or physically, regardless of your professions of faith or spirituality, the result is the same. Even the atheist or the agnostic, or the ascetic or the religious scholar, all need that balance. But that balance is relative, and can only be found when we reflect and sincerely apply what the realisations of our reflections reveal. Unfortunately too many are looking to others to instil that balance in their lives. We look for gurus and frameworks and funky philosophies that worked for someone else, then call it this big secret to happiness and assume that if we follow the textbook, we’ll be fine. We won’t. As long as you’re living someone else’s reality in your life, your life is a lie. It is a painful delusion that will kill you in unpleasant ways while you’re praying for a peaceful death.

    Stop fooling yourself. It’s the greatest gift you could ever give yourself and the people around you.

  • Ties That Blind

    There are times when we’re so fixated on wanting to remove ourselves from a situation because we fear contaminating it, that we lose sight of the fact that our absence is in fact the greatest contamination of all. I find this most relevant in families, where our insecurity to fulfil our roles as role models leaves us receding and convincing ourselves that they’re better off without us. Unfortunately that insecurity rarely presents itself as that. More often than not it manifests itself as either selfishness or arrogance, both of which are simply defence mechanisms that we employ to prevent others from seeing our weakness.

    But it’s not about us as individuals. It never has been. The desire we all have to be part of something greater, or to be part of a wholesome social structure that is nurturing rather than destructive is what we undermine when we succumb to those insecurities. The most intriguing change in my life has been my need to recognise when I stopped being the nurtured and when I started being the nurturer. At some point I stopped being just the son, or cousin, and I started being the father, and the uncle. But it is my singular focus on needing to be nurtured that blinds me from realising that my nurturing is now dependent on being the nurturer.

    It all sounds so complicated, and it will complicate even further when I need to transition to being an elder, and not just the uncle or fatherly figure. But if I resist these changes in the rightful expectations that others have of me, I will be denying the next generation of the very essence of that which gave me a sense of community, family, and belonging. Sometimes it’s not being valued as an individual that gives us the comfort that we need to feel appreciated. Sometimes it’s simply that feeling of being part of a wholesome support structure that defines our self worth. Our innate need for significance is not only fed by recognition for our individual efforts, but more importantly it is fed by being part of something greater than us, and even more critical, having a pride of association with that belonging.

    And so I started contemplating these ties that blind us. It’s ties we maintain to who we were without realising that we have yet to embrace who we are, or who we aspire to be. It’s ties that hold us back in our belief that we have a right to take before we have a right to give. It’s that same sick mentality that convinces us that unless we’re responsible, we’re not accountable. Unless it is related to a responsibility we have over our own children or family members, then we’re not accountable for contributing towards the wellbeing of society at large. We forget that what strengths we have, others have as weaknesses, with the reverse being just as true. So when we stand arrogantly proclaiming that to each their own because we’re doing our bit and they must do theirs, we’re assuming that we’re superior to them in every way because we forget that they probably see similarly frustrating flaws in us.

    This is not an abstract notion. It’s not a philosophical debate either. It’s simply the realisation that if we act selfishly, we will deny the next generation the very security that now allows us the luxury to act selfishly. There is no such thing as a self-made man. We are shaped by society, and even when rejected by that same society, it is those that we surrounded ourselves with to find comfort in our rejection that formed the society from which we drew strength. I think the gravest delusion we suffer from is the assumption that we first need to receive before we can reciprocate. That’s the problem with this world. Everyone is waiting for everyone else, because the fear of rejection or insignificance is so great, that we’d rather demand it through obligation instead of earning that acceptance and inclusion through sacrifice.

    Worse still is the fact that the few that do sacrifice before they receive are most often the ones most trampled upon by the very same ones that cry foul when they are dealt a poor hand by life.

  • Tainted Perspectives

    Too often I witness people that are weighed down by life not because of the gravity of the situation they face, but because of the perspective that they stubbornly hold on to. That perspective most often feeds an underlying need that they maintain which is often based on expectations that they have from people around them. As I’ve experienced many times before, expectation is the source of much bitterness.

    Life, by design, is a vicious cycle. The only exit is death, but despite this reality being known to any reasonable being, it is the one destination that is most feared and often neglected. We’ve attached a stigma of morbidity to the reality of death even though it is life that deserves it instead. Life is what plagues us every single day, while death only plagues us once. Yet we hold on to life, believing that it is more deserving of indulgence, while ignoring death in which rests our ultimate legacy. However, taking a position on either extreme of this realisation is ill advised because it will leave us wanting.

    We are needy by nature. Through a volatile concoction of our needs, our ego, our fears, and not least of all our expectations, we sometimes find ourselves overwhelmed by the lacking sense of fulfilment because that toxic concoction is most often focused on seeking fulfilment from other beings not less feeble than ourselves. Those tainted perspectives are nurtured by our fears which are a result of yet other tainted perspectives relative to a specific life experience. Just as every experience results in joy or pain, every outcome results in an informed learning experience, or a reason to recoil and protect ourselves from a similar situation in future.

    But where does it all start? When is the seed sown that gives birth to the bitter tree that roots us in fear rather than an embracing passion? I suspect that the answer to that question is really irrelevant the moment we attain an age of self-awareness. As has been said, the beauty of the brain is the fact that it uses itself to analyse itself. For this reason there is nothing that compels us to suffer from the distorted perspectives that we inherited from the toxic environments in which we may have been raised. Unless there is a desire to achieve more, we will always hold on to less. That desire is based entirely on choices we make, but the choices we make are directly related to our frame of reference that we choose for ourselves.

    It sounds complicated, but it really is not. No matter how negatively indoctrinated we may be, we know what makes us feel good versus what makes us feel significant. Unfortunately we seldom take the time to notice the difference. Significance is based on how we are perceived, while feeling good, in simple terms, is based on how we feel about others. If our perspectives are focused on how others feel about us, we will inevitably travel a destructive path that will find us miserable and isolated even if surrounded by a room full of significant others. But, if our perspectives are focused on how we feel about others, we’ll find that we are forced to acknowledge and clarify what we stand for, which in turn will question our points of reference, which in turn will result in an awareness of self and surroundings that would otherwise go unnoticed.

    Our tainted perspectives are only inherited as long as we choose not to exercise our ability to be conscious and mindful of who we are and what we stand for. It is an ability, not a gift, nor a learned skill. It is born from a desire to want to know more, to want to be more, and to want to achieve more than the sum of our inheritance. That desire, I believe, is innate the moment we’re born. That is why the baby goes from laying helpless to crawling, to walking, to running, because without being able to effectively communicate, it is already wired to progress rather than to remain stagnant. It is for this simple reason that those of us that hold on to the past, or that resist growth for fear of failure, most often suffer debilitating diseases later in life because our bodies reach a threshold. That threshold is its ability to remain resilient in the face of the unnatural pressures that we subject it to. Eventually, it succumbs, and then we chase about sympathetically looking for cures for these invaders of our bodies, too timid to admit that it is us that our bodies need to be protected from.

  • Don’t Judge Me

    I’ve re-typed this first sentence more times than I care to count, and each time, like this time, I felt the inclination to delete it because it seemed to talk to an audience, rather than a simple expression of what is on my mind. But I can’t keep deleting because it only increases the anxious clutter in my head relative to what needs to be expressed. The fact that I have forgotten how to express my thoughts without considering how I want my words to be received is beyond debate. I’ve got to embrace the whore in me that seeks such attention or engagement, despite my good intentions.

    At some point I convinced myself that sharing my thoughts with a receptive audience would be the only circumstances under which I would find it easy to pour forth my ramblings. I guess that’s what happens when you repeat a lie to yourself for long enough. Eventually, you believe it. I’ve never needed an audience before. The outpouring of thoughts and emotions were entirely for selfish relief and not to garner attention or affirmation of any sort. Somehow, it was more therapeutic that way as well. Again, the feeling of wanting to delete these thoughts is threatening to guide my hand to dump this post in the trash.

    I am on the outside as I am on the inside, albeit slightly more composed. But my apparent composition is not an untrue reflection of my true state because despite being conflicted, it is a perpetual confliction rather than a fluctuating one. Therefore, considering the constant, composed is a disposition that easily disguises perpetual perturbation. Perhaps there is no difference.

    My apparent annoyance with my surrounding circumstances is often assumed to be a lack of appreciation for what has been achieved due to my focus on what remains to be achieved instead. I guess that is the judgement that is most often passed by those that celebrate mediocrity. They are the ones that easily judge my restlessness to be inflexible expectations that are supposedly unrealistic, while failing to see how my anxiety escalates at the realisation of how much more I could have achieved instead. It’s the curse of the realisation of death, although many times that realisation escapes me as well. However the more my capability grows, the more I find myself identifying ways in which I should be benefiting others instead of laying lethargically on the couch feeding my brain with interestingly useless information.

    Don’t judge me for my incoherency in this post, or in my life. There are simple things that are daunting for me. My point of reference is very different to most. I walk into a room of unfamiliar faces and my senses are overloaded with the new, and often disruptive energies of people I have never met before. It numbs my conscious mind for the time I am in their presence, until I eventually get a moment to myself when I am able to wade through the muck of their pretences that they maintain simply to avoid being seen.

    People do that as a matter of course. We defend ourselves in front of others but feel no regret or guilt for the unwarranted defence because it is the norm. Society is composed of a necessary insincerity in light of the dishonesty that we’re faced with. But it seems the dishonesty is what warrants the insincerity as a defence mechanism, although the defence is what feeds the dishonesty. I’m exhausted just contemplating this cycle of insanity. I wonder what came first, the need to defend from fear of being vulnerable, or the vulnerability that resulted from a broken promise? Regardless, it is the norm, and living idealistically like I tend to do so often, it is inevitable that I will be faced with recurring disappointments, and just as likely, I will disappoint those that live realistically instead.

    My perspective is no less sane than yours. While mine is fuelled with naivety, yours is fuelled with the distrust that wreaks through this world. I choose to be the stranger to that filth, at least consciously so. However, I’m quite certain that when I’m lacking in mindfulness, I am as much tainted by that wretched stench as much as those whose insecurities and mediocrity I despise.

    My head hurts. It’s a dull familiar ache. One that has no beginning, but promises to only end when the inevitability of death finally provides it with the assurance of reality that it seeks. Until then, it will hurt, I will be distracted, and the chasm between me and the world will only continue to widen, until eventually I step into the abyss created by my own gluttonous appetite for that which others do not see. That is, the truth of me.

  • Manufactured Threat

    I often stare in awe at people that have the energy to maintain their guard for an extended period of time, often their entire adult life, without appearing drained. They are often unassuming and enthusiastic about life, rarely missing an opportunity to make mention of the many wonderful experiences they’re having every other day. But if you look really closely, there is a quiet lie that accents every word and every gesture. A quiet lie that reveals the pain and the incompleteness of the existence that they pretend is so idyllic. It doesn’t require a trained eye or a special skill to see it. It just requires that you pay attention.

    I look at the smile on people’s faces and most are incomplete. They laugh a lot, and smile even more, but their smile rarely reaches their eyes. Their eyes assume the position needed to complete the gesture, but it lacks the sparkle and the enchanting energy that is exuded when it truly reflects a pleased heart, or a content soul. The mystery of what creates the silent lie often escapes even them because its source is so well hidden that it’s like that trinket that is put away safely because it’s too fragile to handle only to never be found again until some upheaval or significant event causes us to dig into a part of our closet that was always left untouched while waiting for the right moment to arrive. That’s when we’re reminded of the darkness that descended for a while, but was hastily ushered away to prevent prying eyes from noticing the vulnerability that it revealed. But somehow, when that trinket is finally rediscovered, the scars that were too raw to touch or caress may have assumed a charm of their own over the years which finally made it bearable to observe them in a new light while even appreciating them for the characteristic quirks that gave us that endearing trait that we previously would have despised.

    Scars of the soul are as visible as scars of the skin, if not more so but only if you’re paying attention. When we truly seek to engage with another, we’ll see in their eyes what their mouths and bodies refuse to reveal. Their eyes are incapable of lying. Conviction can only be faked if the pretender has convinced themselves of the lie that is being presented. Only then might the eyes conceal it even if only momentarily. And so we go through life protecting ourselves from events that should only have defined a moment in our life, but we nurtured it to define our world instead. In the process of this self-deceit we commit the next greatest harm against ourselves. We create a manufactured threat that convinces us that the defences that belonged to a single moment are necessary for our preservation. But the hurt of the moment was cherished more than the strength we had to survive it, which caused it to grow and fester in our being, while our strength lost its true purpose and instead became a means to maintain a façade that protected us from ourselves while believing that we needed to protect ourselves from the world.

    There is a time in our life when even after all this deception has ravaged us that we will establish a trusted handhold that threatens to draw us out of our fortress. It is at that time that we face the daunting decision to give trust a chance, or to continue with the deception. Most choose the deception and achieve mediocre goals in life that may even seem significant relative to others. Mediocrity is easily seen as greatness if the benchmark is a soul that is damaged more than your own. So we choose our points of reference carefully in order to maintain the deception, all the while convincing ourselves that there is a real threat that we face. A threat that we never expect others to understand because we fail to see the manufactured threats of others while we’re distracted by our own, instead of paying attention.

    Occasionally someone will come along to nudge you out of the stupor. Alas, we’ll likely not notice because attention to the present moment will be dwarfed by our need to protect ourselves.

  • If You Were In Love With You

    I often tell people to take care of themselves. And people often say thanks and return the sentiment. But more often than not, it’s simply a cordial exchange of sentiments and not much more. Today, for some reason, I found myself considering what it would actually entail if we applied it to ourselves. How would we take care of ourselves if we actually did it deliberately and not just as a matter of course?

    I think we would see ourselves very differently if we saw ourselves through the eyes of one that we would like to believe was truly in love with us. I think that we’re afraid to see ourselves that way because for some strange reason we seem to wait until someone else sees us in that light before we believe we’re deserving of such care and consideration. So I wondered then how I would treat myself if I were in love with me. Would I still be as reckless, or as oblivious, or would I want to indulge myself in every moment absorbing the beauty of life and the amazingly endless possibilities that await me?

    When we look at others with love and affection, we unconsciously project our dreams and aspirations on them, but would adapt such goals in line with the context of the happiness we desire for them, and not our own. We feign sacrifice in the belief that their happiness is more important than ours, while ignoring that our ability to make them happy is in fact what we desire affirmation of. Nonetheless, the pursuit of their happiness becomes our mission in life, and anything that compromises that goal brings out a side of us that often surprises even ourselves.

    So why then do we recede so easily in the face of the slightest obstacles that compromise the achievement of our own happiness that we need to give as a gift to ourselves? Why is it that we find it difficult to love ourselves if the love of another is absent? And so I wondered if you were truly in love with you, how would you treat yourself? How would you take care of yourself, and how reckless would you really be with your life?

    There seems to be an underlying conditioning that causes us to base our self-worth on the effort that others put in to contribute towards our happiness. This underlying conditioning is what drives us towards acts of self-sabotage whilst simultaneously giving us the reasons we need to justify why we don’t deserve better, at least not until someone else says we do.

    It’s all a charade. We invest in others more than we invest in ourselves because we need to believe that we’re significant only when we make a difference in someone else’s life, or when someone else needs us. And then also, that need must be overt, and more importantly, it must be a need that we want to fulfil or else it becomes a burden and not a blessing.  Even the most egotistical amongst us behaves anally narcissistic because of a fear of insignificance, not because of a true belief of self-worth. The strange thing is that if we made a definite effort to truly take care of ourselves, we’d probably attract the kind of person that would truly complement our lives rather than seeking out one that completes those areas that we lack the confidence to fulfil for ourselves. It’s that cycle of need that leads to emotional dependence rather than mutual affection and respect.

    The vicious circles of life plague us more than we will ever truly realise. Very few of them keep us grounded, but the vast majority keep us enslaved to our own insecurities. I’m not quite sure what the point of this post was, or if I even managed to make a meaningful point, but I suspect that somewhere in there lies a truth that will prove valuable at some point in my short life.

  • Filled to the Brim

    Given my recent overload of pressure and work at the office, I found myself facing the realisation of what determines my capacity to deal with what is thrown at me each day. I found myself having conversations in my head about how I’ve had enough, how I’m not willing to put up with the crap any longer, and how this is all pointless. However, I couldn’t fend off this nagging feeling that that was just me setting limitations for myself. I was determining when it was enough, often long before it really was.

    There is a physical limitation that is also breached at some point which results in physical fatigue or exhaustion that simply makes it near impossible to function effectively. But the more I considered all this, the more I realised that I was setting a limitation for myself long before I arrived at that point of true physical exhaustion. It reminded me of a study by Dr Tim Noakes that confirms that our brain tells us that we’re tired long before we reach a state of being physically fatigued even though we are capable of much more. That poses a significant challenge to the perspectives that I’ve held on to for so long. I always assumed that being able to read my physical symptoms would be the surest way to make informed decisions about my emotional well being, but it turns out that it’s not as straight forward as that.

    And so I contemplated my current frustration with the on-going seemingly endless cycle of pressure that we’ve been under for more than a month now, and each time I felt like indulging myself with the defeatist proclamation of ‘I’ve had enough’, I knew that I was still capable of dealing with more. Funny how my attitude determined when enough was enough rather than any real physical or emotional constraints I was faced with. Through this painful exercise of working with some of the most amazingly inept resources I’ve ever had to contend with in my career, it has become obvious that what I am capable of is far from what I am tolerant of.

    I guess the focus needs to shift towards improving my tolerance and therefore my abilities to navigate around issues that challenge my tolerance levels, rather than to constantly focus on subject matter competence and relationship building. However, I suspect that this is really just scratching the surface of a bigger issue that lies beneath, that being the issue of self-worth, confidence, and emotional intelligence, each of which have a myriad of supporting issues as well. Yet again, a vicious cycle emerges. What remains clear though is the fact that I determine my capacity long before anyone else is able to push me beyond my own limits. This cup is far from full, although at times it serves my purposes to present myself as having reached a threshold that is reasonable to be considered a limitation of wits and patience for any reasonable person.

    Even in that there is little comfort, because in so doing, I am reminded that I am merely comparing myself to the mediocre, rather than striving to exceed such levels of complacency.