We become defined by what we have when we lack substance in who we are.
We offer material comfort and chase material gains when connecting with the human, both in ourselves and in others, seems like a stretch too far.
What we think of ourselves is what we surround ourselves with.
The one who loves the scent of perfume won’t spend their day in the bellows of a blacksmith if they had the option to spend it in the indulgent space of a perfumery.
The reason we avoid people who demand more of our humanness and less of our outward success is because we can’t give what we don’t have.
Therefore, we only give of what we have.
Similarly, we only find what we’re searching for.
If we’re searching for evidence of why who we are is not enough, we’ll find it.
But, in the process, we’ll also lose sight of every bit of evidence that confirms what is enough, or more than enough about who we are.
There is nothing so bad that there is no good in it.
When we focus on the bad, we become selfish and hard-hearted.
Hard-heartedness only ever leads to misery, and self-imposed misery loves company.
That’s why, when our opinions of ourselves is shaped by how others respond to us, or what we don’t have, the only thing left to give is bitterness and anger.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
And then we blame the world for being a cruel place.
The world is what we make of it. And what we see in others is a reflection of how we see ourselves.
It always starts with you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism #purpose #ownyourlife #theegosystem
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A hard heart beats its owner
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Ingratitude, the illegitimate child of self-loathing
When you judge yourself harshly, you lose sight of the good that you’re achieving.
That you judge yourself at all is an indulgence in breaking yourself down, rather than lifting yourself up.
That’s why those who judge themselves most, are also most dependent on others treating them well before they feel significant, even if their behaviour doesn’t warrant such fair treatment.
That’s how social validation becomes the motivator for everything that we do.
But, we’re so focused on hiding our shame of what we believe to be inadequate about ourselves that we forget that we’re hiding our shame.
We then grow to be defined by the validation that we receive for everything on the outside while losing sight of how we’re avoiding everything on the inside.
The more successful we are in gaining such ‘respect’ or validation from others, the more we become convinced that we’re right, and that anyone who points out our shortcomings must be wrong…or at the least, they must be cruel or envious, they just don’t understand us. .
When judge others by the same standard that we judge ourselves.
You must be OK with oppressing yourself first before you’ll find justification in oppressing others.
You can only give what you have.
That’s how the ones who are sincere in our growth will be taken for granted when we discard them in favour of those who are looking for validation for their ability to validate us.
Victims support each other towards being OK with being victims.
Unless you break the cycle of victim mentality, you’ll lose sight of what good you are capable of achieving, while focusing on what shame you need to pacify yourself about.
Ingratitude is the illegitimate child of self-loathing.
That’s when life feels most torturous.
It always starts with you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism #purpose -
Your perspective may be your undoing
Internal conflict is the greatest contributor to misery.
And misery or stress is felt most deeply when we’re at odds with ourselves, which affects our health because of that internal conflict.
It is stress that always precedes any physical ailment that forms as a chronic illness within our body.
And expectations are at the core of stress.
We experience the most stress when what we believe others expect from us conflicts with what we expect from ourselves because it feels like they’re being unreasonable or as if they’re trying to set us up fry fail.
But we only stress if we lack the ability or confidence to correct their expectations, or to adjust our own.
That confidence is rarely developed in the moment of being challenged.
Confidence comes from the credibility that we develop in ourselves after experiencing the positive outcomes of being true to ourselves.
That means that as long as we avoid being true to ourselves because of the fear of rejection or ridicule, we won’t give ourselves an opportunity to prove ourselves.
In other words, when we hold back because we try to fit in, we drift further away from confidence, and closer to being defined by what others think of us.
That’s how we become miserable, because life becomes a chase for acceptance and validation.
Accomplishments then lack sweetness or fulfilment unless someone else acknowledges the value of what we accomplished.
But even then, we won’t truly connect with the joy and gratitude of such accomplishments because our fulfilment is found in receiving validation from others, and not in the beauty of who we are.
It always starts with you.
Own Your Life.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism #purpose -
Own your prejudice
While I can’t take credit for the poster, the message in the poster is 100% on point.
If you find this offensive, I offer life coaching at very reasonable rates aimed at helping you to own your prejudices.
We need to support women instead of accommodating wayward men.
The same applies for boys who think their toys are an entitlement to sexual favours from women.
That only happens because they have a low self-esteem, go base desires control their behaviour.
Society’s insensitivity and lack of basic education about the natural processes of the biology of a woman is exactly the ignorance at the heart of the problem.
And that doesn’t mean sex education.
It means we need more education that highlights the human behind the biology, for both men and women, or boys and girls.
In a time when information is so readily available to even the under privileged, ignorance is no longer an excuse.
We need to change the narrative.
Now is a great time to start!
#ownyourlife #theegosystem #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #menstruation #condoms #girlchild -
Who’s draining your joy?
Avoidance requires distractions, and distractions are exhausting.
We don’t always avoid the truth because we want to.
In fact, most often, it’s because we’re persisting in what we believe to be true that causes us to ignore the reality that we’re facing.
Like investing in someone who is at war with themselves.
Or expecting opportunities to work out when the others involved have a different agenda.
Or wanting to believe that we’re significant to someone when we never were because they were chasing significance in something or someone else.
And of course, when we deny the reasons for not achieving something by insisting that it was due to actions from others rather than accepting that we didn’t quite commit to it the way we should have.
Protecting ourselves from admitting the truth is only necessary when we attach shame to having gotten something wrong.
That shame is not because of how others would react, but because of how we judge ourselves relative to how much weight we place on the opinions of others.
Life gets a whole lot simpler and more fulfilling when our opinion about ourselves matters more than what others think of us.
That’s when the truth becomes easier to embrace because instead of viewing ourselves with shame, we see less than ideal outcomes as feedback on how to raise our game.
Unfortunately, most of us are playing our game by someone else’s rules and then blaming them for why we’re unsuccessful at achieving our goals.
Maybe that’s why you’re tired before even stepping out of bed.
It’s time to own your life.
It always starts with you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower -
To me… From me…
This may seem vain, but I’ve been wanting to do this in my copy of my first book since I first published it.
And today, sitting and reading through it to remind myself of some of that advice that I give others but don’t use, it felt like the right time to finally acknowledge me.
There was no one cheering me on to walk this journey that I started in 2018.
Rarely did anyone cheer me on in my journey up to that point either.
And I often have to remind myself to give myself a break because it’s easy to get life wrong when you’re trying to figure it out by yourself.
The best things to come out of my mistakes, have been the most fulfilling lessons that I’ve been able to share with whoever thought it worth listening to.
So don’t go through life judging yourself harshly for getting it wrong at times. Or even most of the time.
Success makes us haughty while failure and mistakes inspire us with wisdom.
It all depends on what you take from it.
Peace.
#zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife #anincompletelovestory #authorsofinstagram -
Are you sure you have an attitude of gratitude?
With all the ‘attitude of gratitude’ narratives, I thought it might be helpful to identify when we’re not being as grateful as we think we are.
Gratitude for the self is reflected in how you value who you are without a need to diminish the value of others.
Sometimes, we convince ourselves that we need to take care of ourselves at the expense of the rights that others have over us, while not realising that this mindset is one of a victim who feels oppressed.
Defensiveness and imbalance in how we deal with life is therefore a common outcome when we lack gratitude for who we are.
Gratitude is not reflected in putting yourself first.
Again, that’s a victim mindset.
Gratitude for the self is reflected in how you feel about yourself when others are grappling with their self-worth while blaming you for it.
As mentioned before, gratitude is what we do with what we appreciate, that’s why the truth of your gratitude for yourself is reflected in how you exercise your abilities to create value in your life and the lives of those around you, despite not being acknowledged or appreciated for it.
So, if you connected with any of the 9 points in the above post, you have some introspection due.
You cannot give what you don’t have.
If you’re lacking in gratitude for yourself, you’re likely teaching your kids and others how to be selfish, or how to be martyrs, but it’s unlikely that you’re teaching them how to be grateful for who they are.
It always starts with you.
#gratitudeattitude #gratitude #growthmindset #ownyourlife #theegosystem #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #parenting #generationaltrauma #relationshipgoals -
Choose your battles carefully
There’s that old saying that reminds us that if we stop to respond to every barking dog, we’ll never get to the end of the street..
The lack of interest, lack of respect, or lack of appreciation that you receive in response to your efforts towards what should be joint goals is good reason to get into arguments or debates with those around you about what you need from them.
We’re human, so there will be times when we all need a reminder about what we may be forgetting or neglecting, so those tough discussions are sometimes beneficial when you express how you’re affected by what others are doing or not doing.
However, find a balance between investing in relationships that are mutually respectful, versus recognising when you’re just seen as background noise because what is important to you is not important to them.
This is true in every role that we may play, including parenting, professional roles, partnerships in business, and especially with our partners in life.
The easiest thing to do is talk a big talk about what we stand for.
Recognising who repeatedly doesn’t live by their words is a good starting point to reconsider how much of your time and effort is justified in trying to get through to them.
While we must always keep working at creating understanding because that is the root of the love and harmony that we want in life, we must also be able to know the difference between a misunderstanding and a lack of interest.
It’s the lack of interest in the other person to live up to the shared values that you may have with them that becomes important to recognise when you should invest in building understanding, versus when you are wasting your time trying to get through to someone who lacks interest in what’s important to you.
This is where mindfulness is more important than commitment, or else you’ll be fully committed to a dead end while convincing yourself that you’re striving towards a shared goal.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail
