Blog

  • Keep up, if you can

    Keep up, if you can

    Like they say, love is not two people looking at each other, it’s two people looking in the same direction.

    What happens when the one is looking ahead, while the other is looking behind?

    One common failing in relationships is that while one partner views growth as the amazing things that they can achieve together, the other sees it as a statement of their partner not being happy with what they have.

    One focuses on protecting what they have while the other focuses on improving it.

    One focuses on reaching their full potential, while the other is still waiting to feel validated for what they’ve achieved. And so it goes…

    And when these differences of perspective are not understood, it’s easy to assume that the conflict of priorities is a rejection of who we are or what’s important to us.

    There is no easy fix to this because at the root of it is the fact that the one who is invested in growth has a healthier self-worth than the one who is invested in staying where they are.

    Self-worth is based on how much gratitude we have for who we are.

    And gratitude is something that we cannot instil in another. We can point out all the reasons why someone should be grateful, but the choice to be grateful is always theirs to make.

    Self-pity or self-loathing, which is simply the opposite of self-worth, is what gets in the way of healthy emotional bonds in a relationship.

    Understanding and accepting your ability to influence your partner in this regard could be the difference between courting insanity and choosing peace.

    Choose carefully.

    Own Your Life

  • I see me in you

    I see me in you

    We judge others the way we judge ourselves.

    The less aware we are of our self-judgement, the more rigid we will be in insisting on the accuracy of our assumptions about others.

    The more compassionate and understanding we are in our efforts to improve ourselves, the more space we’ll allow for others to recover from the mistakes that they make towards us.

    Mindfulness and self-worth dss at the core of every experience of our life.

    Just because we’re lacking in mindfulness, or that our self-worth isn’t where it needs to be, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact our experiences.

    Our experiences and the quality of our life is directly proportional to these two things.

    The more mindful we are, the healthier our self-worth, few in turn, the better our quality of life even if things are not going our way.

    That’s why someone with little can have a huge heart, while someone with excess can be miserly.

    Awareness of where we’re at is important of we hope to see things for what they are, rather than what we assume them to be.

    Start with your own point of reference, but then look critically at the evidence to test if you’re assumptions are true or not.

    If you don’t, you’re only serving your insecurities, rather than seeking true understanding.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Internal struggle, outward joy

    Internal struggle, outward joy

    The martyr within, breathes life into the angel without.

    A rare few live their lives outwardly, as they feel inwardly about themselves.

    The need to hide our shame from the world is born from feeling ashamed of who we are, and not because of what others think of us.

    The opinions of others only matter in two ways.

    It hits a tender spot because it threatens to expose what we already judge harshly about ourselves.

    Or it offers us perspective in our efforts to be better than we were the day before.

    Most focus on the judgement because their relationship with themselves is so harsh.

    That’s why so much effort is put into presenting ourselves to the world in a way that will gain favour or distract attention away from how we feel about ourselves, because we carry too much shame within about who we are.

    Understanding where that harsh self-judgement comes from is the beginning of the journey towards reclaiming ourselves, and our joy in life.

    When last did you feel the way you looked when you showed up in the spaces of others?

    If you can’t recall, we need to talk.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • The shame within

    The shame within

    Good advice sometimes feels like a threat because it prompts us to acknowledge a flaw that we feel ashamed of.

    It’s like putting in your best effort to create a piece of art, and then having someone come along and innocently suggest that you should’ve tried this or that to enhance it further.

    No matter how much merit there is in their suggestion, if you’re already feeling insecure about your artistic talents, you’ll find reason to justify taking offence, or to dismiss why you don’t think that will work with what you’re trying to achieve.

    That’s what happens when we assume that the motive behind good advice is to highlight our shortcomings, or to emphasise the superiority of our advisor. Or worse still, we assume that the other person deliberately wants to make us feel inadequate.

    All it is, is a sense of shame that we carry within us about who we are, or how we’re lacking in our efforts to earn the significance or validation of those we love.

    That threat to our significance is what feels like an attack that we respond to with anger, or passive aggression, because anger is a demand for significance.

    Being mindful about our opinion of ourselves is one of the hardest things to do.

    It means that we must be aware of whether we’re judging ourselves based on what we think others will approve of, or are we viewing ourselves with understanding based on who we aspire to be.

    The former is destructive.

    The latter is what creates the inspiration to continuously build and improve on who you are and what you wish to leave as your legacy.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Dishonesty, the destroyer

    Dishonesty, the destroyer

    The profundity of the verse from the Qur’an that says that if you are grateful, Allah will increase you, resonates strongly through every theme of life.

    It is through gratitude that good is created, harm is kept at bay, and we are connected to what feeds our soul.

    Therefore, what destroys good must be the opposite of gratitude.

    It’s easy to call it ingratitude, but not so easy to identify it as that.

    Ingratitude is not just the absence of gratitude, it’s the presence of everything that denies it.

    It is the desire for that which undermines the good that we have, or pursuing that which we haven’t earned.

    It is the betrayal of what we stand for, to feed the fear of losing something that was never real.

    It the compromise of the authenticity of who we are, so that we may be accepted by another, because we can’t bear the thought of being alone with only our self-respect to keep us company.

    Dishonesty is a denial of the self, long before it is a betrayal of trust.

    That’s why it breathes destruction wherever it shows up, because it first destroys the self which then destroys the world around us because we grow desperate for others to make us feel whole.

    All that because we were ungrateful for who we are.

    Dishonesty is the enemy of dignity, and without dignity, the world will be at war with your soul.

    “If you are grateful, I will surely increase you.” (Qur’an 14:7)

  • Who’s doing you in?

    Who’s doing you in?

    This is a phenomenon that I encountered regularly in the corporate world.

    When your performance appraisal is reviewed against your targets only, but all mitigating circumstances are dismissed, understand that they’re not interested in rating your performance, they’re interested in finding someone to blame for their lack of competence, or lack of support.

    If, however, you find yourself in the same situation repeatedly, then you need to consider if you’re communicating effectively with the people who need to support you with the right tools and resources to achieve your targets, or if you’re always avoiding accountability for outcomes the moment you don’t have the ideal environment in which to achieve your targets.

    The latter is a result of a victim mindset, because it’s focused on protecting yourself from being wrong, rather than focusing on taking reasonable risks and initiative to accomplish your goals.

    If you’re convinced that others are simply out to get you, then you need to question yourself for sticking around to repeatedly give them such opportunity.

    If you truly believe in your ability to contribute positively towards your career goals, you’ll make an effort to find an organisation or a team that appreciates the value that you bring to the table.

    If you lack confidence in yourself, you’ll go through life waiting for others to create the perfect circumstances for you to thrive, while blaming the world for not doing enough for you.

    That’s when the burden of stupidity that accompanies the absence of appreciation for context becomes your self-defeating behaviour, while you focus on what everyone else is not doing enough of to help you to be successful.

    Just a random thought I felt like sharing today.

    Own Your Life.

  • Dream a little dream…

    Dream a little dream…

    In a world of cynics, it’s easy to lose sight of the power that you have to turn your dreams into reality.

    Your efforts become more daunting when faced with an endless barrage of naysayers who only see your potential through their own fears.

    Sincere advisors are often driven by fear, and thus focus on protecting you from their fears of what failure may bring.

    So you slowly give up on your dream as a fantasy, while using its promise as fuel to cope with your reality.

    When you maintain clear boundaries between the two, you convince yourself that dreaming is an irresponsible indulgence of youth, while reality is for adulting.

    Without meaning to, you adopted the fears of those around you, and measured your success by how much you could exceed their expectations within the frame of fear that they painted for you.

    Beauty is lost, endearments become fickle expressions of lightness, and death becomes the morbid milestone by which you gauge how much capacity you will need to keep going.

    All this because you believed others when they disbelieved in you.

    Your dreams are yours to abandon, or yours to claim.

    But if you’re trying to claim a dream that is intricately woven around the presence of another, brace yourself for the anguish that accompanies a lifetime of trying to convince them that achieving your dream is possible, when the events of their life convinced them not to try.

    Dream with abandon, and live with courage.

    If you don’t, the regret will be yours to court, and dreaming will become a cynical taunt that feels like a nightmare.

  • The shame within

    The shame within

    You know that awkwardness that you feel when someone says something that you know is right but you’re not ready to hear it?

    Or when a sincere advisor or significant other points out something you’re doing that isn’t helpful or good for you, and you get defensive about it?

    Those are hints at the shame with which you view yourself regarding that habit or character trait.

    When we judge ourselves harshly, we grow defensive the moment someone draws attention to what we already feel insecure about.

    On the surface, we feel justified in defending ourselves because we feel judged.

    However, if we weren’t already judging ourselves, we wouldn’t feel judged, we’d feel misunderstood.

    Choosing whether or not to clarify that misunderstanding then becomes a matter of how much importance we place on the one who is making the incorrect assumption about us.

    But when we feel judged, it’s much more difficult to be selective about who we get defensive with and end up in full attack mode on people who don’t deserve it.

    The shame that we feel about ourselves is because we’re still seeing ourselves through the eyes of those we feel were never proud of us. Usually one or both parents.

    Until we realise this, we’ll go through life believing that we are unfairly judged without being open to growing beyond that because in our obsession with defending ourselves, we were never open to receiving good advice on how to be better.

    It always starts with you.