Blog

  • Do you hate apologising?

    Do you hate apologising?

    Ever reject an apology from someone only to be told, “Well, I apologised. So if you don’t accept my apology, then that’s your problem, not mine.”

    Or something similar?

    When you apologise and expect your apology to be accepted, you’re not apologising, you’re demanding that the other person just move on without any redress to the impact that your offence had on them.

    An apology is more than just an acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

    An apology, when sincere, must focus on assuring the other person of two things.

    Firstly, that there is real remorse or regret about the way in which you conducted yourself.

    And secondly, that you want to make up for the impact that it had on them.

    If either of these are lacking, it’s not an apology. It’s simply a means to pacify your own conscience, and at best, it’s a formality.

    Relationships can often be salvaged through sincere remorse for the mistakes that we make.

    But, if we feel weak for admitting fault, then we have work to do on how we feel about ourselves, and it has nothing to do with how the other person may or may not respond to our apology.

    If you find it difficult to apologise, chances are good that you’re also keeping score about who committed how many offences compared to the other.

    Either way, it means that you live with the fear of being inadequate.

    It always starts with you…and what you think of yourself.

    Own Your Life.

  • Good vs bad manipulation

    Good vs bad manipulation

    Sometimes we choose to maintain the peace by giving of ourselves despite not wanting to.

    Sometimes, we don’t want to deal with the upheaval that follows not doing what someone wants, so we do it anyway.

    Sometimes, we’re afraid of the repercussions of not complying, so we comply despite not believing in what we’re doing.

    Each time we compromise who we are or what we stand for to achieve an amicable or peaceful outcome, we lose ourselves to those outcomes.

    It may seem to offer short term gains, but in the long term, it destroys our sense of self.

    We all find ourselves in situations where such manipulation is required at some point because the timing is just not right to deal with what needs to be addressed.

    The key is to be aware of why we’re choosing this approach, versus believing that it’s the only approach that will get us what we need, or want.

    And the same is true for others who appear to be manipulative by nature.

    It’s simply the fear of negative outcomes that has convinced them that who they are will never be good enough, so manipulation is the only way to maintain significance or to fulfil their emotional needs.

    We’re all built with the exact same emotional needs.

    We just lose our way for different reasons.

    Self-awareness leads to understanding, and understanding is the cornerstone of compassion.

    Therefore, we must always seek to understand our own conduct under similar circumstances, before we seek to judge others.

    It always starts with…you.



  • Enjoying the deferral of death

    Enjoying the deferral of death

    “When we go through life waiting for our struggles to be recognised, to be seen as the walking wounded, or the ones that survived, we become defined by that survival. We become survivors. Survivors don’t enjoy the sweetness of life. They simply enjoy the deferral of death.” From The Egosystem in the chapter titled Recognise My Struggle.

    When we lack appreciation for who we are, we seek that validation from those around us by highlighting our struggles so that they may admire our strength or resolve.

    When we focus on reciprocation, we find reason to emphasise what we do for others, often by mentioning it to anyone that will listen, because again, we lack appreciation for who we are and therefore go out in search of validating the good that we do for others, hoping that it will give us reason to feel worthy.

    We wear the badge of martyrdom when we feel sorry for ourselves, believing that we’re not appreciated or valued, and that our only value to those around us is in how we serve them.

    These are a few examples of how we diminish the value of what we do because we’re trading it for recognition or praise, rather than doing it because we believe in the value of what we do.

    When we mention the good that we do, we become distracted by the praise, and we lose sight of the dignity of those we assisted by mentioning their neediness while highlighting our generosity.

    At the heart of it all is a low self-esteem.

    Once we reach the age of awareness, our self-esteem is no longer inherited from our parents. It’s defined by our gratitude for who we are and what we have.

    The survivor mindset undermines gratitude because it anchors our focus on everything that we need to overcome, while distracting us from everything that is good and wholesome, or blessed in our lives.

    That’s when the sweetness of life is lost, and feeling good about ourselves becomes dependent on how others acknowledge or praise the good that we do, or the struggles that we overcome.

    At which point will we pause to consider how blessed we are to have the ability and the resources to overcome those very same struggles?

    It always starts with you.

  • The harm of wishful thinking

    The harm of wishful thinking

    Whenever I hear things like the universe is waiting to give you everything that you want, or manifest what you desire in your life through positive thinking, or put it out there and the universe will answer, I wonder if the proponents of such philosophies would like to tell that to the toddler that was raped, the innocent boy child that was sodomised, or the ones grieving the loss of a loved one in a senseless act of violence. And the list goes on.

    The approach to life that is embodied in this philosophy causes more harm than good because it denies the rights of those around us as we wait to have our needs fulfilled, while diminishing our accountability in fulfilling their rights over us because…well…they shouldn’t expect it from us, they should wait for the universe to answer, not so?

    Before you think I’m being whimsical or disrespectful about such beliefs, consider this.

    At the heart of such a belief system is wishful thinking. Quite literally.

    In the absence of gratitude for what we have, we’ll wish for things that we don’t have.

    In the absence of gratitude for who we are, we’ll wait for others (a.k.a. the universe) to make us feel worthy or significant.

    Without exception, through almost 3 decades of working with people, every single time that I encountered this philosophy, the individual was avoiding the reality of a painful experience or memory that they didn’t know how to process, or found too difficult to even contemplate.

    While we have compassion for the victim of such experiences, we must also consider the victims of such victims.

    Life happens, often in terrible ways, to all of us. Measuring who has it better or worse is a futile exercise, because relative to the context of each person’s life, their experiences carry with it whatever impact it carries.

    So we don’t dismiss that impact. But we also don’t create space for such events to define our quality of life or our contribution towards the lives of others long after the event has passed, because that diminishes the value of what we have, in favour of what we once lost.

  • More ways to destroy trust…

    More ways to destroy trust…

    Our consideration of trust is often limited to promises or follow through on something that was clearly agreed with another.

    However, trust is broken in many ways, most of which are subtle and often unintended.

    It’s these subtle breaches that leave us seething with anger or raging with tears while not knowing how to connect the betrayal that we feel with the specific conduct of another.

    More than this, it also makes it that much more difficult to express ourselves clearly when they seem oblivious to the hurt or offence that they cause.

    Connecting with why we feel betrayed makes it possible to process those feelings of betrayal in a more constructive way, and allows us to diminish the impact that it has on our sense of self.

    Once we can reconcile in our minds what it is that drives us insane about the behaviour from those closest to us, it makes it easier to see their shortcomings as a reflection of who they are, rather than always assuming that they may take us for granted because of who we are.

    That clarity of understanding and perspective could mean the difference between a life of angst and self-loathing, versus one of understanding and purposeful investment in those relationships that mean the most to you.

    You cannot help those around you to slay their demons if you’re bringing your demons to the table.

    Here are 9 not-so-obvious ways in high we may be breaching the trust that others place in us :

    1. Remaining silent when your words could have provided comfort or support


    2. Deliberately avoiding a request for something that you know is important to someone


    3. Withholding affection when you know it’s needed


    4. Deliberately doing something that you know is offensive or hurtful to another


    5. Being dishonest when relating your story, or withholding part of a story to avoid conflict or accountability


    6. Being unnecessarily harsh without apologising for your conduct (or regularly repeating this behaviour after apologising each time)


    7. Treating your obligations or commitments as optional or subject to your convenience


    8. Demanding your rights from others but ignoring your responsibilities towards them


    9. Dismissing the contribution that others make towards your life

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Do you appreciate you?

    Do you appreciate you?

    When we surrender to what we believe was preordained for us, we give up our ability to influence its outcomes.

    That giving up creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by allowing things to progress in its current path without any effort to disrupt it, convincing us that we were right about it being preordained.

    For this reason, we sometimes allow relationships to degrade to a point of no return because we were convinced that our input or contribution would not change what appeared to be inevitable.

    Gratitude is critical in this process.

    Not gratitude for what we have when we’re faced with loss, but gratitude for what we are capable of when faced with challenges.

    Sometimes, when you take yourself for granted during your moments of ease, you’ll find yourself forced to dig deep and connect with who you are in moments of strife.

    That period of taking yourself for granted is what contributed in some meaningful way towards the strife that followed.

    While we will never know with certainty what to expect from others, we must connect with mindfulness to what the consequences of our choices are, or will be.

    This mindfulness is only possible when we acknowledge the value of who we are.

    That acknowledgement is the root of gratitude, or ingratitude, depending on whether we appreciate who we are, or judge ourselves harshly for supposedly not being good enough.

    You cannot nurture, maintain, or grow something if you don’t connect with the value that it offers.

    Thus, when you lack gratitude for who you are and what positive attributes and traits you possess, you will be incapable of contributing meaningfully towards the upliftment of your life and the lives of those around you.

    That is how the victim mindset slowly sets in, leaving us to believe that our struggle is a definition of our strength and perseverance, while not realising how much of it is in fact self-imposed because of ingratitude.

    It always starts with you.

  • The fallacy of what was meant to be…

    The fallacy of what was meant to be…

    On the surface, this seems like a really positive perspective on life, right?

    But let’s unpack it very quickly.

    Being thankful for the experiences that we’ve had has merit because there is nothing so bad that there is no good in it.

    What we take from our experiences is what gives us the opportunity to grow and to experience greater depths of emotions – both good and bad.

    It’s only in experiencing the bad that we are able to appreciate the good, or else we’d take it for granted.

    However, it’s the last part of this that I believe is a dangerously false notion to adopt.

    Where you’re meant to be by whom? By what?

    When we believe this to be true, we have less reason to question our uninformed or poor decisions that got us to this point because, you know, this is where we’re MEANT to be. Right?

    It’s the last part that is false. It carries with it a fatalistic view of the outcomes of our lives because it implies that no matter what we did, we’d still be at this point because it was meant to be.

    How does this kind of thinking affect someone who is tired of finding their efforts being taken for granted? Or no matter how hard they’ve tried, they keep finding themselves struggling to find peace or healthy relationships, or fulfilment, or success?

    Is it because they were meant to be in such straitened circumstances by some force that g they have no control over?

    Before you whip out the arguments about taqdeer, fate, destiny, and all that, consider what the point would be of our power of choice and reason if everything that happens to us was simply prewritten regardless of our effort to be better or achieve better than that.

    If that understanding of destiny was true, what would be the point of applying ourselves towards any goal at all? Wouldn’t everything happen regardless of our efforts since it was ‘meant to be’?

    It’s more accurate to say that the outcomes of the choices that we made was unavoidable because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. But that’s why we made bad choices, or naive decisions.

    Not because it was meant to be, but because we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

    Own Your Life.

  • Ingratitude starts with you

    Ingratitude starts with you

    We most often only realise that we’re ungrateful for a blessing that we have when it’s too late.

    That’s when regret sets in and either spurs us on to improve our awareness of what we should be grateful for, or it makes us bitter for the loss that we experienced.

    Gratitude is something that no one can instil in us.

    Others may be able to give us something to be grateful for, but they can’t insert that gratitude into our hearts.

    Gratitude is therefore something that we must connect with through our own way of valuing what we have.

    But, valuing what and who we have in our lives becomes difficult, if not impossible, if we believe that we’re entitled to what they offer.

    If we reduce the contribution of others to simply bring their duty, or the expectations of the role that they fulfil, we’ll inadvertently diminish our own value to simply being one of duty and responsibility as well.

    We see ourselves through the same lenses that we use to judge the contribution of others in our lives.

    When we regret the loss of something or someone because we took it for granted, we need to pause and reflect how much of who we are do we take for granted.

    What do we recognise as cherishable traits or attributes about ourselves that we must nurture and protect from contamination?

    Or do we take who we are for granted because we’ve grown so accustomed to trading and transacting with those around us?

    This happens when we believe that what we do for others deserves reciprocation because we need something from them.

    That’s how we lose sight of who we are, and the value that we are capable of creating in the lives of those around us because we want them to experience that value, and not because we need something from them in return.

    You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s why ingratitude towards others begins with ingratitude towards yourself.

    It always starts with you.