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  • 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?

  • Who makes you feel worthy?

    Who makes you feel worthy?

    Confidence comes from caring less about what others think of you, and caring more about what you think of yourself.

    The question is, do you know yourself well enough to have an informed opinion of who you are?

    When we rely on others for more than just feedback and instead allow them to validate who we are, we essentially give them the power to define how we feel about ourselves.

    Listening to what others think of you must be done with one single focus in mind.

    It must be with the objective of determining whether or not the message that you intended was in fact the message that they received.

    But that means that you must know what your message is.

    What is your unique contribution?

    Chances are good that a lot of the good that you do, you simply see it as duty or responsibility.

    And yes, the outcome that we must achieve may be our responsibility or our duty towards others, but how we achieve that outcome and how we make them feel in the process is uniquely us.

    When we lose sight of that, we lose ourselves to duty.

    When we lose ourselves to duty, we feel worthless when our contribution is not appreciated, because our self-worth has grown to be defined by how much others acknowledge and appreciate our efforts towards them.

    That’s when ingratitude for the self kicks in.

    When we diminish who we are because we’re not validated by someone else, we essentially convince ourselves that all the good that we possess is worthless, because it’s not appreciated by one who probably doesn’t appreciate themselves either.

    So. So you know yourself well enough to appreciate who you are? Or is your self-worth nothing more than an affirmation in the mirror?

  • The need to be godly

    The need to be godly

    Godliness, like humility, is lost the moment we lay claim to it.

    It is something that we may exhibit in our conduct or demeanour, but not something that we can directly claim.

    It is our ability to manifest the attributes of the divine in our character and in our treatment of others without wanting to appear pious or godly in our approach.

    The need to claim such attributes of godliness reflects the insecurity that we feel about our standing among those around us.

    The moment we’re focused on how we appear to others, we begin to lose ourselves to their validation.

    Similarly, the moment we claim godliness, we lose ourselves to arrogance.

    And arrogance is only required to compensate for our insecurities. It is a mask to hide our shame, or to claim our needs because we believe that we’re not significant enough for others to want to care about what we need from them.

    That’s why we take, instead of waiting to be offered. Or why we insult or demean rather than advising sincerely.

    It’s all a means towards demanding that our virtues be acknowledged because we feel unappreciated by those we care about the most.

    If you don’t appreciate who you are, in the absence of validation from others, how can you expect others to appreciate you?

    Gratitude begets sincerity, and sincerity fosters brotherhood. Or sisterhood. And claiming divinity or godliness has no place at all.

  • Don’t burn your own hands

    Don’t burn your own hands

    The logic of this is quite obvious, yet we do it, don’t we?

    Sometimes we find it difficult to apologise because we’re afraid that others will think less of us. It feels like a weakness. So we protect ourselves from appearing weak.

    At other times, we find it difficult to apologise because we feel unappreciated. So our offensive behaviour was our way of getting justice for having been treated badly or taken for granted.

    The same reasons that would drive our resistance to admitting fault is what drives others to avoid doing right by us.

    Problems arise when we lose sight of why we expect that much more from them, or worse, why we may be holding them to a standard that is unfair to who they are.

    Sometimes we grow tired of being taken for granted at home, so we lash out at hints of being taken for granted at work. And vice versa.

    Similarly, when our parents may have treated us as insignificant, we end up lashing out at our partners because we fear growing insignificant with them as well.

    That’s how we do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Or why we find it difficult to do the right thing when we know better.

    We complicate life when we lose sight of what we’re dealing with in the moment because we don’t realise that we’re waiting for justice about something that is long gone and forgotten, or unrelated to who we’re with now. .

    Invest in your past, or invest in your present. The choice you make is what determines what you’re investing in your future.

    Emotional mindfulness is key to creating a fulfilled life.

  • Chasing dreams

    Chasing dreams

    Chasing dreams is not all butterflies and roses, or unicorns and rainbows, or whatever.

    Actually, it’s more whatevers than it is anything else because it provokes and inspires changes and new realities in all your comfort spaces.

    But, if you have an endearing relationship with your comfort zones, then chasing dreams is not for you.

    When you chase your dreams, you must be willing to reinvent yourself every step of the way, because what you’re trying to achieve is more than what you have.

    It means that you want to create a version of who you are that will be unfamiliar to those around you, so you risk isolation, being misunderstood, ridiculed, and rejected.

    Chasing dreams means that you’re serving a vision of something you believe to be truly valuable. A vision, not a goal.

    The goals that you define for yourself must be focused on contributing towards that vision.

    Most importantly, it’s your vision. So don’t expect others to believe in it with the same conviction that you do.

    That also means that when others question it, you must recognise that you have more work to do in selling your vision to them. It doesn’t mean that your vision is worthless.

    Chase your dreams. But, before you do, make sure that you own it, or else someone will come along and quite innocently question it, leaving you doubting yourself and potentially abandoning your dream for all the wrong reasons.

    There’s a reason why the majority choose to live by other people’s rules. It’s because they don’t believe in their own dreams, so instead, they dedicate their life enabling the dreams of others.

    There’s no shame in that, provided your doing it consciously, and not out of fear.

    What’s your dream?

  • We’re all searching for home

    We’re all searching for home

    Remember, at some point someone also looked at you in your childhood and thought, “Damn, is this what the future looks like for humanity?”

    Our children have the best of us and the worst of us, and somewhere between those ends they form their own unique character.

    If you hope to understand them, you need to begin by understanding yourself.

    The same way that you didn’t raise yourself, neither did they.

    Therefore, when looking for answers about their behaviour, there is no reason to look any further than the people who have the greatest influence in their lives, their parents, or those fulfilling such parental roles.

    And if you’re a single parent, don’t assume that absent parents don’t hold such influence.

    Often, they hold more influence than the one who stuck around.

    Dealing with the influence of a problematic parent who is present is easier than figuring out the impact of the parent who is absent.

    Either way, understanding is more important than judging.

    Children behave badly when they struggle to find an emotionally safe space for themselves in this world.

    Understanding how this manifests in their behaviour is the secret to raising an adult with a healthy self-esteem, or a troubled child in an adult’s body with adult privilege.

    And don’t forget that you’re raising an adult, not a child.

    So speak to the human behind that bad behaviour and don’t only focus on correcting, through discipline and consequence management, the bad behaviour.

    If you only focus on discipline, you’ll lose the human and repeat the cycle of the problematic parent who themselves also continue to struggle for their place in this world.