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Divinely obnoxious?
Godliness is like humility. It is lost when we actively pursue it. Living by the doctrine to which you subscribe is infinitely more important than preaching it. People learn from how you treat them, not from how you chastise them. Judging the faith of another reveals the cracks in your self-worth more than it offers…
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You cannot make them rise
I’ve seen, and experienced first hand, the disaster that awaits when we convince ourselves that the demons that others deal with is our responsibility to resolve. Being kind, compassionate, and even understanding does not mean that we must own the decisions that others have made, especially when those decisions include them choosing to hold on…
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You judge others as you judge yourself
Judgement is easy. Understanding, empathy, compassion…not so easy. It only gets easier when we are capable of treating ourselves with kindness. But that isn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, many of our efforts at kindness are harmful because we’re distracted from recognising what prompts our deliberate acts of kindness. Towards ourselves, and towards…
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Judge as you wish to be judged
We speak from a position of privilege when we judge the failures of others within the context of what is possible for us. Even something as simple as the resolve we have, or the choices we made to rise above a challenge, comes from a place of assuming that our emotional resilience is the same…
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Are you there for you?
We’re more inclined to recognise the needs of the weak, than we are of the strong. Without meaning to, we diminish the humanness of those who persevere without complaint, because they often make it look so easy. When we’re the strong ones persevering without complaint, we risk diminishing our own humanness as well, because we…
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Selfish concern
I don’t like labels, but this is the equivalent of toxic positivity, where we try to be positive while diminishing the experience of the one experiencing difficulties. I once saw someone experiencing a breakdown at the side of the road. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, oil running out of their engine, it was obvious…
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Dehumanising the human
Don’t become so fixated on labelling yours, or the behaviour of others, that you lose sight of the human struggle behind that behaviour. Labels make it easier for us to deal with stuff. The moment we give it a name, we can manage our expectations around it. This is fine when it comes to abstract…