Tag: embracingME

  • A diet of fear

    A diet of fear

    This is probably one of the most important things you could ever connect with.

    So much damage is caused by fear driven decisions. It destroys your spirit leaving you to find comfort in the very source of the fear that is destroying you.

    If you’ve been raised on a diet of fear and compliance, it is inevitable that your choices will reflect your fears, and not your dreams

    Fear destroys hope and replaces it with futility.

    In the face of futility, we resort to compliance, because compliance provides us with familiarity.

    Familiarity tethers us to rituals, traditions, and behaviours that feed the cycle that sustains the power of fear.

    That is, the cycle of compliance at all costs.

    When compliance becomes the objective, blind following becomes the method, and critical thinking is set aside in favour of inclusion.

    The need for inclusion destroys dreams, breaks hearts, and damages souls, leaving in its wake a field of martyrs who surrender their joy in the face of futility, not realising that it is fear that breeds futility, and not overwhelming odds.

    Be courageous, brave soul. Self-imposed martyrdom is not the only path to peace. In fact, it defeats that very goal.

  • Master patience

    Master patience

    Remembering to hold on to hope, and to abandon my expectations of others has always been my saving grace for my sanity and my dignity.

    Expectations, whether legitimate or not, are rooted in a sense of entitlement to receive what we need from others.

    Expectations are key to a healthy relationship, because when we can trust another to fulfil our expectations from them, it nurtures the bond that exists between us. Provided, of course, that such trust is mutual.

    However, if we’re not aware of our level of expectation and why we want it to be fulfilled by that specific other, we’ll become distracted by the feelings of betrayal should they fall short of our expectations.

    Worse still, when we’re unaware of the level of expectations that we have from those who are not in our circle of significant others, every acquaintance and every stranger is given power over our emotional state.

    Their failure to live up to our expectations feels like betrayal because entitlement is that unwritten social contract that convinces us that we deserve something from another, even if they may not be aware of it.

    If the relationship is important, switch to hope and continue to contribute as best as you can. Hope is grounded in the belief that they are capable of being better than who they are in that moment, but understanding that whatever is troubling or distracting them is what they need to first rise above before they can show up the way that we want them to.

    Expectations, and entitlement, is reflective of our needs, which when fulfilled, convinces us that we’re significant. Hence the anger or bitterness, or depression that sets in when our expectations are frequently taken for granted, making patience difficult to muster.

    Hope is the nourishment of patience, while expectation is the enemy of patience. So when you find yourself being impatient, check your expectations and consider embracing hope instead.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock



  • Claim your humanness

    Claim your humanness

    My daughter looked quite distressed when she asked me this question over the weekend.

    “What drives people to be so cruel to animals, like skinning them alive, or abusing them for profits?”

    The first thought that came to mind was this. We only lose our humanity when we feel less than human.

    The truth is, we only lose our humanity when we believe that we are defined by what happened to us, rather than what our choices were in response to those trials of life.

    Watching her grappling with the reality of who she is versus how others have treated her and betrayed her trust in her short life is grounding me in ways that I never thought possible.

    I swayed from anger at not knowing how to be there for her, to self-pity for not being a good enough parent, to a quiet albeit sad patience, knowing that all I can do is allow her the space to come to terms with the harshness of life in a way that makes sense to her.

    As her father, I fear that she may outgrow me in the process, which stirs up the self-pity and anger, but just as soon, I regain my composure knowing that by giving in to either, I will only create a self-fulfilling prophecy if I insist on inserting myself into this precarious space in which she finds herself.

    So my test in her test is to be consistent and available while she finds her way through it.

    The struggle of single parenting is grossly underrated.

    And the struggle of a single father raising a daughter even more so underrated.

    Through it all, there was another battle just beneath the surface of the ones that I thought were important. That is, the battle to claim my humanness in the face of exactly the same kinds of betrayals and cruelty that I had faced, which are echoed in the struggles that taunt her.

    And it’s through recognising this deeper battle within that I realised the root of my anger and self-pity. It is the need to have my sincerity and effort accepted by one I hold dear, so that the lessons learnt at the hands of brutes and hypocrites will allow me to give that which I did not receive.

    Also, it is my need to protect her from the demons that have so often derailed my efforts in life. I want to protect her from that which ravaged me when I was her age.

    But I can’t. No one can save us from the journey that we must take to discover the beauty of who we are.

    The only thing we can do is remind them that giving up midway through that journey is never worth it. Because once you emerge from the other side, there is a depth and breadth to your humanness that would otherwise have escaped you, and would have left you empty and wanting in your efforts to connect with the beauty around you.

    The irony being that the depth and breadth that is discovered further isolates you from those who distracted themselves through that journey, rather than embraced the pain and the education that it offered.

    A beautiful patience and a courageous perseverance is needed to hold on to your humanness in an inhumane world.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Perspective rules

    Perspective rules

    Perspective defines our reality.

    Taking the worst from an experience doesn’t diminish the good that it contains. It simply denies us the benefit that is waiting to be experienced.

    The opposite being true too. Focusing on the benefit reduces the impact of the bad that we experienced.

    Maintaining a healthy balance between the two keeps us grounded. Going to either extreme leaves us flighty and whimsical, or burdened and morbid about the future.

    Moderation is key, and maintaining a practical perspective rather than one influenced by fear significantly reduces the stress that we experience in life.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock


  • Sabotaging destiny

    Sabotaging destiny

    There are so many memes encouraging gut feelings and instincts to drive or decisions about how to treat others.

    I wish there would be more making us aware of what creates that feeling in our gut to begin with.

    The emotion most commonly experienced as a physical sensation is that of fear. And fear, more than anywhere else in our bodies, is experienced in our gut or in our chest. Both physical centres associated with a gut feeling.

    That tightness, that churning, or the uneasiness we feel that spreads up to our chest and shortens our breath. Gripping fear is more common than butterflies of excitement.

    So when we trust our gut blindly, we project our past experiences on the present moment. We use past experiences with people that treated us badly to make assumptions about the motives of people who are trying to connect with us now.

    That’s how we lose the present moment or sabotage good opportunities because we look for signs that they’re the same as those who came before them, rather than seeing them for who they are. Any positive attributes we see are easily dismissed out of fear of those hints that suggest that they’re just a facade because of something that reminded us of a past hurt or betrayal, or worse.

    When we honour without question our emotions in that moment of fear or stress, we stop being mindful about our emotional state in the current experience. This prevents us from determining if our instinct is correct or not.

    We must be willing to test our instinct if we hope to avoid becoming presumptuous about others, both positively or negatively.

    Except for gratitude, everything else requires moderation to avoid the harms of excess. And following our instincts blindly causes as much harm as the good that it offers.

    Be balanced. Be mindful. Seek to understand your emotions rather than to surrender to it so that you don’t abandon reason in favour of fear.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Regret doesn’t change the past

    Regret doesn’t change the past

    It’s easy to lose ourselves in our efforts to overcome upheaval.

    It’s also easy to look back and think that it was the trial that developed the strength or ability to overcome it.

    But, what if we had that within us all along, and the trial only revealed it?

    We must recognise the difference between our innate abilities, versus the skills we develop by applying those abilities.

    Too often, we look at our skills and assume that to be our abilities. But why is this difference important?

    It is our ability to acquire skills to overcome trials that are more important than the skills we acquire in that moment.

    If we appreciate our ability to learn and to adapt, we’ll find less reason to stress, no need to just cope, and instead, we’ll face trials and challenges with greater confidence and less anxiety.

    Strength therefore is found in our appreciation for our ability to acquire new skills, rather than giving in to the fear that the skills we have may be insufficient to overcome what we’re faced with.

    Trials are therefore opportunities for growth, but we lose sight of the growth when we succumb to the fear of what we think awaits us on the other side of that trial.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Protect your dream

    Protect your dream

    How often do you hold yourself back while waiting for someone else to believe in you first?

    When venturing into a new domain, or taking that bravely bold step to reinvent yourself, don’t be disheartened when you find that those you thought closest to you do not support you.

    Those closest to us are invested in the version of who they know us to be, and therefore find it difficult to appreciate the vision that we may have for ourselves if that vision is a revolution of who we are, rather than a gentle evolution of who they want us to be.

    Sadly, this is often true for many in our circle of significant others. Be they family or lifelong friends, sometimes our goals are a threat to their low self-esteem.

    If you don’t connect with authenticity and sincerity to the value of what you want to create in your life, you will be easily deterred by the doubts or objections of others.

    You are the only person that will ever create your legacy. Let that legacy be one of courage and conviction in leaving this world in a better state than it was before you arrived.

    Maintaining the status quo may keep the peace with family and friends, but it will leave you with storms of incompleteness in your soul that no one will ever be able to pacify.

    Beloved. Be bold. Be brave. Be purposeful. And never sell yourself short to appease the meek.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • Support Indie Authors

    Support Indie Authors

    Thank you Gallo Images for creating opportunities for indie authors and content creators like myself to get exposure.

    As any indie author will tell you, writing the book is the easy part.

    Publishing it is the next part, which is a bit easier than writing it. That’s if you do everything yourself like I do.

    But the most difficult part is getting people to know that your book exists, and to convince them to want to buy it.

    No matter how amazing your writing skills may be, or how enthraling your story, if people don’t know it exists, it will be a brilliant piece of work that is forever undiscovered.

    So efforts like these go a long way towards giving indie authors a fighting chance in the industry against the traditional publishing houses. Or perhaps even to get the attention of those publishers.

    Support an indie author by sharing their content with credits, and by leaving reviews of their work.

    Your small gesture can make a world of difference.

    Thank you.

    Photo credit : Gallo Images