Tag: expectation

  • Gratitude is not an attitude

    Gratitude is not an attitude

    What would life be like if you maximised every resource and every opportunity to which you have access?

    What would the quality of your relationships be if you built on everything that works instead of focusing on what’s not working?

    How would you feel about yourself if you looked at all you’ve overcome instead of being bitter about having had to deal with it all?

    Life is not about an attitude of gratitude, or good habits, because gratitude is not an attitude and habits are formed out of desiring efficiency or convenience.

    Gratitude is an outcome.

    Gratitude is a result of being aware of everything that’s good and right about life, despite there being so many things that could be better, or should be better.

    Gratitude is about understanding what is within our ability to change or influence for the better, and holding ourselves accountable for taking action on that, rather than sitting back and complaining about it.

    Gratitude is not about transacting based on who deserves what. It’s about considering what we wish to enable or what we wish to challenge because of the values by which we strive to live.

    Gratitude, when applied to ourselves, is reflected in how we seek to understand why we are who we are, rather than judging ourselves with shame because of who we’re not.

    Gratitude is reflected in our ability to rise above the anger or bitterness of others, rather than to lose ourselves to it or get drawn into their bitterness because of how they treat us.

    Gratitude is practiced when we approach others with empathy and compassion because we see their struggle with their own demons, instead of judging their inadequacy because we don’t struggle with the same demons.

    Gratitude is not a choice.

    Gratitude is a result of remembering our journey of growth, and owning every step that we took on that journey, both good and bad, while being mindful of the steps that we’re still taking every single day as we work towards our aspirational goals without feeling entitled to having what we strive for.


  • You are your own worst victim

    You are your own worst victim

    The victim mindset wreaks the most destruction and creates the worst of oppressors.

    The victim mindset is established when we find ourselves nursing wounds of experiences and betrayals that have long since passed.

    The victim mindset is nurtured when we are emotionally impacted by the behaviour of those who play no meaningful role in our life.

    The victim mindset becomes more deeply entrenched when we expect others to make up for our experiences from long before we ever knew them.

    The victim mindset is the most debilitating, demoralising, and destructive mindset of them all because it takes offence from being challenged, insult from observation, or feels attacked when advised.

    The victim mindset is set firmly on the belief that we are defined by how others treat us, or treated us.

    The victim mindset denies us the mindfulness and accountability needed to own our life because we’re waiting for our perceived injustices to be remedied before we allow ourselves to move on.

    The victim mindset confuses meaningful action with blind rage.

    The victim mindset destroys, but never creates anything of benefit.

    The victim mindset wastes away life while lamenting the past.

    The victim mindset is a corruption of the soul that fails to separate the moment of being a victim with what we hold onto from the experience long after the experience has passed.

    While we’re caught up in that victim mindset, we lose sight of how many around us become victims of our rage, our neglect, our self-consumed approach to life, and our abdication of responsibility in how we’re supposed to show up for them.

    The victim mindset therefore spawns more victims, and the only way to rise above it is to own it and want to be more than that.

    When you claim your rights before you honour your responsibilities, you’re in a victim state of mind, and you cause oppression while using your feeling of oppression to justify your behaviour.

    It always starts with you.

  • Who smiles first?

    Who smiles first?

    Are you perhaps the village idiot in someone else’s life, or maybe they’re filling that role in yours?

    The answer to the question as to who puts a smile on the face of the village idiot is that no one does.

    No one puts a smile on the face of the village idiot because no one notices the village idiot.

    But everyone is always willing to take a smile from them, or to be entertained by them.

    Who might that village idiot be?

    That village idiot is the care giver, the supporter, the ones who serve without recognition, or the ones who uplift without asking for anything in return.

    It’s the invisible ones that we expect things from, but don’t consider what they need from us.

    Sometimes we’re the village idiots in other people’s lives.

    But most often, we don’t recognise the village idiots in our lives because when we take people for granted, they become invisible or at the least, their contribution feels like our right or their duty.

    And when they no longer provide us with what we need from them, we don’t stop to consider why.

    If we do, we usually assume that they’ve changed, or that we’re no longer important to them.

    So, we simply move on and find a replacement.

    By making significant others invisible in their contribution to us, or only recognising it when we become invisible to them, we create the environment for depression, anxiety, abuse, and suicide, to name just a few common outcomes of feeling invisible.

    So, I ask you again, who puts a smile on the face of the village idiot?

    Remember : We only contribute towards a significant other when we believe that we matter to them.

    When we discover that we don’t, or that we weren’t as significant as we hoped to be, it tests our emotional resilience and our self-worth.

    How we respond to that test determines the difference between peace or pain.

  • Redirected rage

    Redirected rage

    Our self-worth defines our behaviour in moments when we feel most unappreciated.

    Whether a toddler, a teen, or an adult, we are provoked towards anger and bad behaviour when we feel taken for granted or irrelevant to those who matter to us.

    It doesn’t mean that they must treat us badly.

    It could be as simple as them not noticing what is important to us.

    How we need to feel appreciated is unique to each of us.

    Expecting others to know what’s important to us is how we test for significance without feeling vulnerable by expressing our needs.

    In other words, the moment we need to tell others what we need from them to feel significant, it no longer feels like significance to us. It feels like neediness.

    No one willingly seeks to express their needs without first trusting that it will not be used to weaken their position or standing with those around them.

    But trust is the last thing we can rely on when our self-worth is low, because if we don’t think we’re worth it, we have absolutely no reason to believe that anyone else thinks we’re worth it either.

    That’s how bad behaviour becomes the tool to distract attention away from how we feel about ourselves, while directing attention to what we think is a defendable gripe or anger that we have towards others, or towards life.

    It’s a vicious cycle that starts in childhood, but ends with you.

  • The past sucks eggs

    The past sucks eggs

    Life sucks when we take our experiences with others from the past and project it onto the relationship that we have with someone in our present.

    Sadly, this applies to all relationships, not just marriage or romantic partnerships.

    It applies to the parent-child relationship as much as it applies to spouses.

    Especially in times when we have a high prevalence of failed marriages, this plays out in the aftermath of such breakdowns of the home as children grapple with their place between their separated parents, and ex-spouses struggle to find a balance of power in their efforts to co-parent.

    A lot of life is wasted as we rage about what we believe to be our justified anger at what happened in the past.

    Sometimes, we’re so convinced that we have good reason to rage at what is happening in the present that we don’t notice that it is because of a past experience that the present one incites such rage within us.

    The focus should never only be on why we have reason to be angry or to feel hurt.

    More importantly, we must focus on whether the intensity of rage or hurt is understandable relative to the current situation.

    When we do this, we stand a chance of focusing on resolving the current problem rather than contaminating it further because of how it reminds us of how we were treated badly in the past.

    If you don’t own your contribution towards the current problems that you face, you will be owned by the demons of someone else’s past.

    It always starts with you.


  • You cannot not have expectations

    You cannot not have expectations

    The advice to live life without expectations to avoid disappointment is disturbingly misleading.

    If you’re striving to achieve this state of having no expectations of anyone, please stop.

    When we convince ourselves that we should not expect anything from others, we also have to convince ourselves that they should not expect anything from us.

    If that’s who you want to be, then prepare yourself for an isolated and lonely life where you are singularly responsible for everything that you want or need.

    Any rational person knows that it’s impossible to live that way.

    Expectations are fundamental to a healthy relationship.

    Without it, there is no need for trust or loyalty because we expect nothing from anyone, so they’re all free to do as they please, right?

    What cements a relationship is trusting that you can expect a significant other to show up for you the way that you need.

    What convinces us of our worth to others is when they take comfort from knowing that we’re there for them. That’s an expectation that they have of us.

    Focusing on not having expectations is a defence mechanism in response to having had our trust betrayed by someone close to us.

    It’s an attempt to protect ourselves from ever being hurt that way again, resulting in us hurting others who had nothing to do with that betrayal.

    If you don’t resolve that problem of how and why you felt betrayed, because betrayal is very often how we feel about someone’s behaviour rather than them actively trying to betray us, you will create a whole lot of new problems that you never intended to create.

    By all means, be selective about who you expect things from in the same way that you shouldn’t trust every person that crosses your path.

    Trust is earned, while respect is a reflection of who you are.

    Confuse the two, or assume they’re the same, and life will become very complicated and onerous.

    Don’t take advice from memes. Rather consider it as a point of reflection before acting on it.

  • A peaceful fight

    A peaceful fight

    Insanity is subjective.

    So is truth.

    The less we remember this, the more likely it is that we will oppress.

    To pass judgement without understanding reflects our insanity.

    To restrain judgement until we reach understanding reflects our search for truth.

    These two positions define the efforts of our days and the contemplations of our nights.

    And mindfulness is lost between the two.

    Striking a balance becomes the true pursuit of life if we hope to taste peace.

    But balance is only achievable if we know how much of each is valuable as our days progress.

    The enemy of mindfulness is distraction.

    The friend of mindfulness is therefore being consciously purposeful.

    You may not always be able to rein in your thoughts, but you can make a habit of reflecting, in the moment, if you are being purposeful regarding your objective.

    Live consciously and purposefully, and life will be woven into a relatively peaceful tapestry without fighting for peace.

    Sometimes, it’s the fight that denies us the peace that we yearn, while we yearn for peace as we fight.

    Pause.

    Choose your battles.

    Or else you’ll always be at war, blaming others for the choices that you make.

    And remember, if you’re trying to be mindful, you’re distracted.


  • The demon child of ingratitude

    The demon child of ingratitude

    Disrespect only ever becomes an option when we disrespect ourselves.

    We don’t always disrespect ourselves because life is fluid, demanding different things from us at different times.

    In those moments when we are expected to be more than we believe we’re capable of, or when we are corrected for something that we do because we want it without consideration for its consequences on others or ourselves, or when we demand privileges without fulfilling our responsibilities – it is then that we lose our composure and respond in ways that undermine others.

    Disrespect is a form of anger and is a tool to achieve something without earning it.

    Others may experience it as arrogance or narcissistic behaviour, but at the core of it, it’s an insecurity spawned by ingratitude.

    Ingratitude sets in when we focus on everything that we want while diminishing the value of everything that we have.

    It’s at the heart of a vicious cycle that begins with the anger or hurt that we feel about an unfortunate or unpleasant life event, which stirs a rage within us that drives us to want to claim our dues from the world rather than earn it.

    Ingratitude fixates our gaze on risks and threats to our significance, rather than allowing us to focus on the opportunities that present themselves for us to achieve so much more than what we desire.

    Anger is the distraction that justifies disrespect, and disrespect is our perceived tool for justice that distracts us from our ingratitude.

    Few are willing to admit to being ungrateful.

    The rest are too busy justifying their bad behaviour because of how they were treated badly by others, while growing oblivious to how they become just like, if not worse, than those who treated them badly.

    Thus, the vicious cycle of harshness and ingratitude is maintained.

    It always starts with you.

    Do you respect yourself enough to be grateful for who you are and the life that you have?