Tag: gratitude

  • Your intentions are never enough

    Your intentions are never enough

    There is often an unintended entitlement that sets in for those who are trying to make up for the impact of their behaviour on others.

    The entitlement comes through in how we expect our efforts to be received.

    If we apologise, we expect it to be accepted.

    If we comfort, we expect them to feel comforted.

    If we hug them, we expect them to hug us back.

    The one who causes the offence does not get to decide how the offended must forgive or understand.

    Until we connect with this reality, we will continue to downplay the impact that we have on others while believing that they just don’t understand or don’t care about how difficult it is for us.

    When we caused harm, it stops being about us and starts being about those we harmed.

    If we are sincere in our convictions to make right what we did wrong, we won’t feel entitled to our efforts being accepted. Instead, we’ll be focused on being more effective in our efforts to make things right.

    That test of our conviction is what many fail, resulting in the offenders parading as victims and the offended being painted as unreasonable or cruel.

    Check yourself when you apologise or try to make up for something you did wrong.

    If you don’t, you will sour important relationships for all the wrong reasons while blaming them for your actions.

  • Good intentions are not enough

    Good intentions are not enough

    Believing in the universe waiting to serve you is no different than believing that the world revolves around your every need.

    Good intentions do not automatically result in beneficial outcomes. In fact, it too often results in harm.

    There’s a reason for the popularity of that old proverb that says that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

    Understand why your methods may not be effective in achieving what you intend to achieve, and you’ll find yourself less reliant on whispering to the universe and more confident in owning your life.

    Good intentions are never enough.

    Never have been enough.

    Never will be enough.

    Until you are willing to own the methods, the behaviours, the actions that you carry out to fulfil your intentions, you’ll always have reason to believe that life is working against you, or that others don’t appreciate you. Etc.

    Own your life before it owns you.



  • Do you remember your dream?

    Do you remember your dream?

    What will you be when you give up?

    Sadly, too many live their lives this way resulting in them imposing their expectations on their children to fulfil the dreams that they abandoned.

    Every generation complains about the generation before them and loses sight of such behaviour giving the next generation reason to complain about them.

    We’re a strange bunch.

    We distract ourselves with emotions and abandon practicality, then distort our practical efforts to reclaim our emotions.

    If you lose sight of what is magical in the present moment, you’ll eventually convince yourself that you’re just a dreamy romantic when you find yourself speaking longingly of all the amazing opportunities that you sacrificed to create some life for others.

    Meanwhile, it was an effort to protect yourself from failure or rejection that caused you to sacrifice your dreams, and not any purposeful duty.

    Dreams will remain dreams if there is no purposeful conviction behind it.

    It’s possible to integrate your efforts towards your dreams with the practical life that you must live.

    In fact, it’s essential. How else are our children supposed to experience such conviction about the value of this single life that we have if all they ever witness is the drudgery of labour and duty?

    Can you even recall what dreams you abandoned in favour of acceptance or validation from those around you?

    Strike a balance before the imbalance ravages your peace.

  • Authentic gratitude

    Authentic gratitude

    This is for the ‘attitude of gratitude’ crowd.

    It’s for the ones who believe that gratitude is an act.

    A gesture.

    A token word of appreciation.

    A polite mannerism.

    A show of acknowledgement.

    A gift prompted by an event.

    It’s not.

    Authentic gratitude is what you do and how you show up for those whom you claim to appreciate on those special occasions.

    Gratitude is about valuing what is important to those whom you claim to value.

    It is about what you do with the privilege and favour enabled by those who serve and/or support you.

    Gratitude is a state of being.

    It is a way of life.

    It is a way of living without deliberately trying.

    It is a consequence of the belief in the virtue and the goodness of what benefit you are capable of being to those around you, not because they deserve it but because you’re capable of it.

    Authenticity is rare.

    That’s why most use gestures and expressions of gratitude as a commodity with which to transact for significance.

    Appreciation is not gratitude.

    Gratitude is reflected in what you do with, or about what you claim to appreciate.

    You cannot be truly grateful for others if you take yourself for granted.

  • Do you really love yourself?

    Do you really love yourself?

    What does ingratitude towards yourself look like?

    I think it looks like this…

    You focus on your aesthetic to feel better about your internal conversation.

    You live loud with everything you do and possess because you’re concerned about how others perceive you.

    You beat yourself up in private, but present yourself as confident and bold in public.

    You over compensate to make space for people who treat you as an option, but go out of your way to exclude people who have high expectations of you.

    You comfort yourself by preempting how others may judge you by telling yourself that they don’t know what you’ve been through.

    You withhold your contribution of support or assistance if you don’t think others deserve it.

    Your internal conversation is harsh resulting in health issues that you then use to seek pity from those around you for your self-imposed struggle.

    You try to save others from your opinion of their lives believing that you’re doing it because you’re a good person, while not realising that you’re projecting your struggle onto them so that you can feel valued.

    You take your time and your comforts for granted, always procrastinating on your own goals but over investing in assisting others to achieve their goals.

    You see self-sacrifice without healthy boundaries as a virtuous way of life, and lose sight of the impact of such behaviour on your health and wellbeing, and on those who care about you.

    If you find yourself growing angry or agitated at this list, chances are, you are feeling judged or attacked.

    That’s a clear sign of how much the opinions of others about you holds more weight than your opinion of yourself.

    A healthy self-worth is not a narrative. It’s not an internal dialogue. Nor is it a set of tools or methods.

    A healthy self-worth is a state of being, and is only recognised in hindsight.

    It is only through reflecting on how we handled situations that we are able to consciously determine if that is true to who we are or not.

    If not, we focus on understanding what drove us towards such behaviour so that we become aware of the reasons for our behaviour rather than simply judging ourselves for behaving in that way.

    Awareness is the critical step towards self improvement.

    And self improvement is impossible if every piece of criticism or negative feedback makes you defensive.

  • Toxic blah blah

    Toxic blah blah

    The belief that people are toxic is self-serving.

    The belief that parents are toxic is a sign of ingratitude.

    The belief that others are not allowed to change how they behave towards you when you don’t honour what is important to them is entitlement.

    The belief that what is important to us is more important than those who raised us is probably the closest thing to a toxic trait that we’ll find.

    Societies that have withstood the test of time are the ones who honoured their elders and embraced the wisdom that was passed down to them.

    Adapting that wisdom to solve contemporary problems is the failing of the current generation of parents and children.

    People, not just parents, withdraw from relationships when they feel rejected, betrayed, dishonoured, disrespected, taken for granted, and more.

    If you hold your parents to that standard of supposed toxicity, be sure to apply the same definitions to your own behaviour.

    If you truly understood the effort, self-sacrifice, compromise of dreams and aspirations, and duress that a present parent must overcome to show up as a parent, you might understand why betrayal of trust, disrespect, or rejection hurts them enough to want to withdraw from the life of the child that they spent their life serving up to that point.

    It’s fashionable these days to judge parents harshly while believing that the new generation has a better understanding of what’s needed to make life work.

    Sadly, the current state of society proves otherwise.

    How does your judgement of the people who raised you stand up to the scrutiny of the ‘toxic’ label that you’re so willingly throwing around these days?

    You will be tested by that which you judge others about. Be careful.

    Arrogance is a slippery slope.

  • 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.


  • 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?