Tag: hope

  • The right to demand your rights…

    The right to demand your rights…

    The more we emphasise our rights, the less time we spend understanding our responsibilities.

    The rights that others have over us is the responsibilities that we have towards them, and vice versa.

    The moment we focus on only one side of that equation, we become oppressors.

    If we focus on our rights but neglect our responsibilities, we oppress others.

    When we focus on our responsibilities without calling to account those who do not fulfil our rights, we not only oppress ourselves, but we enable the oppression against us.

    The moment we remain silent to keep the peace, we destroy the peace for the next generation.

    Understanding the boundaries of supporting each other in fulfilling our rights and responsibilities is an important step in ensuring that you don’t lose yourself and your peace to your fight for justice with someone who is not invested in justice.

    How we conduct ourselves will benefit or harm our bodies, which in turn enables oppression by ourselves against ourselves.

    Therefore, the balance to be struck is not only in what we do or what we demand from others, it is most critically in how we establish balance within ourselves.

    Approaching rights and responsibilities from a social justice perspective only, or from a perspective of what you should be able to demand from your partner is not about rights at all.

    It’s about demanding significance when you feel insignificant.

    That’s how our opinion of ourselves results either in our fair and kind treatment of others, or it results in oppression and abuse while we blame them for how we feel about ourselves.

    Focus on what you need to do, and most importantly, on who you want to be.

    As long as that is your focus, establishing healthy boundaries will come naturally because you’ll be mindful about what is within your control or influence to change, versus what is beyond your ability to change.

    It always starts with you.

  • Telling yourself sweet little lies?

    Telling yourself sweet little lies?

    You lie to yourself most when you tell someone, “You make me feel…”

    No one can make you feel anything without your permission.

    You give your permission when you’re more focused on what you need from them to feel whole, rather than what you value about yourself.

    The moment you hand over the custody of your emotions to another, you deny yourself the opportunity to own your life.

    When you don’t own your life, you hold others responsible for the state in which you find yourself, which becomes your distraction from doing something to improve your own state.

    When we demand such priority from others, we need to be absolutely certain that we’re offering them as much priority in return, but not the way that we want to prioritise them, but the way that they need it.

    If we need them to create space for us the way we need, we must be willing to do the same in return.

    Unfortunately, when you don’t own your life, you only focus on what you need from others, and rarely is there any focus on what others need from you.

    That’s how the score-keeping starts, or the tit-for-tat, or the guilt tripping when you don’t get what you need or want.

    Self-worth is literally the worth that we place on ourselves, and has nothing to do with the value that others see in us.

    The more you need others to make you feel good about yourself, the more likely you are to drive them away.

    The ones who are drawn to you because you need them to feel good are lacking in self-worth themselves, creating a co-dependence that suppresses your growth potential, rather than enhancing it.

    That’s how ‘toxic’ relationships are formed.

    When one person grows from feeling supported and the other doesn’t, it creates reason for the one who stagnated to feel as if they’re being betrayed because their needs are no longer such a priority for their partner.

    And so the vicious cycle spirals out of control.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Are you abused, or an abuser?

    Are you abused, or an abuser?

    While abuse is never to be taken lightly, if we’re not careful, we can easily become a tool of the abuser.

    A betrayal of trust, especially if repeated often, changes the lenses through which we view the behaviour of others.

    If we’re not careful, the bitterness of such betrayal wears down our tolerance or patience to deal with any disagreement or challenge resulting in an intensified response to innocent mistakes.

    It’s like the irritability that sets in when we experience chronic or sustained pain or discomfort.

    Eventually, we snap at anyone asking us questions about petty issues, or demanding responses to things we have no interest in.

    All we want at that point is relief from our discomfort or pain, leaving us with little tolerance to deal with anything else.

    When that source of pain is because of how we’re treated by someone we love, or someone that we have rights over, we feel abused each time we fulfil their rights while they dismiss ours.

    That’s when, despite having good reason to feel that way, we falsely accuse them of being deliberately abusive, while they were simply behaving selfishly for reasons that have nothing to do with us.

    The moment you have to demand your rights to be fulfilled in a relationship, understand that you are in the wrong relationship.

    And if it’s with blood ties, accept that you cannot change them, but don’t let it taint how you live up to your values and principles.

    When you return the favour by abusing the rights of others because your rights have been abused, you lose yourself to the very bitterness that drove them to deny you the rights that you have over them.

    That’s how you lose yourself, and that’s how you cause pain for others, because of the pain you receive from another.

    Reclaim your dignity.

    It always starts with you.

  • Are you betraying yourself?

    Are you betraying yourself?

    Betrayal stings.

    It doesn’t always take the form of an explicit breach of trust.

    Most often, I believe, betrayal is felt when we put in the effort to make significant others aware of what is important to us, only to watch them repeatedly take it for granted, or treat it with disregard.

    Betrayal is what we feel when who we are is rendered insignificant in the face of what others need from us.

    It’s felt when we’re always expected to show up, but rarely have them show up for us.

    Betrayal, more than anything else, is felt when we realise that we’ve invested in others more than they ever had any intention of investing in us. If at all.

    And in that moment of betrayal, it’s easy to focus on the reality of how little we mean to them, or how unimportant our dreams and aspirations are to them.

    But that’s the distraction that keeps us weighed down by the betrayal.

    The sooner we look beyond that, the sooner we’ll realise when we lost ourselves to what we thought was a relationship worth investing in.

    Self-pity becomes an endearing companion at that point, as we lick our wounds and focus on everything that’s wrong with the world.

    Entertain that self-pity for long enough, and you’ll become defined by how others treat you, while losing sight of how much worse you’re treating yourself.

    Illness sets in when the self-pity progresses to self-loathing.

    The only thing that breaks that cycle is the realisation that you were capable of investing because you had something of value to invest. And they didn’t.

    Wishing that they were different, or that you were reason enough for them to be more than that is simply an indulgence in self-pity and an avoidance of reality.

    Gratitude dictates that you reconnect with the value of who you are despite the betrayals from those whom you trusted.

    That’s how we reconnect with the joy of life within ourselves, when those who live with ingratitude only take from us without sharing much in return.

    It always starts with you.

  • Who defines your behaviour?

    Who defines your behaviour?

    Understanding can only result from sincere interest in what someone is going through.

    When we try to advise without first seeking to understand, we’re judging, rather than supporting.

    We’re dictating, rather than uplifting.

    Doing for others what you would have done unto you is never more true than in that moment when you find someone behaving badly.

    While the urgency of the matter might dictate that you restrain their bad behaviour as a priority, it should never stop there.

    Once you’ve prevented them from causing harm, you need to help them to understand why their rage, or their insecurity is overwhelming their better judgement.

    No one wakes up in the morning wanting to be miserable, or abusive, or toxic.

    Those behaviours are a result of their internal war for significance in their lives.

    In many ways, the bad behaviour is a defence mechanism to protect themselves from appearing vulnerable.

    Under such circumstances, the moment we challenge the behaviour, we validate their need to defend themselves.

    That’s why it’s important to understand what’s driving the behaviour so that we don’t escalate the cycle but instead, we resolve the underlying cause, which in turn, will render the behaviour redundant.

    But first, we need to care about the war that is raging within them, without feeling as if we’re doing them a favour.

    It must be because of who we are, not because of what they deserve.

    Sadly, most of us are defined by how others treat us, that’s why we have a clash of behaviours when understanding and empathy is needed.

    Your triggers are yours to own.

    Until you own them, you will go through life being provoked by every person that doesn’t treat you in the way that you want them to.

    And that’s how you become part of the problem of others behaving badly.

    It always starts with you.

  • Your misery is your downfall

    Your misery is your downfall

    We rarely share with the world the conversation that we have with ourselves in our head.

    Our internal conversations are only shared when we’ve exhausted all avenues in trying to understand why someone important to us could have had reason to treat us so badly.

    The harsh tones and unwarranted criticism that we try to convince ourselves is true about who we are or what we’re worth is how we project on ourselves what we think a significant other thinks of us.

    In other words, we put ourselves in their place and then assume why we would treat someone that way if we were them.

    What we forget is that we’re not them, and they’re not us.

    And the same way that our insecurities about ourselves are closely guarded secrets, the same is true for everyone else no matter how amazing we think they are.

    Self-loathing is born when we assume that how others show up for us is a reflection of how they feel about us, when the reality is that they treated us the way that they did because of who they are and what they were grappling with in their own minds.

    The moment we lose ourselves to self-loathing, we focus on demands for our rights to be fulfilled despite not fulfilling the rights of others.

    We focus on playing on the sympathies of others so that they don’t think less of us when we fall short in showing up for them.

    The war within results in the harsh treatment, or even abuse, of those around us.

    While we’re feeling justified in our rage or complacency because of the self-loathing that has taken over our perspective of who we are and what we’re worthy of, we treat others the way we were once treated, with insensitivity and inconsideration.

    That’s how we pay forward the misery that we received, while complaining about the miserable state of life.

    We always want to believe that we’re justified in feeling miserable about life while failing to see that we’re taking for granted the very life that can lift us out of our misery.

    Ingratitude for who we are is the root of our self-destruction.

    It always starts with you.

  • Who cares?

    Who cares?

    How often do you indulge in self-care because you truly value yourself, versus doing it because you have no reason to believe that anyone else cares enough to do it for you?

    Just because we believe we’re worth it, doesn’t mean that we treat ourselves kindly out of gratitude for who we are.

    Self-care that is driven by true gratitude for the self will result in emotional tranquility despite the trying circumstances of our lives, or the lacking substance in our relationships with others.

    It will result in moments of pause that happen spontaneously because we connect with the value of that moment, rather than because we have to pace ourselves in the hope of remaining functional in our duties towards others.

    Self-pity subtly transforms into self-loathing when it grows to define how we see our place in this world relative to what we need or want from others.

    When our internal conversation shifts towards convincing ourselves that who we are is why we’re not getting what we need, or why we’re not being treated the way we’d like to be treated, that’s when our thinking is driven by the belief that we’re not enough.

    True gratitude for the self is not driven by how others react to you.

    Their reaction is only ever an indication of two things.

    Firstly, the effectiveness of your efforts to communicate what is important to you relative to where they’re at.

    Secondly, a reflection of their ability to receive what you’re offering because of where they’re at.

    Figuring out the difference between the two demands mindfulness and the absence of self-loathing.

    Judging yourself based on your ability to get through to others is nothing more than a distraction from what you should be improving in your efforts to be more effective at achieving what you believe is important,

    Judgement is always only ever the first step in growth.

    It is driven by self-loathing when it becomes the final step.

    What truly drives your reasons for self-care?

  • Pitying yourself because of your self-pity

    Pitying yourself because of your self-pity

    When we realise the impact that our self-pity has on those around us, we’ll discover that we’re part of the cycle that leads to us feeling sorry for ourselves.

    Focusing on what we don’t have distracts us from all the opportunities that are possible with what we do have.

    Similarly, focusing on who we are not, distracts us from all the amazing things that we are capable of because of who we are.

    The root of this problem of self-pity lies in two things.

    We compare ourselves to others.

    And then we assume to know what they think of us because of how they treat us.

    Any comparison we make must be focused on learning and growing by observing in others what is possible within ourselves.

    It must be a source of inspiration to constantly improve, not because we’re deficient, but because we’re capable of more.

    Any focus on what others may think of us must be driven by our need to measure our effectiveness in our efforts to impact their lives in the way that we intended to.

    And any consideration of what is implied by how they treat us must include our understanding, or at least our effort towards understanding, what they may be grappling with in their own life that causes them to behave badly towards us.

    Ingratitude is formed within us when we diminish the value of what we have because we’re fixated on everything that we don’t have.

    You can’t build a life with what you don’t have.

    You can only create something with what you do have.

    Start there.

    Or else you won’t start at all.

    It always starts with you.