Tag: lifegoals

  • Keep up, if you can

    Keep up, if you can

    Like they say, love is not two people looking at each other, it’s two people looking in the same direction.

    What happens when the one is looking ahead, while the other is looking behind?

    One common failing in relationships is that while one partner views growth as the amazing things that they can achieve together, the other sees it as a statement of their partner not being happy with what they have.

    One focuses on protecting what they have while the other focuses on improving it.

    One focuses on reaching their full potential, while the other is still waiting to feel validated for what they’ve achieved. And so it goes…

    And when these differences of perspective are not understood, it’s easy to assume that the conflict of priorities is a rejection of who we are or what’s important to us.

    There is no easy fix to this because at the root of it is the fact that the one who is invested in growth has a healthier self-worth than the one who is invested in staying where they are.

    Self-worth is based on how much gratitude we have for who we are.

    And gratitude is something that we cannot instil in another. We can point out all the reasons why someone should be grateful, but the choice to be grateful is always theirs to make.

    Self-pity or self-loathing, which is simply the opposite of self-worth, is what gets in the way of healthy emotional bonds in a relationship.

    Understanding and accepting your ability to influence your partner in this regard could be the difference between courting insanity and choosing peace.

    Choose carefully.

    Own Your Life

  • Internal struggle, outward joy

    Internal struggle, outward joy

    The martyr within, breathes life into the angel without.

    A rare few live their lives outwardly, as they feel inwardly about themselves.

    The need to hide our shame from the world is born from feeling ashamed of who we are, and not because of what others think of us.

    The opinions of others only matter in two ways.

    It hits a tender spot because it threatens to expose what we already judge harshly about ourselves.

    Or it offers us perspective in our efforts to be better than we were the day before.

    Most focus on the judgement because their relationship with themselves is so harsh.

    That’s why so much effort is put into presenting ourselves to the world in a way that will gain favour or distract attention away from how we feel about ourselves, because we carry too much shame within about who we are.

    Understanding where that harsh self-judgement comes from is the beginning of the journey towards reclaiming ourselves, and our joy in life.

    When last did you feel the way you looked when you showed up in the spaces of others?

    If you can’t recall, we need to talk.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • The shame within

    The shame within

    Good advice sometimes feels like a threat because it prompts us to acknowledge a flaw that we feel ashamed of.

    It’s like putting in your best effort to create a piece of art, and then having someone come along and innocently suggest that you should’ve tried this or that to enhance it further.

    No matter how much merit there is in their suggestion, if you’re already feeling insecure about your artistic talents, you’ll find reason to justify taking offence, or to dismiss why you don’t think that will work with what you’re trying to achieve.

    That’s what happens when we assume that the motive behind good advice is to highlight our shortcomings, or to emphasise the superiority of our advisor. Or worse still, we assume that the other person deliberately wants to make us feel inadequate.

    All it is, is a sense of shame that we carry within us about who we are, or how we’re lacking in our efforts to earn the significance or validation of those we love.

    That threat to our significance is what feels like an attack that we respond to with anger, or passive aggression, because anger is a demand for significance.

    Being mindful about our opinion of ourselves is one of the hardest things to do.

    It means that we must be aware of whether we’re judging ourselves based on what we think others will approve of, or are we viewing ourselves with understanding based on who we aspire to be.

    The former is destructive.

    The latter is what creates the inspiration to continuously build and improve on who you are and what you wish to leave as your legacy.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Dream a little dream…

    Dream a little dream…

    In a world of cynics, it’s easy to lose sight of the power that you have to turn your dreams into reality.

    Your efforts become more daunting when faced with an endless barrage of naysayers who only see your potential through their own fears.

    Sincere advisors are often driven by fear, and thus focus on protecting you from their fears of what failure may bring.

    So you slowly give up on your dream as a fantasy, while using its promise as fuel to cope with your reality.

    When you maintain clear boundaries between the two, you convince yourself that dreaming is an irresponsible indulgence of youth, while reality is for adulting.

    Without meaning to, you adopted the fears of those around you, and measured your success by how much you could exceed their expectations within the frame of fear that they painted for you.

    Beauty is lost, endearments become fickle expressions of lightness, and death becomes the morbid milestone by which you gauge how much capacity you will need to keep going.

    All this because you believed others when they disbelieved in you.

    Your dreams are yours to abandon, or yours to claim.

    But if you’re trying to claim a dream that is intricately woven around the presence of another, brace yourself for the anguish that accompanies a lifetime of trying to convince them that achieving your dream is possible, when the events of their life convinced them not to try.

    Dream with abandon, and live with courage.

    If you don’t, the regret will be yours to court, and dreaming will become a cynical taunt that feels like a nightmare.

  • The shame within

    The shame within

    You know that awkwardness that you feel when someone says something that you know is right but you’re not ready to hear it?

    Or when a sincere advisor or significant other points out something you’re doing that isn’t helpful or good for you, and you get defensive about it?

    Those are hints at the shame with which you view yourself regarding that habit or character trait.

    When we judge ourselves harshly, we grow defensive the moment someone draws attention to what we already feel insecure about.

    On the surface, we feel justified in defending ourselves because we feel judged.

    However, if we weren’t already judging ourselves, we wouldn’t feel judged, we’d feel misunderstood.

    Choosing whether or not to clarify that misunderstanding then becomes a matter of how much importance we place on the one who is making the incorrect assumption about us.

    But when we feel judged, it’s much more difficult to be selective about who we get defensive with and end up in full attack mode on people who don’t deserve it.

    The shame that we feel about ourselves is because we’re still seeing ourselves through the eyes of those we feel were never proud of us. Usually one or both parents.

    Until we realise this, we’ll go through life believing that we are unfairly judged without being open to growing beyond that because in our obsession with defending ourselves, we were never open to receiving good advice on how to be better.

    It always starts with you.

  • Dream killers

    Dream killers

    Do you find yourself waiting in the shadows, wondering when will it be safe to emerge and take that risk on something that you’ve always dreamt of achieving?

    Are you waiting for the perfect moment to ensure that you get it just right?

    Or do you find yourself mentioning it to any person that shows an interest in what you’re passionate about, always lighting up with excitement when you talk about it, but also ensuring that you have a good argument as to why you can’t do it just yet?

    All the above is most often driven by self-doubt rather than the due diligence needed to ensure that you understand the dynamics to be successful at your passion project.

    Due diligence has its place. But only in good measure. Otherwise it ceases to be due diligence and results in analysis-paralysis.

    Analysis-paralysis is when we exhaust ourselves in research and understanding to the point of fatigue, so that we accumulate enough information about what may go wrong, while ignoring or downplaying the probabilities of what may go right.

    It’s driven by a need for perfection that is a defence mechanism to protect ourselves from appearing incompetent in front of others.

    The fear of failure destroys more hope than failure itself.

    That’s why it’s important to choose your confidante carefully when wanting a sounding board about a project or venture that you’re passionate about.

    Share it with naysayers, and they’ll convince you that your dreams are too big for your social standing.

    Share it with visionaries, and they’ll inspire you to overcome the odds while focusing purposefully on the path that you need to navigate to achieve your dreams.

    Wanting to run the race means nothing if you don’t get out of the starting blocks.

    Decide…do you want to leave a legacy of what-ifs and if-onlys, or do you want to leave a legacy that uplifts and inspires?

  • Depression is not what you think it is

    Depression is not what you think it is

    ⚠ Trigger Warning ⚠


    Depression is not a mental illness. It is a legitimate human emotion in the face of overwhelming odds, or the absence of hope.

    It is a moment of pause when everything that we believed to be true about our world, appears to fail us.

    By labelling this important human emotion as an illness, we dehumanise the human who is struggling to find hope in the midst of turmoil, or pain.

    To break the cycle of depression, we must embrace the reasons for feeling depressed.

    Embracing those reasons is not about judging whether we’re right or wrong, or strong or weak, for feeling depressed.

    Embracing those reasons means to gain a fresh perspective on why we invested ourselves in people who appear to have taken our trust for granted.

    When we lose sight of this trust that we placed in others, we also forget that we’ve grown to see ourselves through what we think they think of us because of how they responded to our efforts towards them.

    In other words, we lost sight of who we are, because we assumed them to be someone they’re not.

    Again, it’s not about judging them or ourselves.

    Instead, it’s about understanding where our assumptions and beliefs were misinformed, so that we can connect with the real reasons why it didn’t work out the way we wanted, rather than assume that it’s because we were not enough.

    Depression is always about the absence of hope in achieving something that is important to us, without which every other success in life feels empty and pointless.

    It’s only through understanding how this plays out uniquely in our life, that we’ll be able to rise above the hopelessness that set in when we were distracted by the failure of not achieving our dreams.

    Pause. Breathe. And try again. Only this time, wiser, and more capable than before.

  • Navigating relationships – 2 of 5

    Navigating relationships – 2 of 5

    When we’re insecure about who we are, we’re more likely to assume that the behaviour of those around us is because of what they think of us.

    This places an unspoken burden on them that influences how they show up for us when we need them most.

    If you want to understand your behaviour towards your partner, or their behaviour towards you, you need to be aware of the dynamics in your relationship with your own family. Especially your parents.

    This is true for them as well.

    When we have dysfunctional or even abusive relationships with our family or parents, what we lack in those relationships inevitably feeds our insecurity in our own relationships, and it influences what we expect from our partners to make up for what was always lacking.

    Most often, this is a subconscious need or demand that we place on them, and that they place on us.

    The more aware we are of this, the greater our chances of being able to remedy it without it contaminating an otherwise good relationship.

    When we feel triggered by something that our partner does, it means that we’re still affected by a past experience that most likely occurred long before we met them.

    Our trigger is ours to own, because it is our fear about what the future holds relative to what the current moment reminds us about our past.

    Hence the fear and anxiety that prompts us to respond with intensity towards something seemingly innocent from others.

    When you’re caught up in a bad cycle with someone, focus on what you’re contributing towards that cycle and change that, rather than focusing on what you need them to change to break that cycle.

    It always starts with you.