Tag: loveyourself

  • Who defines your resilience?

    Who defines your resilience?

    “Resilience is our ability to cope with adversity when we focus on rising above, rather than sinking below. Too often we wait for a sympathetic outstretched hand to lift us up because we’ve convinced ourselves that we need lifting.” (The Egosystem)

    Your resilience is directly affected by your belief in your ability to rise above what you are facing.

    It’s OK to feel overwhelmed in the moment. Or even for a while after.

    It’s OK to pause for breath, or to choose your battles.

    It’s OK to have moments of weakness, or fragility.

    Those are all part of the essence of being human.

    But, the moment you allow that to define your self-worth, or you use it to convince yourself that you’re incapable of making something of your life because no one believes in you, you’re no longer being human. You’re being ungrateful for who you are.

    Some may see this as judgemental. Or perhaps even harsh.

    It’s harsher and more destructive to suppress the good that we are capable of creating while waiting for the bad that was done to us to be redressed.

    That’s how evil triumphs over good.

    That’s how misery becomes more important than joy.

    All because we grew to be ungrateful of who we are without realising that it was just another struggling soul that treated us badly.

    But because we’re unworthy of love or affection, or understanding, but because they were incapable of what we needed from them.

    It always starts with you.

  • Daydream your life away…

    Daydream your life away…

    Sometimes we lose ourselves to nostalgia to the point of disconnecting from the life that we have.

    Good memories are great, as long as it’s not a reason to take our current blessings for granted.

    Many of us are so fixated on the life that we once had, that we neglect the people and the quality of life that we have now.

    Sometimes, in fact often, we even neglect our health, because if we don’t have much to look forward to, there’s not much point in taking care of ourselves. Right?

    Wrong.

    When you only take care of yourself on special occasions, you’re taking yourself for granted the rest of the time.

    Memories are created between those special occasions more than on any specific occasion itself.

    When we hear of the good old days, we don’t hear of weddings and birthdays. The majority of the stories are about the wholesome and uncomplicated lives that we once lived. The family bonds, the solid friendships, the lekker meals and adventures.

    If you find yourself only celebrating life on special occasions, you’re taking yourself and your life for granted.

    Worse than this, you’ve probably lost your self-worth to how you want others to see you, and you don’t see yourself clearly anymore.

    You reclaim your life by reclaiming the present moment.

    But you can’t reclaim the present moment if you don’t see value in it.

    And you won’t see value in it if you spend your days longing for the past.

    Live romantically. Now. Not in the past. And your life will be everything you dreamed it could be.

    It always starts with you.

  • What are you taking from life?

    What are you taking from life?

    Our efforts towards others is what we give.

    How they receive and reciprocate those efforts is what we get.

    But what we take from that exchange is often lost to the emotional experience that lasts long after the moment has passed.

    What we take is OUR interpretation of what was behind the way that someone responded to our efforts towards them.

    It’s the assumptions that we make, and the signs we look for to confirm our assumptions to be true, that define what we take from others.

    Those assumptions are most often due to what we believe to be our value to them. It’s our assumption of how much they value us.

    It doesn’t mean that what we assume to be true is a reflection of how they truly value us.

    That’s when we become distracted by how our efforts are validated, rather than focusing on what value we want to create in that moment with them.

    The healthier our self-esteem, the kinder we’ll be towards them and ourselves with the assumptions that we make.

    Otherwise, if we don’t our own value, we’ll assume that their less-than-enthusiastic reaction towards us is because of who we are, and not because of what they may be grappling with in their own self-worth.

    When two unhealthy self-esteems collide, innocent beings are hurt, and a lifetime of pain is nurtured.

    Break the cycle by owning your self-worth, so that you don’t hold others accountable for how you feel about yourself.

    It always starts with you.



  • Reframe what brings you joy

    Reframe what brings you joy

    Reframing our perspective on life is more important than trying to solve problems that have been plaguing us for years, if not generations.

    Like Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.”

    Or something like that.

    Point is, if you keep hitting your head against a brick wall hoping for it to break, you know it’s more likely to break your head instead.

    So, either find something softer to hit your head against, if that’s what you’re into…or…

    Find a more effective way of breaking that wall.

    Hint: it’s not your head.

    This meme is a quote from my upcoming release, Own Your Life. It’s the revised edition of my last book titled Own Your Shit, with some new chapters added, and a lot of work done to improve the way in which the reader can connect with the message in the book.

    Copies should be available by beginning December 2021.

  • Are you losing yourself?

    Are you losing yourself?

    It’s easy to lose yourself if you don’t really know who you are, or who you want to be in a given moment.

    Far too often, we demand a specific response from others because of what we need, not because of what we are hoping to achieve, or create.

    Do we want to create peace, understanding, harmony, affection, and a sense of belonging?

    Or do we need to get all those things from others?

    We cannot give what we don’t have.

    When we lack some or all of that within ourselves, we’ll respond in kind towards those who also don’t have that within themselves.

    That’s how we lose ourselves to the situation in which we find ourselves, and also how we become part of the problem, instead of uplifting those who need it most.

    It always starts with you.

    You either feed the cycle of dysfunction or harshness around you, or you disrupt it by rising above it.

    The choice you make reflects how you feel about yourself long before it reflects how others feel about you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Understand. Then accept. Then forgive.

    Understand. Then accept. Then forgive.

    I see so many who claim to have forgiven, but are still weighed down by what was done to them.

    There’s an important difference between forgiving as a means to forego punishing someone or demanding retribution, versus forgiving because you truly understand why someone behaved badly.

    When that understanding is lacking, it makes it impossible to accept what they did, because we’ll never be able to reconcile why they did it.

    Without understanding why, acceptance becomes superficial, and forgiveness becomes a token gesture.

    Forgive and forget is a great notion of noble intent that often lacks any true resolution or peace.

    If you want that forgiveness to carry with it the promise of peace beyond that experience, you must seek to understand, without judgement, why someone treated you badly, or committed a dastardly deed.

    It’s through that understanding that we’ll discover that their actions were more about their demons, than it was about how they felt about us.

    If our sense of significance or self-worth was defined by their validation of who we are, even understanding won’t give us that peace.

    But, that’s on us. Not on them. We’re responsible for how we feel about ourselves. And no amount of forgiveness will change that.

    It always starts with you.

  • The weight of life

    The weight of life

    How often do we judge others for being moody just because they’re easily annoyed at things that don’t go smoothly for them?

    How often do others judge us for the same thing?

    Moodiness is most often our way of communicating that we’re unhappy about repeatedly being taken for granted, when we’re tired of communicating that we’re tired of being taken for granted. Right?

    When we want to believe that someone cares, we won’t always tell them what we need, because then we’re never certain if they respond out of sincere care or obligation.

    That’s why we choose ‘moodiness’ to express our dissatisfaction about what’s troubling us, or what we’re not getting from them.

    Just don’t lose yourself to those moods.

    Sometimes people may be too distracted by their own pressures in life, and if you wait for them to notice that you’re unhappy, you may assume that they don’t care when in fact, they were simply distracted.

    If you care about them, you’ll find a way to get their attention without judging them to be insensitive or uncaring.

    It’s all about understanding.

    When we’re not getting what we need, it doesn’t mean that we should stop giving what we’ve got.

    It always starts with you.

  • Your world. Your worries.

    Your world. Your worries.

    I walked on the lawn with bare feet the other day.

    For a moment my senses were teased and I felt grounded.

    I gazed around the garden and looked past the sprouting indigenous trees, and instead noticed the chores left unfinished, or new ones that begged for my attention.

    I walked on and paid little attention to them because the lawn felt so good beneath my feet.

    In that moment I knew that even the reality of this world and all its worries could not rob me of the fascination of that moment.

    But no sooner had that thought occurred that I found myself robbing myself of that which the world was unable to take from me.

    That’s when I realised that I willingly give up that peace, or that moment of beauty, when I allow myself or others to contaminate it by worrying about that which I can’t change or influence in that very moment.

    The most common cause of such worry is self-pity, feverish self-pity is driven by our belief that no one cares enough to share our load, or consider our needs.

    Self-pity is driven by ingratitude.

    That ingratitude is not only for what others contribute, in their own way, towards our lives, but especially ingratitude for how much value we’re able to contribute towards others if we didn’t worry about getting credit for it.

    Focus on the value that you can create in the world around you, and your gratitude for who you are will create the peace in your heart that you’re so desperately in need of.

    It always starts with you.