Tag: marriage

  • Respect is not earned

    Respect is not earned

    The old saying of ‘respect is earned’ robs you of self respect and replaces it with entitlement.

    How we treat others is a reflection of who we are, not who they are.

    Our ability to self regulate our offering of respect to those who may treat us badly is a reflection of how much we need them to treat us well before we feel good about who we are.

    In other words, the less grounded we are in who we are, the more likely it is that others will impact our moods, our temper, and our overall emotional wellbeing.

    Trust, on the other hand, is earned through consistency of effort about what’s important.

    Trust cannot be negotiated or contracted.

    If we have reason to doubt someone showing up for us, we won’t trust that they will.

    That reason is sometimes because of them being unreliable, but is also often because of how someone else in the past may have disappointed us or betrayed our trust when we needed a similar thing from them. Like comfort, support, or just being there for us.

    If we go through life trusting recklessly while withholding respect to those who, in our eyes, don’t deserve it, we will find ourselves reeling from betrayal long after it has passed while disrespecting those who don’t understand our pain.

    Problem is, even we won’t understand our pain, so we’ll never be able to communicate it in ways that will allow those close to us to understand why we’re raging.

    It all starts with self respect and self worth.

    Without that, you will need others to treat you well before you treat yourself well.

    Own your life.

  • The absence of drama is not peace

    The absence of drama is not peace

    The struggle in countering the influence of a village of idiots will never be truly appreciated until we experience the impact of the dysfunction that it produces in our lives.

    That impact usually only becomes evident when we’re facing upheaval that challenges any sensibility that we may rely on about life.

    Parenting is largely a lost art with the opportunity to outsource a large chunk of it to social media making it easy to ‘cope’ in that way.

    Losing ourselves to our own struggles that rage in our minds blinds us to the impact of our obliviousness to those around us.

    The absence of drama is not peace, nor is it wholesome family time.

    That is what social media and social distractions offer us. The absence of contention or conflict.

    That’s how we lose sight of the values that we’re imparting without meaning to, because on the one hand, we’re validating social media as a legitimate source of learning how life works, while also confirming that such an approach to parenting or to sharing life’s moments and wisdom is all that we have available to offer.

    We have greater impact through what we don’t do than what we do.

    Unfortunately, we’re mostly too distracted by needing validation for what we do that we lose sight of our abdication of accountability for what we should do more of…or just what we should be doing in the first place. Period.

    Our demons that distract us from what others need from us destroys more relationships than any real conflict that exists between two people.

    Own your life before you end up destroying someone else’s.


  • Heal yourself before you heal the world

    Heal yourself before you heal the world

    When we’re in a problematic relationship, it becomes easy to focus on what others are doing wrong.

    This may be justified, or maybe not. Either way, it distracts us from our contribution towards that situation that we’re party to.

    That’s the important part. To recognise that we are either enabling or sustaining the cycle in which we’re caught.

    Focusing on what others need to change is only productive if we’re having a meaningful discussion with them about how we’re affected by their behaviour.

    Beyond that, it serves as nothing more than a distraction from how we conduct ourselves in response to their behaviour.

    The moment you go into such a situation assuming that you’re right and they’re wrong, you become part of the problem, if not the problem itself.

    Relationships are about finding a balance, not about finding a compromise.

    Compromises lead to scorekeeping and bitterness if either person thinks that they’re contributing more than the other.

    Stop compromising and start focusing on what you’re both wanting to create together.

    If you need them to make you feel complete, you’re horribly distracted from what you find lacking in yourself.

    Healthy relationships are formed when two people own their contribution towards the joint goals of the relationship and create space for each other relative to their strengths and weaknesses without judging each other for the same.

    If that sounds like a mouthful, or if it sounds complicated, then chances are very good that you’re getting it wrong, or you’re not acknowledging your contribution towards whatever frustrations or challenges you’re experiencing with your partner.

    Everyone wants to feel heard.

    Everyone wants to feel seen.

    Everyone wants to feel appreciated.

    Not just you.

    Keep that in mind the next time you approach addressing an issue with your partner and hopefully the outcome will result in understanding and a commitment towards mutual goals that will create a bond between you that you never experienced before.

  • 10 Rules for life

    10 Rules for life

    If you don’t hold yourself accountable before you hold others accountable, you’re insincere about what you claim to uphold.

    If you focus on everyone else’s shortcomings that you think may justify your behaviour, you will be defined by everyone else’s shortcomings.

    Is that really the standard by which you want to live?

    It always starts with you.

    Here are the 10 Rules:


    1. If you want to be trusted, conduct yourself with integrity and consistency at all times, not only when things are easy.

    2. If you want to be respected, learn to respect others, not only when there’s something in it for you.

    3. If you want to be appreciated, show appreciation for what you have and what you receive instead of behaving as if you’re entitled to everything that you need or want.

    4. If you want to be treated like an adult, communicate like an adult instead of throwing tantrums or assuming that you’re right so there’s no need for you to convince anyone else about what you believe to be true.

    5. If you want to feel cared for, show due care and consideration for others, and not only for people from whom you need things or from those who stroke your ego.

    6. If you want the benefit of the doubt, work on your credibility instead of demanding to be treated as if you have credibility, especially if you did something that raised doubts about your credibility.

    7. If you want to be heard, listen with the intention of understanding, and not with the intention of responding to prove that you’re right while ignoring the facts presented to you.

    8. If you can’t handle the answer to a question, don’t ask the question because you’re looking to hear what you want to hear, rather than being interested in what others have to say.

    9. If you don’t want others to assume the worst of you, stop assuming the worst of others.

    10. If you want your rights to be respected, fulfil your responsibilities. All of it. Not only the ones that you think you need to or feel like fulfilling.


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    10 Rules for life
  • Conveniently judgemental

    Conveniently judgemental

    Judgement is only ever supposed to be the first step in correcting what’s wrong.

    Sadly, it’s most often the only step that we take when faced with unbecoming behaviour from others.

    Worse still, judgement is easy to dish out about issues and incidents that are none of our business because having an opinion on something topical is the easiest way to feel relevant.

    Judgement is easy.

    All it requires is the ability to compare what we see to a rule or a law that we believe is revered by others.

    Such comparison requires zero understanding behind the behaviour, nor does it demand any action on our part to improve the situation.

    All it requires is an opinion without empathy or compassion.

    When passing judgement establishes our relevance in social circles, we grow emboldened by the attention we receive from those who agree with us, eventually assuming ourselves to be a moral authority that can speak on behalf of the Almighty.

    That’s when we find justification to pass judgement about the faith and beliefs of others, and we become argumentative about religion and philosophy, and the personal matters of those we have no intention of assisting.

    Passing judgement without understanding or accountability for the impact of such judgement is an indulgence of the ego and serves no good whatsoever.

    Unless you are duly appointed to judge between two parties, restrain yourself from having an opinion on every person or issue that crosses your timeline.

    Peace is found in leaving alone that which does not concern us.

    And harm is caused by involving ourselves insincerely in that which does not concern us.

    Check yourself before you feel a need to share your opinion on someone else’s life.

    Or else you may be tested with that which you judge others about.

  • A burdensome labour of love

    A burdensome labour of love

    Responsibility, when met with gratitude, feels like a labour of love.

    Remove gratitude, and it becomes a burdensome load.

    But only if gratitude is expected.

    That’s when expectations weigh down on us more than responsibility, because of the internal wait for others to reciprocate, or to notice.

    It’s not unreasonable to hold that expectation.

    In fact, we should expect those around us to show gratitude or to share the load, so that the relationship is not reduced to one of a mere exchange of duties.

    However, we must remember that they have the same expectation in return.

    More than this, if we’re not aware of this expectation that we have, because it’s usually a subconscious one, we feel disappointment or a growing bitterness towards those who we feel are taking us for granted.

    And again, the same is true in return from their side.

    To overcome this, not only must we be aware of this expectation, we must also understand if the other person is aware of it, and if they’re capable of meeting it.

    That opens a whole new can of worms. But that’s part of the fun of relationships, isn’t it?

    Having silly moments of realisation when you discover that what you were fretting about was only real in your head because the support or gratitude you were looking for was there all along.

    It just wasn’t in the form or expression that you were expecting.

  • Prisons of our minds

    Prisons of our minds

    Without realising it, we create most of the boundaries and the dependencies that we have on others, often without them being aware of it.

    One of the reasons we do this is because that is our code of life that we’re honouring.

    It’s our way of respecting or protecting what we see as sacred in that relationship.

    However, it’s based on the assumption that our partner shares the same values, and values the same things.

    Healthy communication will make such misalignment of expectations easier to deal with, and resolve.

    But, the moment we tell someone what we need from them, we create an opportunity for doubt within ourselves about whether they’re doing something out of obligation, or sincerity.

    That doubt is the beginning of the prison walls that we erect around ourselves, which slowly isolates us from our partner because we’re expecting them to notice what we need.

    But expectations are important in a relationship.

    Without it, the relationship loses value and the trust fades.

    To avoid this, we need to develop a healthy emotional maturity in the relationship so that issues of trust, expectations, and duty can be discussed in ways that don’t threaten the self-worth of your partner.

    More than this, we also need to realise that if we focused on what we’re not getting, and also focused only on what we’re giving, chances are good that we are unaware of what they need from us beyond the assumptions that we’ve made.

    Thus, the prisons of our minds become the prisons of our lives.



  • The absent parent

    The absent parent

    Even an absent parent is still parenting.

    It’s then on the shoulders of the present one to compensate for that.

    Sometimes, the absence of someone has a greater impact on us than the presence of others.

    This is especially true for parenting.

    The absent parent leaves the child with feelings of abandonment, insignificance, and a low self-esteem, to name a few.

    Worse still, it tortures them with the hope that it could be better if only…while distracting them from embracing the life and love that they have.

    It’s that unfulfilled hope and the failed expectations that become the burden of the parent who is present, who is still committed to the wholesome development of the child, to mitigate the impact of that negative influence.

    While it’s true that the children suffer, not enough is done to recognise the impact on the single parent.

    Because the human is often forgotten behind the role or the label that we assign to them.