Tag: mentalhealthawareness

  • What are you waiting for?

    What are you waiting for?

    When we find ourselves waiting for just the right moment, or that right feeling, or the perfect setting, or the ideal opportunity to present itself before we do something, we’re afraid of failure.

    If we know, with understanding and rational thought, why we are not ready for something, that’s different.

    When we have no real reason to put something off but we hesitate and make excuses, that’s when we’re not yet convinced about the value in what we want to do, or our ability to be successful at it.

    Looking for reason without deliberate effort or purpose is how we pacify ourselves in our efforts to avoid failure.

    When we focus on the value that we wish to create, and we accept that we are always learning something new even in spaces where we are very confident about our abilities, we will find the conviction to take action rather than to avoid failure.

    The only reason failure weighs down on us so much is because we are defined by how others may judge us.

    If you find yourself in such a head space, you need to reflect on why the opinions of others are more important than your opinion of yourself.

    Improve your opinion of yourself, and it will be easier to take advice, learn from your mistakes, and grow from failure.

    Own your life, or else someone else will.

  • Rise

    Rise

    People that respect your victim-hood do so because it makes them feel better about themselves.

    It doesn’t mean that they are malicious or have bad intentions. But they most likely don’t even realise it themselves.

    In fact, you may be supporting others in ways that comfort you more than it helps them.

    When we find familiarity in our struggles that others share, we risk polarising towards those who make us feel better about where we are, rather than seeking out those who may be able to guide us towards uplifting ourselves out of that space.

    That’s one of the difficulties of being in a victim head space without realising it. We become really good at making others feel OK about their weakness while believing that we’re supporting them to overcome it.

    Before you take offence to what I’m saying, you need to realise that you’re only a victim when you allow the oppression of others to define your self worth, and to dictate your effort towards establishing a life worth living.

    The moment you own your life and rise above the impact of that oppression, you’re no longer a victim, you’re a fighter!

    Not a survivor! A fighter!

    You lose the sweetness of life when you focus on coping as best as you can.

    That’s why you must always strive to rise above, to overcome, to prevail, and never to surrender or cope with what life throws at you.

    You only get one shot at life.

    Make it count.

  • How to abandon your dreams

    How to abandon your dreams

    Failure only threatens is if we feel defined by the outcome of our efforts in trying to achieve our goals.

    Sometimes those goals are small things that influence the daily quality of our lives, and sometimes it’s big things that shape our future.

    The source of fearing failure is in our need to be respected by those around us.

    The only time we will be disrespected or diminished when we fail at something is when we surround ourselves with those who themselves are defined by how others see them.

    In such environments, mediocrity and tradition will be sacred. Playing it safe will be considered responsible. And being risk averse will be considered maturity.

    If the life that you seek is one without failure, without change, and without discovering who you truly are, then such environments are perfect for you.

    But, as humans, we are restless in spirit, and adventurous in nature. We are driven by knowing that we left our mark and we improved the state of the world in the short time that we were here.

    Mediocrity, conformance, and restraint therefore goes against our nature.

    When we fight our nature from fear of exclusion or rejection, it’s only a matter of time before our health suffers, and our spirits will be dulled.

    That’s how dreams are lost and hope is abandoned.

    You owe it to yourself, and the next generation, to be true to the value that you are capable of creating in this world beyond just maintaining the status quo.

    Live inspired.

  • Embrace the whole of you

    Embrace the whole of you

    We often discard good advice because we don’t like the source.

    Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to appear weak in front of them, and other times it’s because we are trying to save face after having treated them badly.

    Emotional maturity is achieved when we are willing to learn from our enemies and loved ones alike.

    It’s achieved when we are more focused on growth, than we are on how we may appear to others.

    Emotional maturity is key to living with authenticity, and serving with conviction.

    But, emotional maturity is not something that you can pursue directly. It is an outcome.

    What we need to pursue directly is connecting with the gratitude of who we are, while seeking understanding of why they are who they are.

    We must seek to understand the value of every good quality, positive trait, and also every flaw, while embracing how each of these contribute towards making up the whole of who we are as a human being.

    Emotional maturity and quality of life, and relationships, follow from there.

    Any other approach is not sustainable, because every other approach will be dependent on how others treat us, before we will be able to show up as our best selves in that moment.

    Own Your Life. If not, someone else will.

  • A victim of your own mind

    A victim of your own mind

    There’s a difference between being a victim in the moment, versus holding onto the victim mindset long after the moment has passed.

    We hold on to the victim mindset when we need others to recognise our struggle, or to acknowledge what we’re having to overcome or deal with.

    The only reason this becomes necessary is because we feel unappreciated for the most part.

    More than this, we also believe that if we don’t have the victim card to play, we will have no excuse when we fall short of the expectations of others.

    The victim mindset is therefore a result of us believing that we’re not worthy in our own right, that’s why we need to give others something to appreciate about who we are and why we are that way.

    This is a classic example of a self-defeating behaviour.

    In addition to all this, when we’re in victim mode, we place demands on others to compensate for our shortcomings, resulting in strained relationships because they become responsible for how we feel about ourselves, while also having to take up the slack that we leave behind because of how exhausting the victim mindset can be.

    You owe it to yourself to rise above the impact of your last experience. Waiting for justice or retribution, or even an apology only results in you placing your life on hold, and most often has zero impact on the one who treated you badly.

    Don’t give them power beyond the event. If you do, you’re feeding the very cycle of abuse or bad behaviour that you feel victim to.

  • What’s your legacy?

    What’s your legacy?

    Live to love, to laugh, and to leave a legacy.

    It is only through truly appreciating who we are, that we will be able to leave an imprint of love in the hearts of those we cherish.

    Until we connect with that gratitude of self, our efforts will put smiles in the hearts of others, while our own faces carry smiles that barely reach our eyes.

    Without such gratitude, our laughter will be nothing more than an attempt to release, in that moment, the heaviness that we harbour within.

    And our legacy will be one of sacrifice and martyrdom, teaching our loved ones to sacrifice themselves in the service of others, while not teaching them how to connect with the sweetness of such service.

    Material success is only a blessing if it uplifts, rather than enslaves.

    Wealth that enslaves is the wealth that strokes our ego but deprives us of the joy of human connection, or denies us the bonds of beauty that feed our souls.

    Laughter should not be sourced from a business deal that outwitted our opponents.

    Such laughter will mock us in our later years when we realise that our fascination with wealth was merely a drop in the ocean of joy compared to the joy that we could have achieved in investing our incredible talents to brighten up the faces of loved ones, or even strangers.

    Wealth is a means to an end. Don’t get so caught up in the means that you completely lose sight of your end.

  • Peace always starts with you

    Peace always starts with you

    The next time you find yourself having a disagreement with someone, consider if the way in which you conduct yourself is to demand that they show you due respect or consideration, or are you trying to establish understanding.

    When we feel taken for granted or invisible in something that is important to us, we’re more likely to become defensive, aggressive, or passive aggressive in our efforts to get our point across.

    If we’re not aware of our need for significance, we will go in search of significance in almost every setting.

    This is how we end up yelling at cashiers, losing ourselves to road rage, and being argumentative with co-workers, as just a few examples.

    Understanding why we feel insignificant is the first step towards breaking that cycle.

    Understanding why those who are significant to us are not treating us with the significance that we need is the second step.

    And the third step towards breaking this cycle of rage or bitterness at the world is to understand why we need such validation to feel significant before treating others in a way that is true to who we are, rather than being driven by the anger or disappointment that we feel.

    Emotional mindfulness is core to the above, and having a healthy self-worth is what makes it possible to pace ourselves in our efforts towards creating the understanding and establishing the bonds that we believe will improve the quality of our relationships.

    It always starts with you.

    If you need help to understand what drives you to be less than who you want to be, reach out via my website at zaidismail.com or on WhatsApp at +27836599183, and let’s get the conversation started.

  • What are you really waiting for?

    What are you really waiting for?

    In order to know what’s not right, you need to know what right would look like.

    Or feel like.

    Or taste like.

    Just because you don’t know how to make it right, doesn’t mean you have to accept and live with what’s wrong.

    But sitting back and growing frustrated at your condition without trusting yourself to know that it can or must be better is a self-imposed constraint over your happiness.

    Think of your life as your favourite meal.

    Eventually, as life happens, the free who prepared that meal for you leaves your life, or you leave theirs.

    But, your new partner doesn’t know how, for example, your mom or dad, used to prepare that meal for you, so they try their best to make it the way that you like it.

    Despite their best efforts, they just don’t get it right.

    At that point, you have some choices to make:
    1. Blame them for not doing enough
    2. Understand that they can’t recreate something if they don’t have the knowledge or abilities to do so
    3. Accept that your favourite meal cannot be recreated, so you need to discover a new favourite
    4. Work with them in trying to figure out how to create it, so that together, you can once more create what you once loved

    If you choose 4, you will also be creating space for you and your partner to discover something beautiful together.

    You’ll have less reason to blame them for being inadequate, and more reason to play an active part in creating your joy with them, rather than holding them responsible for creating it for you.

    The most important point being that we must avoid the assumption that if someone isn’t doing what we told them we want or need from them, that they’re withholding it out of spite or selfishness, when the truth is more likely to be that they honestly don’t know how because they didn’t have in their life what we had in ours.

    This is how we begin to create space for new joy in our life, instead of wasting life away while lamenting the loss of what we once had.