Tag: mentalhealthrecovery

  • You will, or else…

    You will, or else…

    If it is true that the path to hell is paved with good intentions, then it confirms that good intentions are not enough to create positive outcomes.

    If we raise children with the fear of negative consequences, they’ll never truly connect with the benefit of doing what’s right.

    When that fear barrier is broken, and it will be broken at some point, we lose our children to influences and social structures that offer them inclusion and acceptance, rather than fear and punishment.

    With ease of access to alternate value systems and cultural norms, fear and a demand for compliance is no longer sufficient to influence children towards doing good or being good.

    Methods of escape in the form of substance abuse, pornography, demeaning and abusive social media trends, and more are accessible by toddlers, let alone teens or adults.

    The only sustainable approach towards combating such harmful influences is not through the fear of hell fire, or the threat of punishment,it’s through the establishment of a healthy self-esteem.

    A healthy self-esteem is built on how emotionally available their parents are.

    But parents can’t give what they don’t have.

    That is, if the parent doesn’t have a healthy self-esteem, they will rely on compliance and obedience to measure their worth with their children, failing which they will resort to being more controlling and intolerant towards bad behaviour.

    Given the norms of intolerance and compliance that set the tone for many of today’s adults, connecting meaningfully with our children has become a struggle that many are not even aware of as we interpret the behaviour of the youth as willful disobedience, rather than as a desperation to feel significant.

    If we can’t connect the youth with the value of the value system that we want to instill in them, they will connect with value systems that stroke their need for inclusion and understanding.

  • Your rage, your loss

    Your rage, your loss

    If left unchecked, rage eventually clouds our judgement as we seek vengeance from anyone who reminds us of those who treated us badly in the past.

    When you find a reason to rage at every assumed threat, peace becomes elusive and bitterness takes over.

    Feeling enraged may be human, but acting on that rage is a choice.

    Sometimes we get so caught up in our anger at the world that we lose sight of the fact that our anger feeds the very same cycles that we’ve grown to despise.

    No one makes you angry.

    Anger is your choice of response to someone else’s behaviour because of what they mean to you, or because of what their actions trigger within you, or both.

    And that’s because of what you want to mean to them, but are failing at achieving it.

    So your anger is your demand for significance when who you are is insufficient to achieve that significance.

    Your anger and your triggers are your responsibility.

    Making the world responsible for your emotional response to life gives everyone the power to control your behaviour.

    If you can influence a positive change in how someone treats you, do it.

    If not, walk away.

    Insisting on rage after you’ve realised that you are unable to influence positive change is an indulgence of your ego and not a righteous protest.

    Choose carefully who you want to be when someone treats you badly, or else you’ll lose yourself to become just like those whom you despise for treating you badly because your rage will cause you to become a source of oppression against those who have nothing to do with your feelings of inadequacy.

    Don’t get angry.

    It’s not worth it.

  • A destined misery…or is it?

    A destined misery…or is it?

    Are you sightseeing while wishing that what you see could be your reality?

    Most often, it is our belief in what we deserve that limits us more than what we actually deserve or are capable of achieving.

    In fact, considering what we deserve or don’t deserve is a distraction most likely grounded in self-pity or entitlement, neither of which changes reality.

    Couple that with resigning your fate to destiny and you have a recipe for misery.

    It’s like waiting up all night to witness an amazing sunrise only to give up as the first streaks of dawn appear, followed by convincing ourselves that it was our destiny not to see the sunrise.

    No. Destiny is the sum total of the choices that you make with the opportunities that present themselves to you.

    If you’re too distracted to notice those opportunities, or lack the courage to embrace it, that’s your choice, not destiny.

    The only thing that can reasonably be blamed on destiny is the consequences that affect us of the bad decisions that others make.

    Likewise, they are confronted with the fateful outcomes of our poor decisions, or our inaction to improve things.

    How we respond to that which is out of our control is a reflection of who we are and what we value about life.

    Don’t settle for less and then blame the world for not treating you fairly, or for not allowing you to have the life that you want.

    You only accept or pursue that which you believe you deserve, or that which is safe for you to pursue when you’re distracted by what others think of you.

    That’s why most of us settle for the dawn because we believe that we’re undeserving of the majestic sunrise.

    It always starts with you.

    Not with destiny.

  • Judging self into misery

    Judging self into misery

    When we internalise our struggle to the point of believing it to be so unique that it cannot possibly be grasped by anyone else, we give it a power of magnitude beyond the experience itself.

    Misery intensifies the more we dwell on it.

    When we live inside our heads, we convince ourselves that our struggle and our pain defines our courage because if only ‘they’ knew what we were dealing with while still showing up, they wouldn’t judge us the way that they do.

    We judge ourselves harshly long before we give the world an opportunity to judge us.

    We then take that self-judgement and treat it as a truth of what we think others think of us.

    Then we treat others based on that assumption that we made from the self-judgement while blaming them for judging us.

    Crazy, right?

    That’s what holding on to pain or misery does.

    It distorts our grasp on reality because we only find what we’re looking for, while we ignore or dismiss anything that conflicts with that.

    It’s not as confusing as it may sound.

    If you go to the grocery cupboard looking for a can of tuna, you’re not going to notice if you have enough rice left, because you weren’t looking for rice, you were looking for tuna.

    Same with life.

    What you focus on is what you’ll find, and that’s why you won’t see what others see if you’re busy judging yourself or waiting for justice, because they’re looking at your life very differently.

    That’s how we create self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships, or we create anxiety about what we need to deal with in life.

    Step back.

    Take a deep breath.

    Break the routine.

    And surround yourself with people or an environment that helps you to regain perspective beyond what is weighing you down.

    That’s how we reconnect with hope and with joy in life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Your dignity is yours to claim

    Your dignity is yours to claim

    Did you notice how some people, when faced with soul destroying realities, are still dignified in how they rise above it.

    If you wait for your aggressor or abuser to treat you with dignity before you find reason to respect yourself, you’re doing life back to front.

    Expecting recognition of your humanness from the world is like expecting your tormentor to become your mentor.

    It’s irrational.

    Dignity is not bestowed, it is claimed!

    It is undignified to ask to be treated with dignity because that means that your dignity is dependent on how others treat you.

    It means that it’s dependent on others agreeing that you’re deserving of dignity.

    You either maintain your dignity in the face of them being undignified towards you, or you trade your dignity for inclusion or validation.

    However, be sure that you’re offering what you’re demanding from others.

    Expecting people to treat you with respect and dignity while you treat them harshly or dismissively is hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is the opposite of dignity.

    As always, you cannot give what you don’t have.

    If you lack self-respect, you’re likely to demand respect from others so that you can feel better about yourself, while ignoring the fact that you not only treat others with disrespect, but you also treat yourself the same way.

    If you lack mindfulness of who you are in moments when your patience is tested, you’ll feel compelled to respond the way that you think they deserve, rather than being able to consciously choose who you want to be in that moment.

    It always starts with you.

    mentalhealthrecovery

  • The courage to own your life

    The courage to own your life

    The courage to own your life will pay dividends long after you’re gone. It’s an investment in the generations to come.

    In the same way that we look back on our predecessors or great grandparents and feel a sense of awe about their achievements, or their way of life, generations from now, someone may be doing the same about us.

    That’s why it’s important to get over our insecurities and act with purpose and conviction.

    No legacy worth leaving was ever created by focusing on what others might say.

    If nothing else, worrying about what people may say is the very root of the fear that prevents us from sharing with this world what it desperately needs.

    Authenticity.

    When we operate from a place of fear, we step into survival mode.

    We’re prone to protect what we have or what we’ve inherited, rather than growing because of it.

    That fear then makes us aggressive towards those who don’t deserve it, and it convinces us that what we have is all we’ll ever be capable of achieving.

    Courage results from believing in the value of what we are capable of creating, and pursuing it as if our life will remain incomplete without it.

    But that assumes that you haven’t already surrendered to your fears and embraced the probability of amounting to very little by the time of your death.

    Don’t wait until your final sleep arrives before realising that you prevented yourself from living.

    Your past only defines the experience and skill that you acquired to navigate your future. It doesn’t, and never will define your future.

    It always starts with you.

  • Knowing your place

    Understanding where you fit into the strategy of the lives of your significant others will save you a lot of disappointment and even pain. More than this, understanding where you reside in the totem pole of their priorities is essential if you hope to maintain your sanity. If you are not aware of these two simple points, you’ll assume that the value system by which you embrace them is the value system by which they’ll embrace you. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

    When every ideal of yours is shattered by those in whom you tirelessly invest the moments of your life, you’re left contemplating who you are and what you stand for in the face of an abhorrent rejection. To claim grace and dignity in that moment when the audacity of ingratitude bears down on you without shame, becomes the battle that will determine whether you lose yourself to rage or do you hold on to the remnants of the self-respect that allowed you to invest tirelessly to begin with.

    Creating spaces for a life filled with love always seems like an amazing way to spend your life, until those spaces are neglected by the loves with whom you hoped to share it. The hand that gives is greater than the hand that receives because the hand that receives rarely understands what it takes to be able to give of that which you sacrifice much to earn a little. Receiving bears the threat of entitlement, while giving, the threat of arrogance. Lose sight of yourself in either, and you’ll become one with the ingrates who trade with entitlement and arrogance.

    Of course, this means that you must have first claimed yourself to begin with. Most have not. Most are defined by what they want to be seen as. They want to be seen as glorious, but offer only vainglorious ethics. They want to be seen as generous, but they trade with ingratitude. They want to change the world, but truly, they only mean to claim more from it for themselves. And if you grow up believing that you must take what you need in life, you’ll have no reason to consider the hands that toiled to create what you have available to take. Hence the ingratitude with which you are bound to operate.

    But giving while trusting that you will have what you need when you need it requires a trust that is scarce. When we realise that the values by which we live is not the values by which we are received, that trust in humanity, or even in our circle of endearment becomes a hot coal that we juggle in our hands, burning ourselves out while not having the heart to discard it because we know what it’s like to be discarded by those who don’t have it. For anyone looking on without appreciation for why that hot coal must not be abandoned, we appear as nothing more than a dancing madman persisting in self-harm while everyone else is self-preserving.

    Perhaps that is the place of the insane, whom, by the standards of the society around them, remain the only hope to retain some humanness where there now appears only a desert of isolation. In that desert we reach out to each other with tentacles of materialism while yearning for a warmly touch from living flesh, but incapable of receiving it with gentleness when it is offered, because we feel entitled to its offering because of our assumed place on the totem pole.

    When you step away from the system that depletes your dignity, you need a resolve that holds you steady as you navigate the darkness that remains in the spaces outside of that system. A cryptic life leads to a cryptic mind of cryptic thoughts that deepens the isolation of spirit, and increases the takers who reach out with those tentacles demanding a piece of your soul while reciprocating with a shallow smile and a goodly sentiment. But no warm embrace.

    Know your place.

  • With whom are you competing?

    With whom are you competing?

    Who are you really competing with in life?

    The only person you should be competing with is the one you were yesterday!

    The most common limiting belief that I encounter in others is the belief that they’re not as good as others.

    The way I encounter this within myself is when I question whether I’m good enough to achieve something, or when I think I’m fooling myself into believing that I’m capable of influencing the change that I am passionate about seeing in this world.

    If we stop and pay attention for a brief moment, we’ll realise that it’s not about better or worse, it’s about competing with what we believe to be true about ourselves.

    The day I began trying to prove myself wrong about all the things that I thought were just dreams or whimsical wishes is the day that I broke away from the expectations of others.

    Better or worse is only important if you’re competing to be just like everyone else.

    If everyone else had things figured out, the world wouldn’t be in the state in which we find it.

    We’re all struggling with our own demons on the inside, while presenting a confident and bold facade on the outside.

    That’s not necessarily being fake.

    Sometimes it’s just how we preserve our dignity.

    The moment you believe the facade, you judge yourself against a standard that doesn’t exist.

    The fact that you find reason to judge yourself at all is problematic.

    Your only focus should be in determining if you’re moving closer to, or further away from, the goals that you set for yourself.

    Remaining connected with purpose and conviction to those goals is the only challenge you have.

    Be you. Life is so much more rewarding when you are, and love becomes that much more attainable.