Tag: optimism

  • Understand before you judge harshly

    Understand before you judge harshly

    Before you get upset with someone for not treating you the way that you want them to treat you, consider that what you need may not come naturally to them.

    Without meaning to, we oppress others when we assume that just because we’re capable of something, they should be too.

    This is especially true when it comes to emotional expression.

    How emotionally expressive we are is directly related to how emotionally accessible our parents were to us during our childhood.

    And no, not all siblings in the same household have the same experience, because not all parents treat their children equally.

    So when we look at the behaviour of our adult partners and we compare them either to ourselves or to their siblings or other family members, we’re dismissing their specific life experience, while insisting that they be like everyone else around them.

    Emotions cannot be sincerely and authentically expressed if it was never received in that way.

    How it’s received – again – is relative to how emotionally grounded our past experiences may have been.

    When you’re not getting the kind of emotional availability that you need from your partner, consider that it’s something that they may just not be connecting with because they’ve never experienced it in a safe and fulfilling way themselves.

    And just because you’re expressing it to them now doesn’t mean that it suddenly changes it. It doesn’t, because your expectation of them to reciprocate makes that setting an emotionally vulnerable space for them.

    Create an emotionally safe space for your partner before you judge them for being insensitive or cold, or else you may destroy their love for you just because they couldn’t express it the way that you wanted them to.

  • 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.



  • 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.

  • 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.


  • Don’t test the ones you love. Love them.

    Don’t test the ones you love. Love them.

    Ever find that despite your best efforts, someone close to you just never appreciates what you do for them?

    Ever feel like you’re having to fulfil their expectations in detail about how to do something the way that they want you to do it before they are satisfied with you?

    Even then, when you do that thing exactly the way they wanted you to, they then question your sincerity.

    “You only did it because I asked you to!”

    Does that sound familiar?

    Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

    The reason that they treat us that way, or even why we may treat others in that way is not because we’re questioning their sincerity, it’s because we doubt our significance to them.

    When we feel insignificant, we test others, often in passive aggressive ways, to see if we’re really important to them.

    The only reason we test them is because we don’t appreciate them. And then we hold them responsible for how we don’t appreciate ourselves either. That’s why we test them.

    When we look for kindness to be packaged in a specific way, we lose sight of the kindness or affection that they offer of their own accord, in their own way.

    When we expect others to express their appreciation, or affection towards us in a specific way, we not only diminish who they are, we also show ingratitude for their sincere efforts towards us.

    Then, when they pull away because they feel unappreciated, or taken for granted, or worse, because they feel invisible, we convince ourselves that we were right about their insincerity to begin with.

    Self-loathing is the root of most relationship problems.

    Don’t hold your partner or significant others responsible for how you feel about yourself.

    If you don’t appreciate who you are, you give others permission to take you for granted.

    It always starts with you.