Tag: ownyourlife

  • 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.

  • Are you accountable to you?

    Are you accountable to you?

    You know that feeling that you get when you see someone say or do something and you just know they’re talking nonsense?

    That’s because they lack authenticity.

    But when you get that feeling and they actually do follow through with what they say and do, and they mean it, then you lack authenticity because you were projecting your insecurities on them.

    Sounds harsh?

    If it does, you’re approaching life from a position of judgement, rather than growth.

    No one does that deliberately.

    NO ONE. NOT EVEN YOU.

    So when you find yourself or others living with a disconnect between who they are and what they say, understand that they’re compensating for an insecurity that they may not be aware of.

    And again, the same applies to ourselves when our behaviour is inconsistent with our values.

    Blaming others for giving you reason to behave badly further erodes your authenticity, no matter how principled you may be in every other sphere of your life.

    The reality is, we’re responsible for the choices we make, whether it relates to how we’re being treated, or how we’re responding to the behaviour of others.

    If life is about wanting to be better than who we were yesterday, each time we get something wrong, we’ll be inspired to try again until we get it right.

    If not, we’ll need distractions like substance abuse, or other unhealthy addictive behaviours including mind altering medications.

    Alcohol, drugs, and other mind altering substances are not just innocent pastimes.

    They’re a need to escape what you’re not willing to embrace because you’re judging yourself based on how someone else treated you.

    Not necessarily the person you’re with.

    The price that you pay, and the price that innocent people pay as a result of your need to cope or escape, is not worth it.

    Step up. Face your demons. And if needed, get help.

    The evidence is clearly against any excuses that you might make.

    Your life doesn’t have to be an escape from your past.

    It can be amazing because of it.

    It always starts with you.

  • Who’s broken?

    Who’s broken?

    There are no broken humans.

    Nor are there perfect ones.

    As we contemplate whether our cup is full or empty, we lose sight of whether we’re in a position to receive what is being offered, or if others are able to receive what we’re offering.

    One of the biggest contributors towards misery and struggle is that we try to solve the wrong problems.

    When we focus on how we feel about things, we lose sight of why we feel that way.

    The same applies to how we feel about people.

    When we honour those emotions without understanding where they truly stem from, we grow passionate about addressing those symptoms by claiming our rights, or demanding space, and so on.

    That’s how we go about trying to solve the wrong problem.

    The problem with that is that when we’re distracted by the symptoms of a problem, we forget that the real problem continues to fester, growing more intense and toxic as we lose ourselves to it’s symptoms.

    Like looking for pleasurable distractions in an illicit relationship because we feel neglected by the partner that we have.

    Or extending ourselves to help others while believing that our own family doesn’t deserve our efforts because they take us for granted.

    We make such poor decisions when we’re distracted from why it is that others have such an impact on how we feel about ourselves.

    Each act of ours that goes against our claimed values reveals a struggle within that is provoked by what we’re facing in life.

    That’s when we need to look within, rather than blame others for our behaviour.

    If not, we become the proverbial broken cup that can never be filled, because life will always feel like a struggle instead a pursuit of passion.

    Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

  • Live the life that you have

    Live the life that you have

    Having dreams and goals are great, but not if it robs you of the beauty of what you have.

    Like it has been said, there is nothing so bad that there is no good in it.

    Similarly, no matter how desperate or miserable life appears, there is always something to be grateful for, or something to be excited about.

    The more we invest in the future, the less we connect with the present.

    Most often, our investment in the future is to protect us from something that happened in the past.

    Past, present, future – they’re all relevant.

    But, as always, moderation and balance is important.

    It’s the moments of joy and accomplishment that gives us hope for how the future can be better than what we have now.

    However, if we’re so fixated on creating that future that we desire, we may lose sight of the fact that the present ease or comfort that we have relative to what we had before, is in fact that future that we’ve been striving to create.

    But here’s the real kicker.

    It’s only through embracing the reality, the opportunity, the joy, or the pain of the present moment that we are able to do something constructive with it that will contribute towards that future that we desire.

    The future is the very next moment after the moment you’re in.

    It’s not some distant point in time.

    Don’t confuse investing in long term goals with living the life that you have.

    Otherwise you’ll put your life on hold without any guarantee that your goals will be reached, thereby losing both.

    Work with what you have.

    Be purposeful with what you have.

    And the future will take care of itself.

    It always does.

  • 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.

  • Who do you think you are?

    Who do you think you are?

    We self-loathe when we assume what we think others think of us, and then use that to justify why we should not serve them.

    It’s an irony that is intended to voice to the world our dissatisfaction at how we’re being treated, while contributing towards the very reason why the world treats us that way to begin with.

    Just like darkness is the absence of light, misery and harshness is the absence of kindness and generosity of spirit.

    The moment we trade our ability to be kind or generous in favour of being harsh or selfish, we deny ourselves the fulfilment that none other can provide because it is a fulfilment experienced in being able to uplift, not in being uplifted.

    The misery that we feel when we do that to ourselves is then projected on those we wish would treat us better, while not realising that we’re competing with the same demons that have already overwhelmed or distracted them.

    It would be quite comical if it wasn’t so destructive.

    The only time we should withhold our generosity or support is when it enables another to oppress others, or us.

    And even then, we need to be measured in our response by ensuring that we don’t dish out harshness or cruelty to fight oppression.

    At the most, we should simply disengage so that we’re no longer available to enable such bad behaviour.

    If we’re mindful of the value of who we are, self-loathing will feel uncomfortably lacking in authenticity as we try to convince ourselves that we’re worthless while we know with absolute conviction that we are capable of doing more.

    Self-loathing is the ultimate middle finger to ourselves and does nothing to improve the state in which we find ourselves.

    So if you find yourself self-loathing, ask yourself, “Is this truly all I’m capable of?”

    It always starts with you.

  • Too good to be true

    Too good to be true

    I’m often asked why is it that someone with a solid self-worth can have their sense of self totally destroyed by a bad relationship.

    This is why.

    Despite our best intentions, placing someone on a pedestal is never a good idea.

    Not only will it blind us to their humanness, it will also distract us from our potential.

    Worse than this, it distorts our judgement of ourselves when they don’t respond or react the way we need them to.

    Firstly, when we elevate someone in that way, we forget that it’s based on our perception of who they are, and not because they claimed that spot on the pedestal that we built.

    Secondly, because of this misplaced belief in their excellence of character or accomplishment, the success or failure of our efforts to earn their praise or affection leaves us questioning our worth because of how much credibility we place on their reactions towards us.

    Remember, we placed them on that pedestal, so they probably have no idea why our expectations of them are so high, making it easier for them to fail us without them knowing why.

    When they falter, we see them as falling from grace because we assume that they always thought that they were too good for us, meanwhile they never saw themselves that way to begin with.

    Worse still, that unreasonable expectation that we place on them could easily provoke their insecurities, resulting in them deliberately resisting what we need from them.

    That sets in motion a cycle that destroys an otherwise good relationship when we blame them for not living up to the expectations that we imposed on them, while accusing them of setting such high expectations.

    Be mindful of what you take from others versus what they’re offering.

    Otherwise you’ll create self-fulfilling prophecies while blaming the world for your misery.