Perspective is a choice, not an inheritance.
Improve your awareness of why you believe what you believe, and it will be possible to consciously choose what resonates with your personal value system, and discarding what doesn’t.
When we lose sight of why we hold the perspectives that we do, and those perspectives create a conflict within us, we feel an increase in stress and anger without always understanding why.
At those times, it’s easy to explain our emotional state by connecting it with our perspectives that are being challenged.
However, responding from a position of anger or defence because of a perceived attack on what we believe to be true is a defence mechanism.
We would have no reason to defend that which we believe is based on an objective truth.
The only way to achieve such a level of confidence in our perspectives and beliefs is by improving our self awareness, and thereby improving our ability to critically assess what we stand for, and why.
This will go a long way towards finding balance in life, and knowing which battles are worth fighting, and which are not.
#perspective #trust #truth #trustissues #beliefsystem #valuesystem #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #selfworth #selflove #selfawareness #selfrespect #mindfulness #inspiration #ownyourshit #ownyourlife #theegosystem #embracingME #zaidismail
Tag: ownyourshit
-
Your perspective is your choice
-
Don’t let fear win
If you’ve been raised on a diet of fear and compliance, it is inevitable that your choices will reflect your fears, and not your dreams
Fear destroys hope and replaces it with futility.
In the face of futility, we resort to compliance, because compliance provides us with familiarity.
Familiarity tethers us to rituals, traditions, and behaviours that feed the cycle that sustains the power of fear.
That is, the cycle of compliance at all costs.
When compliance becomes the objective, blind following becomes the method, and critical thinking is set aside in favour of inclusion.
The need for inclusion destroys dreams, breaks hearts, and damages souls, leaving in its wake a field of martyrs who surrender their joy in the face of futility, not realising that it is fear that breeds futility, and not overwhelming odds.
Be courageous, brave soul. Self-imposed martyrdom is not the only path to peace. In fact, it defeats that very goal.
#courage #fear #compliance #tradition #inclusion #familyties #traumabonds #abusiverelationships #dreams #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #selfworth #selflove #selfawareness #selfrespect #mindfulness #inspiration #ownyourshit #ownyourlife #theegosystem #embracingME #pursuitofhappiness #victimmentality #zaidismail #mybeloved -
Save yourself from regrets
I believe that among the great deathbed regrets will be the realisation that we never truly showed the world who we are.
It’s the what-ifs and if-onlys that cause more regret and heartache than any bad decision.
Bad decisions are made with good intentions, yet we always choose to remember the negative outcome, rather than celebrate our innocence and sincerity for trying.
We do this because we’re more focused on what others think of us, than we are about what we know to be true about ourselves.
This bias against ourselves is one of the roots with which ingratitude takes hold in our life.
When that happens, we become martyrs in our own mind, as we focus on everything that didn’t work out, while losing sight of the beauty and blessings that we have.
Living up to your convictions, despite society, is what will provide you with peace and fulfilment when you need it most.
That is, in those final moments when you look back at the sum total of your life and wonder if you made the best of it, or did you only focus on the worst of it?
Redefine what peace means to you. It is always beyond just the absence of disagreement or hostility. Peace lies in being true to yourself, and appreciating the opportunities for growth that such conviction creates in those around you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #ownyourshit #embracingME #motivation #optimism #zaidismail #peace #deathbedregrets #death #companionship -
Saving my insanity
Sometimes I write to share my insanity, but sometimes I write to save it.
When everything about the world feels unnatural, sanity offers no relief.
Besides, like Vonnegut said, “A sane person, when compared to an insane society, will appear insane.”
I have often considered myself that lone voice of sanity, and in that assumption, I found myself to be insane.
Fulfilment lies in finding one who will embrace such insanity with me.
Despite the search being over, the insanity remains unfulfilled.
#sanity #insanity #reality #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #selfworth #selflove #selfawareness #selfrespect #mindfulness #inspiration #ownyourshit #ownyourlife #theegosystem #embracingME #pursuitofhappiness #zaidismail #relationshipgoals #love #loss #fittingin -
The value of values
One of the paths to insanity is to try to reason around someone else’s actions or behaviour by assuming that their value system is the same as yours.
This includes people who come from the same culture, tradition, ethnicity, and even family as you do.
Our value system may be informed by a common framework or point of reference.
But, unless everyone complies 100% with that framework, each interpretation or implementation of those values becomes a unique value system, as unique as each individual.
When we don’t recognise these differences, we insist on compliance rather than understanding in the way each person adopts these values in their lives.
That’s the root of misunderstanding: The assumption that because we have shared values on some key issues, we have shared values on all issues.
Thus, relationships and homes are broken because of our expectations of compliance rather than our efforts towards understanding.
#values #counselling #culture #traditions #familytime #familyvalues #religion #relationshipgoals #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #ownyourshit #embracingME #motivation #zaidismail #authenticity #leadershipcoach -
Yearning for a simple life
Life is simple, but it’s not easy.
It becomes complicated when we look for the easy way out.
Doing the right thing is often complicated by our concern for the consequences with those around us.
The greater our emphasis on those consequences, the more complicated life becomes because we have that much more to consider before we hold true to our convictions.
Often, it’s the easiest way to lose sight of our convictions, or finding reason to compromise it until it becomes an empty shell of what we once believed to be sacred.
A simple life, by definition, would lack such complexity.
But in that lies the demand for courage and clarity of thought.
The clearer our thinking, the easier it is to muster up our courage.
Courage is therefore contaminated by an unhealthy fixation on potential outcomes.
Worse still, by preempting outcomes and changing our convictions to avoid conflict, we deny others the opportunity to grow by protecting them from the truth that we hold within us.
Thus, life threatens to be complicated, and unfulfilled, because what we express on the outside ceases to resonate on the inside.
And finally, this opens the door for a bitterness or regret that can no longer be expressed because we surrendered our peace for a painful compromise.
Hold on to your truth, and allow others the space to deal with the awkwardness of their insecurities as they slowly learn to embrace a new understanding.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #ownyourshit #embracingME #motivation #zaidismail #trust #truth #relationshipgoals #courage #authenticity -
Judge me fairly
How often do we build pedestals for people and then judge them for sitting on it?
Judgement is inevitable. It’s how we make sense of our world.
But are we aware of the basis of our judgement?
When we judge anyone or anything, it’s based on our past experiences with troubled souls, and not on the present moment.
The moment we shift our attention to the present moment, we’ll find ourselves seeking to understand, rather than to judge.
That understanding will allow us to shift the basis of our judgement in future, because it allows us to test the knowledge that we gained from our past.
The moment we avoid understanding, we’re responding to the fear of reliving a painful experience, rather than creating a new experience.
Oh, gentle soul, many moments of beauty and joy are lost because of such fear.
Sometimes, an entire lifetime of joy can be discarded because we lose sight of the fear that drives us, and believe it to be our conviction to protect ourselves from a cruel world.
Slow down, beloved. Breathe. You’re in this moment because you rose above your past. Let that be the pedestal from which you look to your future.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #ownyourshit #embracingME #motivation #zaidismail #anincompletelovestory #relationshipgoals #love #gentleness -
Allow healing to begin
Don’t wait for someone to speak of your pain before you allow your wounds to heal.
Your wounds will fester and taint everything around you as you look for reason to feel appreciated for the struggle that you have endured, or may still be enduring.
You may even convince yourself that your struggle is important enough to be noticed by those important enough to you.
But, while waiting for them to notice your pain, you suffer.
You stop noticing what is being tainted by your festering wound.
And each time you glare at them, looking for evidence of understanding, and only sometimes finding sympathy instead, you look within and notice that sympathy is only ever a dressing to cover the wound, but never to heal it.
Sympathy only provides a comfortable space in which to nurture the wound, but doesn’t cure it.
A wound caused by betrayal can only be healed through an accepting embrace.
An embrace of everything you were before being wounded, and an embrace that loves everything you are capable of being despite your wound.
An embrace that sees you beyond your wounds, and reconnects you with every innocent belief that you held true, deep within, before that unkind cut gouged your soul.
There is beauty and peace beyond that wound. But only if you allow its healing to be administered by a heart other than the ones who betrayed you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #ownyourshit #embracingME #motivation #zaidismail #love #betrayal #relationshipgoals #forbiddenlove
