Tag: personalpower

  • 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.

  • Who’s draining your joy?

    Who’s draining your joy?

    Avoidance requires distractions, and distractions are exhausting.

    We don’t always avoid the truth because we want to.

    In fact, most often, it’s because we’re persisting in what we believe to be true that causes us to ignore the reality that we’re facing.

    Like investing in someone who is at war with themselves.

    Or expecting opportunities to work out when the others involved have a different agenda.

    Or wanting to believe that we’re significant to someone when we never were because they were chasing significance in something or someone else.

    And of course, when we deny the reasons for not achieving something by insisting that it was due to actions from others rather than accepting that we didn’t quite commit to it the way we should have.

    Protecting ourselves from admitting the truth is only necessary when we attach shame to having gotten something wrong.

    That shame is not because of how others would react, but because of how we judge ourselves relative to how much weight we place on the opinions of others.

    Life gets a whole lot simpler and more fulfilling when our opinion about ourselves matters more than what others think of us.

    That’s when the truth becomes easier to embrace because instead of viewing ourselves with shame, we see less than ideal outcomes as feedback on how to raise our game.

    Unfortunately, most of us are playing our game by someone else’s rules and then blaming them for why we’re unsuccessful at achieving our goals.

    Maybe that’s why you’re tired before even stepping out of bed.

    It’s time to own your life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Own your misery

    Own your misery

    Miserable are the ones who compete with their companions, and then go searching for companionship among those that will ruin them.

    Self-pity and self-loathing are the marks of ingratitude that turn your greatest supporters into your greatest distractions.

    All because you think that they see the inadequacy and shame with which you view yourself.

    That’s why at times, when someone believes in us, we convince ourselves that they’re simply trying to humiliate us.

    Such is the seeds of ingratitude and self-loathing, that we end up taking advice from enemies, and discarding advice from those who care most about our success.

    Your self-loathing is your ingratitude for who you are.
    Stop blaming the world for you getting in your own way.

    It always starts with you.

  • Self-pity is never a recommendation

    Self-pity is never a recommendation

    When we go out searching for safe spaces in which to grow, we’re more invested in hiding the shame that we feel about ourselves, than we are in growing.

    Rather than focusing on pushing ourselves into spaces that are uncomfortable, we need to focus on why we feel such shame to begin with.

    Shame doesn’t always feel like shame.

    But, if we pay attention, we’ll note how difficult it is to talk about what we’re struggling with, or what we think we’re failing at.

    That difficulty is because we’re judging ourselves for failing or being inadequate.

    So we protect ourselves from that becoming visible by disguising it as our legitimate struggle against everyone and everything that treated us badly.

    That’s why we polarise towards those who share such weaknesses, because there is less shame in failing together than there is in failing alone.

    That’s how we limit our growth.

    If you want to be successful in business, you don’t seek advice from others who have failed at it.

    Similarly, if you’re not reaching your goals in life, don’t surround yourself with others who are also messing up theirs.

    Choose your role models and your advisors carefully.

    If you choose them out of self-pity, they’ll convince you that nothing is your fault and that everyone else is to blame, including the dead.

    That may make you feel better in the moment, but it will also keep you stuck in that moment for that much longer.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Are you there for you?

    Are you there for you?

    We’re more inclined to recognise the needs of the weak, than we are of the strong.

    Without meaning to, we diminish the humanness of those who persevere without complaint, because they often make it look so easy.

    When we’re the strong ones persevering without complaint, we risk diminishing our own humanness as well, because we become defined by being strong for others.

    Whether you’re strong or weak, you need to take time to connect with the human behind the strength, or the struggle that you observe in others, and especially within yourself.

    If you don’t, you risk becoming the enabler of weakness and dependence, or the enabler of harshness and insensitivity.

    Because that’s what happens when we lose contact with our humanness.

    We stop expecting, or allowing ourselves and others to be human.

    That’s when everything becomes dutiful and focused on rights and responsibilities.

    And empathy and compassion, let alone love and affection, leave through the window.

    All this because we forgot that we’re human, and that the ones failing us are human too.

    We cannot choose differently for how others show up in our lives, but we can choose how we show up for them, and for ourselves.

    Focus on that, and let the rest take care of itself.

    When you achieve this, you’ll taste the sweetness of life and not just the accomplishment of goals.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.



  • A path to insanity

    A path to insanity

    We work with the assumption that our partners and our children share the same values that we try to uphold in our lives.

    This is rarely true.

    While we may share the same frame of reference or even the same cultural norms, values are much more personal, and therefore unique.

    Our personal value systems are shaped by what we take from life.

    Note, what we take, not what we’re taught.

    Our teachings form the frame of reference within which we live our lives.

    However, what we place emphasis and priority on, and what flexibility we allow ourselves within that frame of reference is what shapes our unique value system.

    For this reason, two siblings raised in the same home under the same rules of discipline, and with the same privilege and emotional access to their parents may adopt very different values because of what they assumed to be true about the motives or sincerity of their parents towards them.

    The difference between the two is self-worth.

    The important thing about self-worth is that it’s about how we feel about ourselves, and not how someone else feels about us.

    No matter how much we convince ourselves that we feel how we feel because of how someone else treats us, it doesn’t change this fact.

    Self-worth is about how we feel about ourselves.

    How we develop this sense of self is a complex process that can change with life experiences, but until we’re aware of what we allow to influence how we feel about ourselves, we’ll blame the world for our unhappiness or misery.

    It is this that we must bear in mind when we try to rationalise the behaviour of others when it conflicts with the value system that we thought we shared.

    Self-worth or self-loathing is what makes the difference between authenticity and selling ourselves short to gain validation.

    It always starts with you.

  • That self-loathing demon

    That self-loathing demon

    Ingratitude for the self is reflected in how much time we spend self-loathing.

    But self-loathing is disguised in many creative ways.

    The above list of 10 common points is only the tip of the iceberg.

    Self-loathing is rarely, if ever, a result of our current circumstances, and almost always a result of how we felt about our place in our parent/s home.

    The less space they made for us in their lives, the less worthy we feel as humans.

    This is especially true for problematic relationships with our fathers, but often extends to criticism or insensitivity from our mothers as well.

    Because that shapes our sense of self early in life, it’s difficult to realise its impact because it just feels normal for us.

    That’s when we grow to believe that our partners are responsible for how we feel about ourselves, or that they’re responsible for our enthusiasm towards our dreams.

    That’s how we grow harsh and cruel, or rigid and abrasive towards them, not realising that we’re holding them accountable for how we feel about ourselves because we had one, or both, parents who were emotionally inaccessible when we needed to feel like we were worthy, or like we belonged.

    Self-loathing, beyond our early years when we didn’t know better, is a testament of ingratitude for who we are, and what good we have access to.

    Until we start owning how we feel about ourselves, we’ll always have reason to rage at the world, and at the innocent ones around us.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • I see me in you

    I see me in you

    We judge others the way we judge ourselves.

    The less aware we are of our self-judgement, the more rigid we will be in insisting on the accuracy of our assumptions about others.

    The more compassionate and understanding we are in our efforts to improve ourselves, the more space we’ll allow for others to recover from the mistakes that they make towards us.

    Mindfulness and self-worth dss at the core of every experience of our life.

    Just because we’re lacking in mindfulness, or that our self-worth isn’t where it needs to be, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact our experiences.

    Our experiences and the quality of our life is directly proportional to these two things.

    The more mindful we are, the healthier our self-worth, few in turn, the better our quality of life even if things are not going our way.

    That’s why someone with little can have a huge heart, while someone with excess can be miserly.

    Awareness of where we’re at is important of we hope to see things for what they are, rather than what we assume them to be.

    Start with your own point of reference, but then look critically at the evidence to test if you’re assumptions are true or not.

    If you don’t, you’re only serving your insecurities, rather than seeking true understanding.

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.