Tag: selfrespect

  • 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

  • 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.

  • Every mind can be healed

    Every mind can be healed

    TRIGGER WARNING:

    If you prefer a victim mindset, don’t read further.

    This is an extremely important reminder given the horribly unhealthy mindset that this meme encourages.

    There is no such thing as a broken mind.

    There is a struggling human, and there is good reason to feel duress, even debilitating duress.

    Understanding the reasons for feeling that way empowers you to process it in a healthy and meaningful way, and to rise above it.

    The moment you convince yourself that an emotional experience cannot be overcome, you will prove yourself right.

    Not because it cannot be overcome, but because you are looking for all the evidence that confirms why it cannot be overcome, instead of looking for evidence that provides insight towards overcoming it.

    Perspective is especially critical when it comes to mental health and processing emotional trauma.

    No human is broken.

    And every mind can be healed.

    When we convince ourselves that we’re broken or that we can’t be healed, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy, because what we set out to achieve is what we’ll achieve.

    Besides, it’s not the physical pain of physical abuse that sticks with us, it’s the mental and emotional anguish that it leaves that haunts us.

    Memes like this are well meaning, but they cause more harm to our mental health than they offer benefit or relief.

    Be careful what you take from the Internet.

    Good intentions have destroyed many lives.

    If you want to learn how to heal yourself, get a copy of Own Your Life and discover the power of understanding your emotions, rather than judging it.

    Choose your advisors carefully, and please, for the love of everything sacred, do NOT believe every meme that resonates with your emotional space.

    It will destroy you.

  • Burn yourself, why don’t you.

    Burn yourself, why don’t you.

    Anger always claims a higher price from ourselves than it ever will from the people on whom we project it.

    And before you assume that to be false because of the lasting impact that it has on its victims, understand that that lasting impact is because of their anger at the one who was taking out their anger on them.

    When we carry the impact of such anger for long after the incident has passed, it’s because we cannot make peace with what was done to us, while waiting anxiously for our pain or suffering to be acknowledged, and the perpetrator to be given a taste of justice.

    No matter the circumstances, our anger is because of our feelings of insignificance or dry the hands of those who treated us badly.

    What we hold onto them keeps us on high alert for any signs of anyone else treating us in that way.

    That’s why innocent gestures from others will trigger us, because it feels like those experiences that still haunts us.

    Anger is our demand for significance from the world, especially from significant others.

    Anger is always expressed in a space where we have no fear of repercussions, but is kept at bay when we have reason to fear the consequences of our angry expression.

    The one who is angry is the one whose self-worth is low in that moment of anger.

    Therefore, as long as you hold onto anger, you diminish your self-worth.

    For this reason, we must own our anger, and we must recognise the source of the anger from those around us.

    The moment we react in free, we become a willing participant in their war, while believing that we are justified in giving them a taste of their own medicine.

    The question is, at what price do we lose ourselves to anger in our fight for justice or in our efforts to correct the wrongs around us?

    Anger is not needed for firm and resolute action against injustice.

    If anything, it distracts us from our purpose and causes us to become oppressors, just like the ones who oppressed us.

  • The demon of self-loathing

    The demon of self-loathing

    We cannot give what we don’t have.

    This is a simple truth that cannot be denied.

    When we realise what this means for the behaviour that we display towards others, we’ll realise what it says about how we feel about ourselves.

    When we take ourselves for granted, we feel entitled to what others do for us out of sincerity on their part, and not obligation.

    When we believe we’re unworthy, we’ll treat others as if they need to earn our favour or be grateful for us making time for them.

    When we are ungrateful for who we are, we’ll find it impossible to connect with true appreciation for what we have or what we receive.

    And so it goes.

    But, we always need to remain significant or relevant, because being invisible is the worst feeling ever.

    So we develop elaborate coping mechanisms through personality traits and mannerisms that endear us towards others.

    Those who don’t see our self-loathing become our targets for ‘niceness’, while those who push us to be sincere and authentic are viewed as enemies.

    All because we carry a shame within us about ourselves that they remind us of, so we demonise them while convincing ourselves that those who don’t call us out on our bad ways, or don’t see beyond the facade that we’ve created, are in fact our sincere advisors and friends.

    Self-worth is never about what others think of you. That’s why it’s called SELF-worth.

    It’s about what you think of yourself.

    It always starts with you.

    And when you blame others for how you feel about yourself, you create even more distance between who you are and who you want to be.

  • To know…

    To know…

    When you take out the murder weapon and gently and lovingly caress its edges, knowing that it disembowled the most dedicated soul that breathed joy into you, after they left you for the bitterness that sullied their miserable soul.

    When you can still pick up that blade and treat it with tenderness, and stare emptily at the one who raised you to be beautiful beyond that. Belligerent. Uncaring. Unflinching. Unapologetic for the impact of your actions on him.

    When you find yourself cocky enough to present yourself as this beacon of hope for your generation to make something of their life without feeling like they owe anyone anything.

    When you feel like you are here to take, and anything you give is a generosity of spirit on your part.

    You are no less calloused a soul than the scum that spawned you. You’re window dressing for the same delusional generation who thinks that no one has it worse than them, while benefiting from everything created by those before them, and feeling entitled to every comfort and unearned privilege that empowers the stench of your claims of entitlement to the world.

    But here you are thinking you need a break because you’re the generation of hope. You’re the generation of entitlement. Jope only features when a whimsical wimp inserts such a tough on your head because you lack any true understanding of the gratitude for who you are. You don’t know who you are without your social media validating you.

    You are a generation with a lost identity and a fairytale future blaming the past for a present that you have done nothing to improve, but everything to consume.

    And the last of the conscientious ones bare the burden of awakening this arrogance to the abdication of their humanness. Blaming the system for everything but having no system of their own to do better. Pawns doesn’t get to whimper about the Kings, until they’ve gathered the courage to stand toe-to-toe with the Kings. Until then, they’re just fodder for validation from your social circles.

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