Tag: selfworth

  • The harm of wishful thinking

    The harm of wishful thinking

    Whenever I hear things like the universe is waiting to give you everything that you want, or manifest what you desire in your life through positive thinking, or put it out there and the universe will answer, I wonder if the proponents of such philosophies would like to tell that to the toddler that was raped, the innocent boy child that was sodomised, or the ones grieving the loss of a loved one in a senseless act of violence. And the list goes on.

    The approach to life that is embodied in this philosophy causes more harm than good because it denies the rights of those around us as we wait to have our needs fulfilled, while diminishing our accountability in fulfilling their rights over us because…well…they shouldn’t expect it from us, they should wait for the universe to answer, not so?

    Before you think I’m being whimsical or disrespectful about such beliefs, consider this.

    At the heart of such a belief system is wishful thinking. Quite literally.

    In the absence of gratitude for what we have, we’ll wish for things that we don’t have.

    In the absence of gratitude for who we are, we’ll wait for others (a.k.a. the universe) to make us feel worthy or significant.

    Without exception, through almost 3 decades of working with people, every single time that I encountered this philosophy, the individual was avoiding the reality of a painful experience or memory that they didn’t know how to process, or found too difficult to even contemplate.

    While we have compassion for the victim of such experiences, we must also consider the victims of such victims.

    Life happens, often in terrible ways, to all of us. Measuring who has it better or worse is a futile exercise, because relative to the context of each person’s life, their experiences carry with it whatever impact it carries.

    So we don’t dismiss that impact. But we also don’t create space for such events to define our quality of life or our contribution towards the lives of others long after the event has passed, because that diminishes the value of what we have, in favour of what we once lost.

  • More ways to destroy trust…

    More ways to destroy trust…

    Our consideration of trust is often limited to promises or follow through on something that was clearly agreed with another.

    However, trust is broken in many ways, most of which are subtle and often unintended.

    It’s these subtle breaches that leave us seething with anger or raging with tears while not knowing how to connect the betrayal that we feel with the specific conduct of another.

    More than this, it also makes it that much more difficult to express ourselves clearly when they seem oblivious to the hurt or offence that they cause.

    Connecting with why we feel betrayed makes it possible to process those feelings of betrayal in a more constructive way, and allows us to diminish the impact that it has on our sense of self.

    Once we can reconcile in our minds what it is that drives us insane about the behaviour from those closest to us, it makes it easier to see their shortcomings as a reflection of who they are, rather than always assuming that they may take us for granted because of who we are.

    That clarity of understanding and perspective could mean the difference between a life of angst and self-loathing, versus one of understanding and purposeful investment in those relationships that mean the most to you.

    You cannot help those around you to slay their demons if you’re bringing your demons to the table.

    Here are 9 not-so-obvious ways in high we may be breaching the trust that others place in us :

    1. Remaining silent when your words could have provided comfort or support


    2. Deliberately avoiding a request for something that you know is important to someone


    3. Withholding affection when you know it’s needed


    4. Deliberately doing something that you know is offensive or hurtful to another


    5. Being dishonest when relating your story, or withholding part of a story to avoid conflict or accountability


    6. Being unnecessarily harsh without apologising for your conduct (or regularly repeating this behaviour after apologising each time)


    7. Treating your obligations or commitments as optional or subject to your convenience


    8. Demanding your rights from others but ignoring your responsibilities towards them


    9. Dismissing the contribution that others make towards your life

    It always starts with you.

    Own Your Life.

  • Do you appreciate you?

    Do you appreciate you?

    When we surrender to what we believe was preordained for us, we give up our ability to influence its outcomes.

    That giving up creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by allowing things to progress in its current path without any effort to disrupt it, convincing us that we were right about it being preordained.

    For this reason, we sometimes allow relationships to degrade to a point of no return because we were convinced that our input or contribution would not change what appeared to be inevitable.

    Gratitude is critical in this process.

    Not gratitude for what we have when we’re faced with loss, but gratitude for what we are capable of when faced with challenges.

    Sometimes, when you take yourself for granted during your moments of ease, you’ll find yourself forced to dig deep and connect with who you are in moments of strife.

    That period of taking yourself for granted is what contributed in some meaningful way towards the strife that followed.

    While we will never know with certainty what to expect from others, we must connect with mindfulness to what the consequences of our choices are, or will be.

    This mindfulness is only possible when we acknowledge the value of who we are.

    That acknowledgement is the root of gratitude, or ingratitude, depending on whether we appreciate who we are, or judge ourselves harshly for supposedly not being good enough.

    You cannot nurture, maintain, or grow something if you don’t connect with the value that it offers.

    Thus, when you lack gratitude for who you are and what positive attributes and traits you possess, you will be incapable of contributing meaningfully towards the upliftment of your life and the lives of those around you.

    That is how the victim mindset slowly sets in, leaving us to believe that our struggle is a definition of our strength and perseverance, while not realising how much of it is in fact self-imposed because of ingratitude.

    It always starts with you.

  • The fallacy of what was meant to be…

    The fallacy of what was meant to be…

    On the surface, this seems like a really positive perspective on life, right?

    But let’s unpack it very quickly.

    Being thankful for the experiences that we’ve had has merit because there is nothing so bad that there is no good in it.

    What we take from our experiences is what gives us the opportunity to grow and to experience greater depths of emotions – both good and bad.

    It’s only in experiencing the bad that we are able to appreciate the good, or else we’d take it for granted.

    However, it’s the last part of this that I believe is a dangerously false notion to adopt.

    Where you’re meant to be by whom? By what?

    When we believe this to be true, we have less reason to question our uninformed or poor decisions that got us to this point because, you know, this is where we’re MEANT to be. Right?

    It’s the last part that is false. It carries with it a fatalistic view of the outcomes of our lives because it implies that no matter what we did, we’d still be at this point because it was meant to be.

    How does this kind of thinking affect someone who is tired of finding their efforts being taken for granted? Or no matter how hard they’ve tried, they keep finding themselves struggling to find peace or healthy relationships, or fulfilment, or success?

    Is it because they were meant to be in such straitened circumstances by some force that g they have no control over?

    Before you whip out the arguments about taqdeer, fate, destiny, and all that, consider what the point would be of our power of choice and reason if everything that happens to us was simply prewritten regardless of our effort to be better or achieve better than that.

    If that understanding of destiny was true, what would be the point of applying ourselves towards any goal at all? Wouldn’t everything happen regardless of our efforts since it was ‘meant to be’?

    It’s more accurate to say that the outcomes of the choices that we made was unavoidable because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. But that’s why we made bad choices, or naive decisions.

    Not because it was meant to be, but because we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

    Own Your Life.

  • Ingratitude starts with you

    Ingratitude starts with you

    We most often only realise that we’re ungrateful for a blessing that we have when it’s too late.

    That’s when regret sets in and either spurs us on to improve our awareness of what we should be grateful for, or it makes us bitter for the loss that we experienced.

    Gratitude is something that no one can instil in us.

    Others may be able to give us something to be grateful for, but they can’t insert that gratitude into our hearts.

    Gratitude is therefore something that we must connect with through our own way of valuing what we have.

    But, valuing what and who we have in our lives becomes difficult, if not impossible, if we believe that we’re entitled to what they offer.

    If we reduce the contribution of others to simply bring their duty, or the expectations of the role that they fulfil, we’ll inadvertently diminish our own value to simply being one of duty and responsibility as well.

    We see ourselves through the same lenses that we use to judge the contribution of others in our lives.

    When we regret the loss of something or someone because we took it for granted, we need to pause and reflect how much of who we are do we take for granted.

    What do we recognise as cherishable traits or attributes about ourselves that we must nurture and protect from contamination?

    Or do we take who we are for granted because we’ve grown so accustomed to trading and transacting with those around us?

    This happens when we believe that what we do for others deserves reciprocation because we need something from them.

    That’s how we lose sight of who we are, and the value that we are capable of creating in the lives of those around us because we want them to experience that value, and not because we need something from them in return.

    You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s why ingratitude towards others begins with ingratitude towards yourself.

    It always starts with you.

  • Self-help guides are not sustainable

    Self-help guides are not sustainable

    For those who believe that my books are self-help guides and are expecting instructions for life from it, this may clarify my approach for you.

    The above photo is from The Egosystem p.25. I don’t believe in prescriptive exercises or methods when advising others about how to navigate the challenges in their lives.

    Such prescriptive approaches assume that others are like us, and that their lives are like ours.

    It also assumes that they have access to the same resources and support structures as we do, and that they interpret the events of their lives in the same way that we would.

    None of that is true.

    We’re each unique in our relationship with the world around us. That’s why a prescriptive approach will never be sustainable.

    It may provide interim relief, but it will not be sustainable the moment your circumstances change.

    Creating understanding and awareness about why you are who you are, and why you feel the way that you do allows you to choose your responses to life more mindfully, and in a way that is uniquely you.

    Otherwise all we’re doing is creating mini-me versions of coaches and therapists and counsellors in the lives of our clients.

    How does that help anyone? 🤔

    Own Your Life.

  • When sincerity is tested

    When sincerity is tested

    Like the old saying goes, talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words.

    It’s easy to say the right thing, especially when times are good and what we’re committing to is convenient.

    However, when our commitments pull us between what we want for ourselves versus what we committed to doing for someone else, that’s when our sincerity is tested.

    But what defines our sincerity?

    Is it how we want to appear to others or how we live by the values that we stand for?

    The moment we’re focused on what others think of us, we play to the responses that we want from them, even when we’re doing something good.

    The problem with this is that without realising it, our motivation slowly shifts from living by our values to how we are perceived by others.

    That’s the beginning of how we lose ourselves to the attention that we get from others.

    More than this, the lower our self-respect, the more inclined we’ll be to say the right thing while finding it difficult to do the right thing.

    That’s when making excuses for our behaviour becomes easy when others challenge us about the commitments that we haven’t honoured.

    This is an indication of a low level of self-respect.

    Self-respect is tainted when we lack gratitude for who we are.

    The more we dismiss the value of who we are, the more we’ll need validation from others. Hence the unhealthy cycle of focusing on what others think of us, versus being true to who we are.

    We’ll only be true to who we are if we truly value who we are.

    For this reason, don’t expect sincerity or consistency from one who is self-loathing. And realise that you are self-loathing when you struggle to be consistent or to follow through on the commitments that you make to others.

    It always starts with you.

  • Don’t trade your best for their worst

    Don’t trade your best for their worst

    There is rarely a day that passes without me reading or hearing about someone who invested years, if not decades of their life, to people who were not invested in the relationship.

    When the reality of that betrayal finally hits home, it destroys our spirit and convinces us that we’ve sacrificed the best years of our life while having nothing more to look forward to.

    Nothing could be further from the truth.

    The same way we were able to create beauty in such a desolate landscape, we must recognise that the best of us that we gave was simply the truth of who we were. And are.

    The moment we discard that because it was discarded by an ingrate who was looking for servitude of their ego when they could have had love for their essence, we become ingrates just like them.

    Don’t trade who you are for who they were. It’s never a fair trade. You owe yourself more than that.

    And self-pity will only ever prevent you from being true to yourself.

    Embrace the beauty of who you are despite the ugly of who they were.

    That’s how we take back the gift that they discarded so that we may be able find a more fitting recipient.

    As long as you’re breathing, there’s always hope.