Tag: selfworth

  • The demon child of ingratitude

    The demon child of ingratitude

    Disrespect only ever becomes an option when we disrespect ourselves.

    We don’t always disrespect ourselves because life is fluid, demanding different things from us at different times.

    In those moments when we are expected to be more than we believe we’re capable of, or when we are corrected for something that we do because we want it without consideration for its consequences on others or ourselves, or when we demand privileges without fulfilling our responsibilities – it is then that we lose our composure and respond in ways that undermine others.

    Disrespect is a form of anger and is a tool to achieve something without earning it.

    Others may experience it as arrogance or narcissistic behaviour, but at the core of it, it’s an insecurity spawned by ingratitude.

    Ingratitude sets in when we focus on everything that we want while diminishing the value of everything that we have.

    It’s at the heart of a vicious cycle that begins with the anger or hurt that we feel about an unfortunate or unpleasant life event, which stirs a rage within us that drives us to want to claim our dues from the world rather than earn it.

    Ingratitude fixates our gaze on risks and threats to our significance, rather than allowing us to focus on the opportunities that present themselves for us to achieve so much more than what we desire.

    Anger is the distraction that justifies disrespect, and disrespect is our perceived tool for justice that distracts us from our ingratitude.

    Few are willing to admit to being ungrateful.

    The rest are too busy justifying their bad behaviour because of how they were treated badly by others, while growing oblivious to how they become just like, if not worse, than those who treated them badly.

    Thus, the vicious cycle of harshness and ingratitude is maintained.

    It always starts with you.

    Do you respect yourself enough to be grateful for who you are and the life that you have?





  • Embrace your demons

    Embrace your demons

    Relationships fail when the demons of both don’t play nicely with each other.

    But demons are not so easy to recognise.

    What feels like a right or a legitimate expectation is often underpinned by a demon from the past when those rights were denied, or those expectations dismissed.

    Our innate need to be of significance to those we deem significant stir the demons within when that significance comes under threat.

    It gets ever more complicated when the demon is associated with what comes next, and not what is.

    Consider this.

    Those who play it safe in life are protecting themselves from failure or inadequacy.

    What they’re focused on may appear to be their absolute priority, and may even feel like it is their priority to them, without realising that what they’re focused on is to protect them from what it may lead to next.

    That’s how success becomes a threat, or emotional availability feels like intense vulnerability.

    The fear of abandonment means that we must protect ourselves from growing attached, or the fear of rejection means that we must preemptively reject before we’re rejected.

    Thus, self-sabotage leads to self-fulfilling prophecies that convince our demons that we were right to protect ourselves from a threat that no one else understands.

    That’s how our demons from the past ruin the promise of a beautiful future.

    If you don’t own your demons, your demons own you.

    It always starts with you.

  • Surviving sucks

    Surviving sucks

    I see too many people take pride in being a survivor, which in itself is not the biggest problem.

    The problem arises when that act of survival defines you for the rest of your life.

    When a traumatic event, or an abusive relationship, defines you beyond the immediate impact of experiencing it, you keep it relevant long after its occurrence.

    We surrender our lives to the efforts of survival when we lose sight of our ability to change our circumstances as we wait for change to arrive.

    What’s worse is that we don’t realise that those who are not showing up for us are likely in survival mode themselves.

    That’s how we do to others what has been done to us without realising that we’re part of that cycle.

    While we’re ‘surviving’ or waiting, those who have rights over us to show up for them as fully formed humans are denied the experience of feeling significant because we treat them as duty.

    But, more important than this, it’s not their ignored rights that is the greatest oppression.

    Taking for granted our ability to create ease and joy despite our backdrop of struggles is the worst oppression against ourselves.

    That’s the greatest loss of all.

    Nothing compares to the loss of opportunity to contribute towards the sweetness of life for yourself and for others.

    Not even death compares, because in death there is no life waiting to be lived.

    In death there is no need to create joy or to experience the wonderment of life.

    Yet so many yearn for death because of a tormenting moment from the past, while discarding their ability to create joy because of the horrors caused by troubled souls.

    That’s how we become equally troubled and repeat their mistakes in our own unique way while lamenting the burden of existence, forgetting that we gave up on life itself.

    Regret and sorrow has its place only as long as it spurs us into action, otherwise it ceases to be about what happened to us and becomes an indulgence of self-pity because we need our struggle to be appreciated.

  • Well intended bad methods

    Well intended bad methods

    Good intentions coupled with a bad method will result in bad outcomes.

    When that happens, fixating on our good intentions won’t make any difference to the consequences of our actions.

    The merit of what we do is always more important than the intention with which we do it.

    The moment we flip that around, we cause harm while abdicating responsibility for the impact of our uninformed decisions on those who had nothing to do with our choices.

    Sincerity and conviction come from wanting to achieve what we intended to achieve, rather than making excuses for why it wasn’t our fault when we fall short of our goal.

    That’s when self-pity overrides our accountability and we convince ourselves that it was not in our destiny to have achieved that goal.

    When we use destiny to explain our shortcomings, but accept praise for our successes, we lack conviction in who we are and what we stand for.

    Conviction comes from sincerity of belief in the value system that we claim to uphold.

    The moment that value system is open to compromise, we lose our bearings in life and become victims of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

    Conviction is impossible without self-worth.

    And self-worth is impossible when we lack accountability while living our lives for an audience.

    It always starts with you.

    Goals would be pointless if they could always be achieved on our first attempt.

  • Self-indulgent self-loathing

    Self-indulgent self-loathing

    Self-indulgence leads to self-loathing because there are too many who think that contentment lies in putting yourself first.

    Putting yourself first is easy.

    Look around and see how many self-indulgent people you have in your life, and then consider how it is that they may really just be trying to take care of themselves because they don’t feel cared for.

    And then consider how many around them feel the exact same way because they’re invisible to the one who is self-indulgent, while finding that to be reason to be self-indulgent too.

    That’s how the crazy cycle of loneliness and isolation of spirit is maintained.

    The lower your self-esteem, the more you try to raise visibility for your struggle.

    ‘You don’t know how hard it is…’

    ‘If only you experienced what I experienced…’

    ‘Nobody understands…’

    ‘Nobody cares…’

    ‘No one gave me a start in life…’

    Whether that is true is irrelevant to what you need to do.

    When you need your struggle to be heard, to be seen, to be appreciated, or to be celebrated before you move on from it, you hold yourself back while looking for validation.

    Only, you don’t think it’s validation. You think it’s honouring yourself.

    Your struggle is for your growth so that you can contribute what you didn’t receive.

    That’s how we improve the world and the quality of lives of those we care for, because that’s what feeds our soul.

    The more you indulge yourself before others, the more you’ll chase fulfilment in a never ending spiral while blaming everyone for not caring, or for using you.

    If you only offer material benefit, how is anyone supposed to take emotional comfort from you?

    Own your life, because if you’re not owning it, you’re probably messing up someone else’s without meaning to.

  • 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.

  • You judge others as you judge yourself

    You judge others as you judge yourself

    Judgement is easy.

    Understanding, empathy, compassion…not so easy.

    It only gets easier when we are capable of treating ourselves with kindness.

    But that isn’t as easy as it sounds.

    In fact, many of our efforts at kindness are harmful because we’re distracted from recognising what prompts our deliberate acts of kindness. Towards ourselves, and towards others.

    The moment anything is done deliberately and isn’t a natural consequence of our value system instinctively driving our behaviour, the risk of it being self-serving is very high.

    It’s like doing the right thing because it’s expected of you, rather than because you believe it’s the right thing to do.

    The moment no one expects you to do it, you have no reason to continue doing it.

    The same with empathy, compassion, and understanding.

    If we do it because we would want someone to do it for us if we were in their position, then it’s self-serving.

    When we have no reason to expect anyone to treat us in such gentle ways, we’ll easily stop treating others well as part of our protest against the world that is seemingly treating us badly.

    That’s when judgement becomes easy.

    The more aggressive or blatant we are about how we judge others, the more desperately it reflects our need for our struggle to be appreciated by others.

    You are responsible for your self-worth.

    The moment it is dependent on how others treat you, it’s not self-worth.

    You cannot give what you don’t have.

    That’s why you can only give what you have.

    Your unwarranted judgement of others reveals how harshly you judge yourself.

    Own it. And you may just be able to own your life.

  • Do you truly respect yourself?

    Do you truly respect yourself?

    One of the most important questions you could ever ask yourself in any situation is, ‘Who do you want to be?’

    Life is quickly defined or tainted by who we think others deserve us to be.

    We start out believing, often with good reason, that we need to be a certain way so that we don’t enable or encourage others to treat us badly, or to take us for granted.

    That’s when we lose ourselves to the assumptions of what we think others think of us, and along with it we lose our self-respect.

    Self-respect must be measured in the same way as what we use to determine if we are respected by others.

    If someone treats us in a way that lacks consideration for who we are, if they break their promises to us, if they lie or avoid accountability for what they do to us, or how they affect us, we feel disrespected by them.

    Why then do we not feel as if we’re disrespecting ourselves when we treat ourselves in similar or worse ways?

    It’s easy to blame others for our reaction of for not following through on commitments that we make to ourselves.

    But we need to realise that when we do that, we’re effectively giving up who we are for how we need them to treat us.

    That’s what happens when we assume that how others treat us is a reflection of who we are, rather than it being a reflection of what they’re dealing with within themselves.

    That’s how life gets complicated, and withholding who we are begins to appear as a needed defence against being treated badly.

    Before you go demanding respect from others, consider what it means for your self-respect if you believe that demanding respect is an effective way to be respected.

    When you demand respect, you only receive good manners or compliance. Not respect.

    Because the one who is disrespectful is only giving what they have.

    Have you got enough self-respect to treat others with respect regardless of whether they deserve it, or have you traded your self-respect for anger and self-loathing without realising it?