Dignity is the ultimate social currency.
With dignity comes accountability and self awareness.
Or perhaps dignity is only possible through self awareness and accountability.
But accountability is an outcome of self respect and integrity which in turn demands that we care more about who we are and what we stand for than what we want others to think of us.
That’s when it gets complicated.
It gets complicated when we focus on what we are likely to lose from others if we take a stand about what we believe to be important.
But that complication is not because the issue is complicated.
It’s because we complicate our lives by contaminating it with what we want others to see in us instead of being true to our values and principles regardless of what they think.
Dignity demands that we be open to correction because of the shame we feel when we are dishonest.
It demands that we protect the dignity of others because we must not be able to live with ourselves if we willingly and consciously look away when another is treated poorly.
What we would want from others in our time of need or vulnerability is what we must offer.
If not, we sow seeds of hypocrisy in our hearts which eventually contaminate the entirety of our being because dignity is lost and validation from others becomes the only peace we will know.
Your dignity is yours to claim.
Don’t outsource it in exchange for popularity or personal gain.
#selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife #narcissisticabuse #narcissist #rage #anger #angermanagement #gazagenocide #Palestine #freepalestine
Tag: theegosystem
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Don’t outsource your dignity
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Check your entitlement
Expectations breed entitlement.
Like the entitlement of privileges that weren’t earned, or a free pass to abdicate responsibility because we’ve got it tough. Or entitlement to a homeland that belongs to someone else.
Conviction and sincerity are lost when we do things hoping for a good return.
We should do good because of who we are and what we choose to stand for. Not because we expect a return.
A return on investment is for business transactions, not for moral positions.
If you choose to fight for a cause, do it because it resonates with your values.
You honour your value system when you live by it, especially when it’s inconvenient or unpopular to do so.
When your values are used as a trading commodity with others, they’re not values, they’re tools for manipulation.
Accountability is a trigger for too many.
If you feel triggered when someone calls you to account, you have work to do on yourself.
Our triggers, frustrations, annoyances, anger, and emotional volatility is ours to own.
We cannot make others responsible for tiptoeing around it just because they ‘don’t know what we’ve been through’.
Their empathy or compassion towards us is a reflection of who they are, in the same way that ours is a reflection of who we are.
Outsourcing that or claiming that someone deserves not to receive it from us is an indulgence of our entitlement mentality, and not a defendable moral position.
Own your life. It always starts with you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife #narcissisticabuse #narcissist #rage #anger #angermanagement #istandwithpalestine #freepalestine #gazagenocide -
Hopefully…
Hope is not hope when it is rooted in futility. That is simply wishful thinking.
Hope is born from the belief that things can change.
It is not predicated by statements of ‘if only’ or ‘I wish’, but rather inspired by focusing on the probabilities and the opportunities that we have.
Hope is born when we focus on what we can do to uplift ourselves or change our state, rather than focusing on what we need from others before things can improve.
Hope is the most powerful statement of gratitude without having to claim being grateful.
It is not an attitude, nor is it blind faith.
It is awareness of who we are and what we’re capable of, so that what we discover to be our limits creates a yearning in us to acquire the skills, knowledge, understanding, and resources to push beyond those limits.
Hope is always present.
But when we surrender, we invest that hope in someone else saving us, because we gave up hope in our ability to rise above what we are facing.
Fear is the enemy of hope, and conviction is hope’s armour.
If you desire relief from an oppressor more than you desire to destroy the oppressor, you invest your hope in the benevolence, or the mercy of the one who oppresses you.
That is surrender, no matter how rebellious you may appear in your response.
If your optimism is not followed by meaningful and decisive action, you’re lying to yourself about being optimistic.
Where and in whom is your hope invested?
If you say that it’s invested in the Almighty, then be true to exercising the abilities and competence that He has endowed you with, instead of praying for Him to exercise it for you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife #istandwithpalestine -
Fallacious philosophies
This is incorrect on many levels. Most importantly, it suggests that our thoughts inspire the actions of others.
That is patently incorrect.
It also suggests that if we focus on positivity, we’re guaranteed to attract positivity.
That is dangerously incorrect.
We all wear masks of some kind.
When someone offers us an opportunity to fill the gaps in our lives that those masks are intended to hide, we are attracted to them, and vice versa.
A healing spirit will attract a hurt soul, and hurt souls often attract the generosity of a healing spirit.
But that doesn’t mean that the one that is hurt will choose to be healed.
Many find comfort in the affection and care that their hurt attracts.
When that comfort defines their self worth, they will respond aggressively when expected to rise above it, or encouraged to heal from it.
That’s when the masks fail them and the relationship breaks down.
This law of attraction thinking is a fallacy that will harm more than it will heal.
Be careful of what philosophy you buy into.
#lawofattraction #mentalhealth #karma #fate #positivethinking #selfworth #goodintentions #ownyourlife #theegosystem #taqdeer #zaidismail #mentalhealthawareness -
Own your life
There are many unflattering adjectives that have been used to describe me over the years.
Before life got real, it used to trouble me to think that others had a negative opinion of me despite my best efforts to be a decent human.
It was a distraction that sometimes still gets the better of me. Fortunately, only in short bursts these days.
I don’t assume that I’m never any of what they accuse me of.
I know I’m entirely capable of being a difficult person, or even an abrasive and opinionated fool.
But, I only reconsider my actions if I receive such feedback from someone who is willing to engage beyond the insult or the negative assumption.
Everyone is opinionated. Many just don’t have the courage to speak plainly from fear of rejection or being unpopular.
Those are the ones that I ignore.
Not because I think I’m better than them, but because they have nothing of value that I can work with in my efforts to be better than who I was the moment before they shared their opinion about me.
Without such a mindful consideration of what people think of me, I literally would have been six feet under in an unmarked grave from having taken my own life because of the bitterness that others project onto me when they’re not willing to face their own demons.
My sanity and my life is mine to own.
If I give up that accountability, I will be no more than an attention whore praying for acceptance by the spineless.
Life is too short for such frivolity.
Own your life. If you’re not owning it, someone else is.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife -
Toxic blah blah
The belief that people are toxic is self-serving.
The belief that parents are toxic is a sign of ingratitude.
The belief that others are not allowed to change how they behave towards you when you don’t honour what is important to them is entitlement.
The belief that what is important to us is more important than those who raised us is probably the closest thing to a toxic trait that we’ll find.
Societies that have withstood the test of time are the ones who honoured their elders and embraced the wisdom that was passed down to them.
Adapting that wisdom to solve contemporary problems is the failing of the current generation of parents and children.
People, not just parents, withdraw from relationships when they feel rejected, betrayed, dishonoured, disrespected, taken for granted, and more.
If you hold your parents to that standard of supposed toxicity, be sure to apply the same definitions to your own behaviour.
If you truly understood the effort, self-sacrifice, compromise of dreams and aspirations, and duress that a present parent must overcome to show up as a parent, you might understand why betrayal of trust, disrespect, or rejection hurts them enough to want to withdraw from the life of the child that they spent their life serving up to that point.
It’s fashionable these days to judge parents harshly while believing that the new generation has a better understanding of what’s needed to make life work.
Sadly, the current state of society proves otherwise.
How does your judgement of the people who raised you stand up to the scrutiny of the ‘toxic’ label that you’re so willingly throwing around these days?
You will be tested by that which you judge others about. Be careful.
Arrogance is a slippery slope.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife #parenting #gratitude -
Deluded confidence
We treat others the way that we treat ourselves.
If you struggle to understand what drives the emotional currents that you experience within yourself, look at the feedback that you’re receiving from those who stand to gain nothing from your downfall.
Remember: The most important feedback is non-verbal.
When we hold ourselves accountable for what we do or don’t do, we will hold other’s accountable for the commitments or claims that they make.
When we give ourselves an easy pass, we’ll allow others to be flaky about their commitments towards us.
We give what we have and we accept what we want must be tolerated about us.
So when we are filled with self-loathing while pretending to be at peace with and claim to be grateful for who we are, we will be harsh or unforgiving towards those who question our behaviour while being exceedingly gentle and generous with those who affirm our delusions.
This is not about who is right or wrong, good or bad, noble or despicable.
This is simply the way life works.
You cannot give what you don’t have.
Expecting it to be different will result in contention and stress within yourself as you struggle to find answers to what should not be problems, and it will strain relationships that matter because you will be that much more difficult to be understood.
That lack of understanding from others, when observed through your delusions about who you are, will seem like rejection or confrontation because when we are unwilling to hold ourselves accountable for the state in which we find ourselves, we will feel attacked by anyone else holding us accountable for our contribution towards any problems in our relationship with them.
The reasons for holding onto delusions, especially while knowing that those delusions conflict with reality, is a topic for another day.
But first, we must be willing to test our assumptions about life and about others to ensure that we’re not deluded to begin with.
It always starts with you.
#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #theegosystem #ownyourlife -
The victim-hood of self-loathing
No good deed goes unpunished. I was reminded of this in recent days when the bitterness of a self-loathing human distracted me from what is important about life. It’s not the bitterness that was jarring. It’s the intensity, and the immensity of the self-loathing that has become the battle cry of too many that jarred me most.
The delusion that doing good attracts goodness adds to the mind-numbing effort of being human. We don’t attract what we do or what we give, we attract those who are most in need of what we’re offering.
That’s why the vapid seek the wholesome.
The weak seek the strong.
The self-loathing seek the grateful.
And the cursed seek the blessed.
But the twist is a terrible one. Just because you’re self-loathing doesn’t mean that you’re not blessed. It just means that you will not see in yourself what others see in you.
It’s easy to lose yourself to the bitterness of a world full of ingrates disguised as humans parading as the wounded selfless ones. But in that lies the clue to recognise the twist of that dagger of self-loathing before it is inserted into your tender flesh.
The selfless, the truly selfless, never parade.
The ones who wear their heart on their sleeves, their struggle on banners of goodness and humility, and their inaction as a claim to exhaustion from their reality are the ones who are ungrateful for who they are and what they have. That’s why they look for validation for what they parade in sometimes subtle tones, but most often in blatant distortions of their reality.
Naivety is the knife that you drive into your own gut when you trust blindly, serve loyally without question or wisdom, and when you surrender who you are for who you believe you must be.
Joy is ephemeral when not shared. It becomes a fleeting moment celebrated privately when what we honour comes to pass, but is just as quickly set aside because it doesn’t really matter if we don’t matter. It is this core of being human that turns our humanness into a frailty that is exploited by the self-loathing.
Self-loathing is born from our assumption that we are incapable of what is needed to earn affection or inclusion. Such an assumption demands that we must present our best case to defend our pitiful state before others see us as pitiful or lacking. That’s when our struggle grows to define us. That’s when we need everyone to revere our struggle and not dare to advise us to rise above it because rising above it becomes a threat to our sense of self.
If we don’t recognise the self-loathing in others, we’ll exhaust ourselves to the point of depletion in our efforts to be enough for them, or to inspire them to be better, or to believe in them until they begin to believe in themselves, while never holding them accountable for their ingratitude for everything that the have, and all that they are.
If we don’t recognise the self-loathing in others, we’ll assume that they’re victims of life, while losing sight of the victims of their carnage as they go through life taking from everyone but always having reason not to reciprocate in equal measure. That’s how a healthy self-esteem in one who is sincere in uplifting another can easily be exchanged for crippling self-doubt after struggling to understand why we may never be enough for one who seems so full of potential if only…If only they see themselves the way that we see them.
Self-loathing doesn’t create space for such realisation because self-loathing is the abdication of accountability for who we choose to be. Without accountability, there can be no healthy self-esteem because we need accountability to take a stand for what we stand for before we will ever experience the self-respect that results from standing for something that we believe to be important, rather than chasing things that make us important to others.
Self-loathing is the ultimate barometer of gratitude, or more accurately, ingratitude. If we can’t be grateful for who we are, how can we possibly be grateful towards others for what they do? We cannot give what we don’t have. Which means that we can only give what we have. That is how our behaviour, when understood clearly, reflects the light or the darkness that we court within.
