Tag: understanding

  • 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.

  • Repost: Judging to be safe

    Repost: Judging to be safe

    Judgement is not always harsh. But, judgement is always focused on an external standard that we think others respect.

    Don’t under estimate how much this mindset causes problems in every sphere of our lives.

    Before throwing in the towel on that relationship, reconnect you with the reasons that gave you hope in the first place, so that the distractions don’t leave you with regret later on.

    External standards give us comfort because we don’t run the risk of making a bad decision by ourselves.

    If things don’t go well, we can always say that everyone thought that it was the right thing to do.

    More than this, when we live up to a standard that we know others respect, we automatically feel respected.

    That way, we don’t have to go through the difficulty of earning respect by ourselves.

    This mind set conditions us to judge right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse, rather than to seek understanding of why we, or others, may fall short.

    This, more than anything else, undermines the quality of the relationships that we have with others, and especially with ourselves.

    And remember, seeking to understand bad behaviour doesn’t mean we condone it. It just means that we have a better chance of addressing the reason for it, rather than responding to its symptoms.

    Own Your Life.

    It always starts with you.

  • Navigating relationships – 4 of 5

    Navigating relationships – 4 of 5

    The importance of having a healthy support structure cannot be over emphasised.

    Majority of relationships fail because support structures from one or both sides are focused on protecting their own from the assumed malicious intent of the other party, rather than trying to establish understanding between the couple, and supporting them towards building their relationship.

    This need to protect before seeking to understand is the very same culture that leads individuals to believe that what they need from the relationship is more important than what they need to contribute to the relationship.

    The old school wisdom that teaches us that we don’t only marry an individual, we marry their entire family, is true but very misunderstood.

    Not only do we need to understand that the extended family will have expectations of us, but also that the family culture will influence the expectations that our partners have of us.

    Believing that either our partner or we are capable of completely mitigating the impact of that extended family influence is naive.

    At some point, sometimes very early in the marriage, the loyalties are tested through guilt-trips or blatant demands where we feel pulled between our support structures and our partners.

    That’s when relationships go sour if the individuals involved are unprepared for that kind of emotional pressure.

    That’s when choosing an independent and informed advisor becomes critical towards breaking the patterns that are leading to the breakdown of the relationship.

    Choose carefully.

  • Judging bad behaviour

    Judging bad behaviour

    I have yet to meet someone who behaves poorly when they feel appreciated.

    Yet, we’re most often focused on the poor behaviour instead of their feeling of insignificance.

    The same is true for us.

    Our anger, bitterness, or rebellion is simply an expression intended to reclaim our significance when significant others treat us as if we don’t matter. Or when we feel like we don’t matter to them.

    This doesn’t excuse the behaviour, but hopefully, it prompts us to be more understanding rather than judgemental when we find ourselves faced with unacceptable behaviour from those around us.

    It’s easier to judge others when being kind or understanding feels like weakness on our part, or if we’re afraid of condoning their behaviour.

    Both those assumptions are based on our assumptions about what their intentions are behind their bad behaviour.

    Consider that the next time you become aware of how you’ve chosen to judge someone.

    Are you judging their behaviour because of what you don’t want to be associated with? Are you judging it because you expect them to be better than that? Or are you judging it because it undermines your role in their life?

    Whichever one it is, judgement should be reserved for the courts, and understanding and compassion should drive our interactions with those around us so that we can encourage the best in them, rather than judge the worst in them.

    And if you want to understand why you’re driven towards assumptions about what drives your behaviour, or the behaviour of those around you, get a copy of my book, The Egosystem.

    It answers exactly such questions so that you might be able to find that elusive peace that you need within your soul.

  • We’re all searching for home

    We’re all searching for home

    Remember, at some point someone also looked at you in your childhood and thought, “Damn, is this what the future looks like for humanity?”

    Our children have the best of us and the worst of us, and somewhere between those ends they form their own unique character.

    If you hope to understand them, you need to begin by understanding yourself.

    The same way that you didn’t raise yourself, neither did they.

    Therefore, when looking for answers about their behaviour, there is no reason to look any further than the people who have the greatest influence in their lives, their parents, or those fulfilling such parental roles.

    And if you’re a single parent, don’t assume that absent parents don’t hold such influence.

    Often, they hold more influence than the one who stuck around.

    Dealing with the influence of a problematic parent who is present is easier than figuring out the impact of the parent who is absent.

    Either way, understanding is more important than judging.

    Children behave badly when they struggle to find an emotionally safe space for themselves in this world.

    Understanding how this manifests in their behaviour is the secret to raising an adult with a healthy self-esteem, or a troubled child in an adult’s body with adult privilege.

    And don’t forget that you’re raising an adult, not a child.

    So speak to the human behind that bad behaviour and don’t only focus on correcting, through discipline and consequence management, the bad behaviour.

    If you only focus on discipline, you’ll lose the human and repeat the cycle of the problematic parent who themselves also continue to struggle for their place in this world.

  • Seek understanding. Always.

    Seek understanding. Always.

    If you find yourself judging, more than understanding, you’re filled with fear about the future. Not hope.

    Judgement is not always harsh. But, judgement is always focused on an external standard that we think others respect.

    External standards give us comfort because we don’t run the risk of making a bad decision by ourselves. If things don’t go well, we can always say that everyone thought that it was the right thing to do.

    More than this, when we live up to a standard that we know others respect, we automatically feel respected. That way, we don’t have to go through the difficulty of earning respect by ourselves.

    This mind set conditions is to judge right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse, rather than to seek understanding of why we, or others, may fall short.

    This, more than anything else, undermines the quality of the relationships that we have with others, and especially with ourselves.

    And remember, seeking to understand bad behaviour doesn’t mean we condone it. It just means that we have a better chance of addressing the reason for it, rather than responding to its symptoms.

    If this is something that you or someone close to you is struggling with, reach out. Let’s talk. A fulfilled life is more achievable than it may appear to be at present.

  • Be what you need

    Be what you need

    In a world that is demanding attention all the time, it’s easy to get caught up in what we need from others while ignoring what they need from us.

    Our humanness is often celebrated for ourselves, but set aside in our expectations from others.

    We all need sympathy and compassion, but are hesitant to give others the benefit of the doubt when they fall short in giving us what we need from them.

    The same way that we must seek to understand why we sometimes disappoint ourselves or others, we need to afford others the same consideration when they disappoint us.

    We all have our demons that we’re fighting, but we each succumb to different ones.

    Just because we’ve reigned over one of ours doesn’t mean that everyone else should be able to overcome the same demon in their lives.

    The next time you find yourself demanding compassion or understanding from others, pause for a moment to consider why it is that they may seem incapable of being compassionate in that moment.

    They may just be struggling with something themselves and don’t have the capacity to do more than they’re already doing.

    Photo credit : Adobe Stock

  • A Brain Dump

    A Brain Dump

    The short posts don’t allow for a meaningful purge of what rumbles inside my head. And there’s a lot of rumbling this morning. Having finally published my novel, the reactions I’ve noted along with the assumptions that people make about my reasons for doing so, are entertaining. I’ve always taken a morbid pleasure from watching people sum me up incorrectly, or assume to know what drives me. I barely know myself, so it’s highly improbable that anyone else will know either.

    Despite my efforts at explaining myself, sharing my passion, living out loud, and scribbling my thoughts in digital ink for any passerby to read, I still remain a well-kept secret. A colourful life such as mine is intimidating for many to grasp. It’s much easier for them to find random points of entertainment instead. Of that, there is an unlimited supply.

    However, it only serves to be morbidly entertaining if the ones who are peering in have no significance in my life. What then when one held dear takes a closer look and feels afraid? Those are the moments when the introspection shifts from morbid curiosity to flirting with regret. Being trusting has earned me more struggles than deliberate betrayals ever did.

    When philosophy teases us, we play with words that talk of the strength of character of those most burdened by the trials of life, but when reality demands that we embrace them, we recede from fear of contamination. Sometimes, we recede from fear of feeling burdened by them. But from afar, from a safe distance, we admire and celebrate their resilience, as long as they keep their resilience to themselves.

    The irony of society is that it will be more inclined to offer itself to one who appears untarnished so that it may experience the process of being tarnished by the experiences of life with them, rather than to revel in the joy of one who has already been polished by what once tarnished them. It’s the equivalent of wanting to marry a virgin, but hoping to have the sexual experience of a seasoned whore, and then realising that the whore may be more pleasurable, but looking for one who is still virginal in demeanour. We really are an entertaining bunch, aren’t we?

    Sometimes it seems like we’re hypocritical in our approach to establishing or respecting respectable standards, but that hypocrisy is easily defended when such standards become our own to defend. Fear of the future has tainted many well-meaning men, and suspicion has destroyed many loves before they were allowed to bloom.

    Words have been elusive, except in unpredictable bursts of late. The topics have been revealing, teasing my soul and flirting with my audience, but largely unfulfilled either way. Fulfilment continues to be a slithery one. Testing everything that I assumed to be true, and teasing it with new experiences and emotions that have long been dismissed as taunts of fairy tales.

    Poetry has been a bipolar friend. Sometimes testing my skill at articulating the melody of my mindlessness, and at other times distorting my words to reflect the angst that defines my madness. Between mindlessness and madness, love is cradled in a delicate hammock, ready to tip over at the slightest sway, but even in its tipping over, offering laughter and joy in unexpected waves of delight that distract me from the sand in my face.

    The ambivalence of life digs ever deeper. Joys grow more intense with each ravaging of happiness that passes, only to be followed by yet another crescendo of joy. Each time, the crescendo exceeds the previous pitch, creating an ever-deepening cavern into which to plunge when the joy is tainted. From depths of despair to wings of angels, peace is elusive. But peace fades from want in the presence of such joy. If only the joy would stay, perhaps then it will inspire a peaceful serenade of a life waiting to be indulged in hues yet to be seen.

    An interesting life leaves a kaleidoscope of scars that form beautiful patterns in the stars, as we imagine constellations of soulful connections in spaces that remain empty and lifeless, if not for the gaze of the beloved into that realm. My vocabulary fails me much. Yet another double-edged dagger, fulfilling my need to articulate more closely what my heart yearns for, yet denying me attachment due to my increasingly complex expression in my efforts to be understood. Finding the most articulate words to describe in the smallest phrases has birthed the epitome of sophistication through minimalism. Only such sophistication serves no good end in the absence of one who seeks to understand, or heaven forbid, to embrace.

    A dump indeed, this has been…but not of the brain, and more of the heart. A strange encounter.