Tag: zaidismail

  • 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.

  • Raising adults

    Raising adults

    Just like we don’t blame the fruit for the tree from which it came, we can’t blame our children for their character before they reach an age of self-awareness and critical thinking.

    If we find the fruit of a tree to be lacking in sweetness, we pay attention to the tree and what it needs to produce better fruit.

    We don’t try to sweeten the fruit itself.

    We first need to consider why it is that our intended outcomes for our children in character and values are not what we wish for them, before we focus on disciplining them towards compliance.

    When we feel compelled to resort to harsh disciplinary measures, we need to realise that we lack the influence that we need to have on our children for them to want to adopt our values and principles.

    The problem to solve is then to figure out why they’re not connecting with us as parents, rather than driving them further away by treating them harshly.

    Our insecurities as parents, coupled with cultural norms that discourage emotional availability between parents and children, result in a focus on being dutiful towards our children, while dismissing how much they need to feel seen and appreciated by us.

    Seen and appreciated through sincere, meaningful, emotional bonds, and not through participation awards, or through buying them stuff.

    But we can’t give what we don’t have. That’s why we need to understand ourselves better when we find that the outcomes we wish for ourselves with our children may not be what we hope to achieve.

    When the village holds more influence over your children than you do, and if that influence goes against your value system, life as a parent becomes a struggle.

    That struggle can only be alleviated by demonstrating, through action and not words, why what you want for them is more beneficial for them than what the village around them stands for.

    That’s when you need to pull them closer, not increase the fear of consequences if they don’t do what you expect of them.

    Give them an opportunity to learn from you how life works, so that they don’t learn it from the village instead.

    Raise adults, not children.

    #raisingkids

  • 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?

  • Own your own life first

    Own your own life first

    The causes that we’re afraid to fight in our own lives, we fight through proxy in someone else’s life.

    When we lack the conviction to apply ourselves to full effect in our own lives, we pacify our conscience by coming to the aid of those whose struggles offer an opportunity for us to find significance in ways that are lacking in our own lives.

    Our efforts may appear noble or sincere, and we may even believe that we’re pursuing a noble or sincere cause, but nobility or sincerity cannot be measured in the absence of authenticity.

    Authenticity demands that we conduct ourselves in our own lives consistent with how we conduct ourselves in the lives of others.

    When such consistency is lacking, authenticity is eroded, and our insecurities grow to define our sense of justice and righteousness.

    Thus, the victim mindset causes new problems while believing that we’re solving existing ones.

    Any problem left unresolved only grows in complexity and intensity, slowly festering until it becomes intolerable or unavoidable.

    At that point, it overwhelms us to the point of hopelessness, giving way to depression, anxiety, and unexplainable fatigue, including chronic illness.

    The victim mindset causes more problems than the problems it solves.

    It undermines our credibility, while diminishing the significance of those around us.

    When we lack the courage to meaningfully tackle the problems in our own lives, we lack the self-worth to hold ourselves accountable for what we claim to stand for.

    It always starts with what we think about ourselves long before we formulate any opinions of what we think of others.

    Reflect and connect with the resolve that you have for taking action in your own life before you set out to change the world for others.

    If there is a difference in how you show up between those two domains of life, you have a crisis of authenticity about who you are.

    It always starts with you.