We spend far too much time focusing on issues that are irrelevant and add to our feelings of frustration and fear. Allowing them valuable oxygen and pouring fuel on fires already hard to extinguish.
Positive affirmations? They sound great. But all too often, they just remind us, repeatedly, we aren’t who we want to be.
Looking in a mirror and saying you’re not good enough isn’t a valuable exercise.
It just reinforces the belief you’re not measuring up to today’s image.
Repeating the mantra you can be successful, happy, loved just reaffirms each time you don’t believe you are.
Praying for that one person to fulfill you implies we aren’t fulfilled on our own. Love isn’t a void to be filled, but a wonderful addition to an already lived life. Otherwise the relationship survives only as long as they continue to fill that hole. A role no one can endure.
Focusing on what we don’t have, what we haven’t achieved, bemoaning our fate and wishing it was different just reinforces the belief we are victims. Incapable of impacting our fate.
We live in a society that tells us we are never good enough, we always need more.
More money
More clothes
More friends
A perfect spouse
A perfect body
We are constantly bombarded with pictures and claims we are the only ones not achieving these goals.
Look at any photo on Facebook.
They’re all happy, successful, perfect, beautiful people.
Even though we know it’s only make believe and pretense to project an image that doesn’t exist.
Honesty and reality is what most of us seek, not pretense and perfection. Those are never sustainable, and the harder and longer we try to perpetuate a false image the worse we feel.
I knew one woman who got out of bed an hour earlier than her husband just to fix her hair and put on make-up. It took years before she finally believed in the relationship and stopped. She said that’s when they used that extra hour to “bond” in the mornings.
We need to stop putting all our energy into chasing after something that makes us feel inferior.
Or lashing out at others.
Is it really worth our energy and agony to get upset over the gas station attendant who was rude to us?
The car that cut us off on the way to work?
The co- worker who didn’t ask about our weekend?
Is that what life has become?
It’s time to prioritize.
To focus on, and give time and energy to, what really matters in life.
Our health, happiness, goals, community, and people we care about- and shut down those that don’t.
Put our thoughts and time into giving back to those less fortunate.
They deserve our attention. Only by lifting up others, do we all succeed.
But it doesn’t happen by wishing and hoping. It happens by looking at where you’re at and where you want to be. Realistically plotting a path to achieve those goals while staying malleable and adaptive to what life throws in your way as you progress. Understanding the twists and turns that impact our lives can bring the most amazing and meaningful moments to it.
Stop worrying what others think.
Stop asking to get or become something.
Look in the mirror and see who’s looking back.
Don’t like what you see?
Decide what changes need to be done to get you where you want to be.
Then do it.
Separate out the garbage from the truth.
Then throw it out.
I’ve always loved the quote by, Hunter S. Thompson,
‘Life should not be a journey to the grave,
With the intention of arriving safely in a pretty
And well preserved body,
But rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke,
Thoroughly used up, totally worn out,
And loudly proclaiming,
“Wow. What a ride!”’
