by Shikha Rastogi | Dec 9, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Since it was Thanksgiving in U.S. last week, I examined ‘gratitude’ and why it is more important to really practice it during the tough times in our lives. This week, I would like to examine the thought process that a lot of us may have from time to time especially when we read literature or listen to lectures on how to live a better life or be more spiritual because we may end up judging ourselves way more than the next person around who gives a crap about learning anything in life!
This post of mine is going to especially touch those people who are highly sensitive in personalities. So, if you are not completely sure whether or not you are that person, keep an eye on how you feel after reading this post because it may just confirm what you may have known deep down in your heart for a long time!!
Folks, when I was going through tough times and during those times when this amazing Universe introduced me to the concept of viewing life and living through a ‘different lens’ or a ‘different perspective’; all the books and articles that I used to read on how to live a better life and all the lectures and seminars that I used to listen to would sometimes make me think so less of myself. At that time, I would sometimes feel so badly about the fact that I didn’t already know all this stuff and therefore how to live a more peaceful life!! And this judgement would surface especially when I would try to put into practice this new way of living but would fail miserably because apparently it’s not that easy to unlearn your old ways of living!! And this is the reason why I wanted to write this post today which is for each and every one of you who has in the past or may in the future feel any reason to judge yourself, to not love yourself, to feel guilty about what you did or didn’t do. This judgement, to me, is the only downside of trying to be more spiritual or learning to live a more conscious life. And on top of that, if you are a Highly Sensitive Person (like me), chances are you much better aligned to understanding all this spiritual stuff and therefore may end up judging your spiritual abilities much more than anyone else who is on similar path as you are but is not an HSP – which is why this post of mine is dedicated to all of you out there who have such beautiful hearts which can feel the pain and suffering of other people as well! I know very well that it’s not easy being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) but you are that hope which this world full of conflict and chaos needs to help bring yourself as well as the rest of humanity to the next level of consciousness.
So many of us who always strive to learn to live a better life, to try to face a situation in a better way next time, to deal with a challenging person in a more positive way next time, to live life focusing more on gratitude instead of being grumpy most of the time etc.; even though our intentions are very good, yet, we fail so many times in trying to put everything we have learned into practice. And part of the reason why we fail is because we don’t like where we are today. We don’t like how we react today. We don’t like the unhappiness that surrounds us today. We don’t like the lack of faith we have in the Universe today. And the reason we don’t like where we are today is because we never, not even in our wildest dreams expected to encounter situations that we have encountered in life so far. We never expected to be in personal or professional relationships with such challenging people. We never expected that life can throw surprises at us that we would barely know how to handle. We never expected life to take us into the darkest places of our hearts where lots of sadness and despair and loneliness resides. We never expected any of this and that’s why when we listen to all these lectures and seminars and read all these books, it gives us hope and in the name of hope we try but we end up trying so hard that we end up failing! And we try so hard because we are so desperate! So desperate to heal our sadness, our anxiety, our depression, ourselves and our life!! We are so desperate because we don’t like where we are. We don’t like to feel the sadness in our hearts all the time, we don’t like to think anxious thoughts all the time, we don’t like to live in fear all the time, we don’t like to deal with all that we are dealing with in our life anymore!! But folks, what I have come to understand is that there is a reason why you feel the way you feel, why you are where you are in your life today, why you are facing whatever you are facing in your life today. Whatever or whoever you are dealing with has messages for you, the lessons that you need to learn in this lifetime. It’s your job to figure out what it is that you need to learn and once you get the lesson, the Universe will graduate you to the next lesson and the next and the next…this is what life and living is all about!! But before you can even begin to understand all the messages and lessons this amazing Universe is sending along your way; you have to first learn to accept that this is who you are and how your life is no matter how different it is from what you had imagined growing up! There are always reasons why it is the way it is and I know this is the most challenging thing to do – to be able to allow yourself to accept your life the way it is today, no matter how broken it is today!
Personally for me, I had to accept the fact that I am a highly sensitive person who is affected greatly by negativity in any form, by sadness of my own heart or anybody else’s heart , by fear in my own mind or anybody else’s mind. And once I accepted that, I got my messages and one of those was to write it all down and that’s when I started to write this blog! And it doesn’t matter if 5 people read my blog or 50, I feel so alive writing it that I will keep writing until I don’t feel the aliveness anymore!
Lots of love and peace to everyone out there who needs it at this time! Until next time, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Dec 2, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! I couldn’t publish a new post last Friday as I was traveling but a couple of weeks ago I examined how a human mind is always on the hunt to find reasons to be fearful and used last month’s presidential election to show how the mind is capable of creating all the fear and fearful thoughts even though your own life is not directly impacted by outside events (yet). This week, since it was Thanksgiving in U.S. last week, I would like to examine ‘gratitude’ and why it is even more important to practice it during the tough times in our lives.
Belief: I am facing so many challenging situations and people in my life; I don’t see anything that I can be grateful for!
Most human beings don’t think about the good things or people they have in their lives and are grateful for them even during good times, let alone during hard times. A lot of times, people are so busy moving on from one thing in their to-do list or goals to another that once they have accomplished one of their wish-list items, they don’t take the time to pause and be grateful for what the Universe just made possible for them. Other times, they think that just because they worked hard, they deserved what just became possible for them and therefore out of arrogance, don’t think it is important to thank the Universe. Whatever your reason may be to not be able to focus more on being grateful, what I have understood so far in life is that whether or not you are grateful during good times in your life, it’s the challenging times which need us to focus more on gratitude. Gratitude for the things or people we have in our lives today despite whatever or whoever you are dealing with in that moment. Let’s explore further how gratitude can help shift your perspective and actually help you deal with your challenging situation or person.
So let’s take an example of how a human life looks like if you only see it from the perspective of challenges. Let’s imagine that this is your life where after you were born, you had a childhood which was limited in means because of your parents limited income. So, when you went to school and interacted with your friends, you felt less than because your parents were not as rich. This probably was the first challenge you thought you had in life – not having well-off parents!
Then when you grew up and were ready for college, you had to struggle to acquire the best possible education because your parents didn’t have the right connections and money to get you into the prestigious colleges in your country. Hence, this you thought of this as another challenge that you had to face in life.
Then you graduated from college only to find out that a good job is not that easy to find and hence you settled for any job just so you can get your foot in the door. Your mind defined this as another challenge!
Then when you finally found a decent job, you got married but to your horror, you found out very soon that staying married requires adjustments from you that you never imagined even in your wildest dreams 🙂
Then when you finally sort out your marital issues, you decide it’s time to add to your family and so you start trying for a baby which to your amazement takes years and as a result takes you through emotional pain that you never knew existed. Hence another challenge!
Finally, you had a baby and you were on top of the world until you discovered it’s no joke to raise a kid which requires your non-stop emotional and physical presence! So, this became another challenge that you had to face in your life!
I think you got the point folks :-)! We humans think of everything from a perspective of challenges; however, if we can try to instead shift our perspective and think about each challenging situation or person from a perspective of ‘what is it trying to teach me’, our entire lives will look completely different. Our lives will look different because now we will be try to welcome and accept whatever life is giving us and think of it as a gift instead of fearing everything and everyone when we think of them as challenging! Let me explain using the same examples that I just used above to help you understand how you can focus on the lessons and stay in gratitude even when a situation appears to be challenging.
If you had a childhood which was limited in means because of your parents limited income and you had to struggle to acquire the best possible education, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘to have faith in yourself and something bigger than you’ to achieve your dreams!
When you graduated from college and struggled to find a good job, maybe the Universe was conspiring ‘to match you with that awesome boss’ who you need to be able to guide you towards success!
When you got married and had a rough start with your partner, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to give and receive love’ because the basis of any relationship is love!
When you had a hard time becoming a parent, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to be patient’ because apparently that’s the one trait that makes you an amazing parent 🙂
When you had a baby and discovered it’s no joke to raise a kid, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to make mistakes and still love unconditionally’ because that’s what being a parent is all about 🙂
So, do you see the shift? If you do, based on my learning in life, when you shift your perspective, the very first thing that will happen is you will stop fighting with all the challenging situations or people and when you stop fighting is when you find peace and love and gratitude! So, be grateful for your challenges as much as you are for your successes and when you are grateful is when you will live your best life!
And as always feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next week, try to make the shift 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Nov 18, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Even though I had promised I would be back last Friday, I skipped last week because of the kind of reaction the U.S. election results received. And since then, I have spent a lot of time thinking about why is it that people voted the way they did and the fact that the rest of the nation and may be even the world re-acted the way it did. And on top of that, I have also been trying to understand if the electing of this new president is this really a huge problem, the way a lot of people in this world think it is. But before you read on, just a disclaimer that this is not a political post if that’s what you are here to read. In the process of trying to make sense of everything that just happened, I understood something very interesting about a human mind. So, if you are interested in learning/remembering something more about how a human mind works, read on.
Belief: Other people and outside situations are responsible for my happiness and peace!
In one of my previous posts, I have talked about how a human mind defines problems – anything that doesn’t align with an individual’s belief system is called a ‘problem’ which needs to be solved. And this recent U.S. election just confirmed that mindset once again. The mindset of fear and disappointment and frustration and pain and sadness. All of it! But if you look very closely and reflect upon your own re-action to this election, you will notice a trend. A trend which has nothing to do with just an election and its outcome. This is a trend where so many people stay in a perpetual state of anger and frustration and sadness and all the other emotions that I just mentioned above. And all these negative emotions ooze out as soon as people encounter an event, even an insignificant one at that. Some people are angry because they think their neighbor is a racist. Some people are frustrated because they think their spouse doesn’t behave the way they think he should. Some people are sad because their kids don’t do what they think the kids should do. Some people are angry because they think their bosses are jerks. Some people are angry because they think they live in a country that is not run by the right politicians etc. etc. And as always, I can just go on and on and on here. So folks, there are 2 things that I would like to point your attention towards. The first is that a human being wants to control everything and everyone around them and the second is that because they want to control everything and everyone around them, they are always focused on everything and everyone outside of them! And this is what keeps people so far away from experiencing peace within. Let me explain further.
Let’s take this recent election as an example because it is still fresh in our minds. Since this was a historic election not only because a non-politician was one of the contenders; on top of that, to the entire world’s amazement, this non-politician who has his peculiar ways ended up winning the election! And the people who didn’t vote for him and didn’t want him to be the president of this country, started to feel a lot of fear. And people feel a lot of fear because their minds started to imagine all the really bad things this new president can do in the 4 years he will be in office and how these really bad things can hurt their families and their lives. Hence this fear has come forth as a lot of anger and frustration from various people all over the world. However, to the people who are reacting with anger and frustration (and I was one of them until I caught myself reacting this way), I have a few questions which I would like you to answer honestly. Has anything bad happened to you or your family since the new president was elected? Do you think this anger and frustration you have could also be because of all the fear that you had already inside of you and the election is just another event that triggered all that fear in you? Don’t you agree that since you voted in this election, you already did whatever you could possibly do and you didn’t have any more control over the election and its results? If you answered yes to these questions, don’t you think it’s not the election results rather your own fearful thinking and imagination about everything bad that could happen in the future which is causing you so much misery? Don’t you think you tried to control what the outcome of this election by expecting that the results would align with your own beliefs and how you voted? How do you know the candidate you had voted for would have brought you peace and happiness – because your mind told you so?
Folks, human beings think that the quality of their lives and the happiness and peace that they can feel in their own lives is completely dependent upon what happens in the outside world and how people around them behave. And if whatever happens is in agreement with an individual’s belief, they think they will be happy and peaceful. But have you ever tested this theory to understand if it is actually true or not? I have and each time I have tested, I have confirmed my new belief that I am responsible for my own happiness and peace regardless of who gets elected, how my spouse and kids behave, how big of a jerk my boss may be, how crazy my next door neighbor is works!! However, it’s not an easy approach to live life because we were not raised with this understanding and trying to unlearn old beliefs takes a lot of practice. But this is where it begins – if I want to be peaceful and happy, I have to make a decision to be happy and peaceful. Then when faced with any situation and event, I have a choice – I can choose to believe my fearful thinking which tells me how all these people and events are making my life miserable and I can become all stressed and angry or I can choose to not believe in my own thinking and instead remember that it’s my own fearful thinking which is causing me so much stress and misery and I can choose to let go of such thoughts. More on how I have been choosing to let go of my own negative thinking next time.
And if you feel like leaving a comment, you are more than welcome, else, live life and I will be back next Friday 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Oct 21, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined the society’s very strongly held belief that it is more important to put others needs before our own. This week I would like to take another step further and peel one more layer to understand why is it that so many times we feel that we ‘should’ do this or that instead of just focusing on ‘what we want to do’.
Belief: This is what I should do, how I should do it and when I should do it…and if I don’t do things the way I am ‘supposed’ to do them, it will mean that I have failed in life.
Have you ever paid attention to the thoughts in your mind that tell you all the things that you should do in life and when you should do them and how you should do them, or else…things like getting married at a certain age, getting married to a certain kind of person, having kids at a certain age, working in a certain job, behaving a certain way with your in-laws, behaving a certain way with your colleagues, being a certain kind of friend to your close friends, being another kind of friend to your ‘not so close’ friends, being the ‘right’ kind of parent to your kids etc. etc. I can go on and on and on here but I think you can see where I am going with this. So, let me ask you this very simple question…have you ever wondered, how is it that your mind even gets around creating all these thoughts about the ‘things you should do’ and the way ‘you should behave’ etc.? Where do all these thoughts come from? Let me give you my perspective on this.
Folks, as I have been pondering this question for some time now and really trying to understand why is it that human beings approach life and living with a lot of ‘things they should do’ instead of ‘things they really want to do’, it’s becoming very clear to me that this saga started generations ago when someone back in the day started to create a list of all ‘things we should do in life’ in order to achieve happiness and perfection and hence live a successful life. And may be these people created this list because doing all those things and doing them in a certain way led them to happiness, however, to me, all these ‘things we should do in life’ are really ‘rules’ telling us how we should all live our lives. And I absolutely don’t think that just a handful of rules which we didn’t even create for ourselves and instead someone else created them for us generations ago can teach us how to live our own lives today. Furthermore, all these rules which eventually became beliefs and got passed on from one generation to next were created completely out of fear which is why any human who tries to live their life based on these ‘rules’ or ‘beliefs’ end up being miserable instead of happy. Let me explain further.
Let’s try to understand this through an example. Let’s imagine that you are a first time parent who like any other new parent has no clue whatsoever how you are supposed to raise this tiny human being. So, you turn to help and advice from your parents, your in-laws, your friends who may already have kids, your colleagues, or maybe even internet or magazines. And even though you receive great advice from all these people/sources and you try to implement some of it or most of it, yet, you don’t think any of it seems to be working for you and your kid. So, by this time you are frustrated and begin to doubt your own parental skills. And out of frustration, you start to convey back to all those people who you received advice from that their tips are not really working and then they start to inform you that you must be doing it all wrong because it worked for them! And by this time, you are not just frustrated, you are depressed. You are depressed because you thought you should know how to raise a kid when you delivered one and even if you didn’t because this was your first time, you should have been able to successfully implement all or at least some of the tips that worked for all these people. So in this example, I don’t think you did anything wrong in reaching out to these other people or sources to seek advice, however, what you assumed in the process is that because all these people are much more experienced and have raised or are raising kids, ‘they should how to raise your kid better than you’. And because they should know better, you ‘should’ be able to not only understand their advice but ‘should’ be able to implement it successfully with your own kid.
Can you imagine the kinds of feelings that this parent would feel? Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, hopelessness, embarrassment etc. Basically, lots of fear about not being a good parent for their own kid!! But you know folks, everything that this parent really needed to know about raising her own kid was inside her own heart. But because her beliefs told her that she ‘should’ seek advice from others to become a successful parent and that she ‘should’ listen to others because they are more experienced is why she didn’t even pay attention to her own heart which knew exactly the kind of kid she has and therefore the kind of parenting style she can adopt to raise her kid.
But folks, don’t be disheartened because this society at this moment is at the brink of waking up! Waking up and realizing that it’s not getting married at a certain age or having kids by a certain age or working in a job that earns you a six figure salary or may be even getting married at all or may be even choosing not to have kids even though you are married etc. is what decides whether you will be happy or successful in life. What makes a person happy is in their own hearts – which is why the saying – follow your heart! And if a human heart wants to not get married, that’s ok; if it doesn’t want to have kids, that ok; if it doesn’t want to talk to certain friends/relatives because they are not worth talking to, that’s ok; if it wants to leave their six figure salary behind to do something else, that’s ok; if it wants to travel the world alone, that’s ok; it’s all OKAY! And before I end today’s post, I would like to commend each and every one of you out there who has the guts to follow their own hearts!!! By following your own hearts, you are helping people around you wake up!!
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Oct 14, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined our beliefs about relationships and focused on what having a relationship with our own self means and why it is the most important relationship that any human being can have. This week, I would like to take a step further and would like to examine the society’s very strongly held belief that it is more important to put others needs before our own.
Belief: It’s more important to help others first and fulfill their needs.
Amazingly, generation after generation has held this very strong belief that it’s more important to help others and love others and be kind to others and basically fulfill their needs before we should even think about our own. And even more amazing is that in some cultures it’s actually the way of life, the norm rather than an exception. And in these cultures, since this is the expectation, the people who actually dare to take care of themselves first before extending help to others are frowned upon. So, have you folks ever wondered why so many generations of humans have felt and still feel very strongly about putting others before their own self? Here is how I look at it.
Every human that has taken birth on this planet has been after one and only one thing – happiness! And in chasing after this most elusive thing, ‘happiness’, I believe that people back in the day came up with ideas and beliefs about where this happiness comes from and what it is that humans need to do to find this happiness. And in the process of figuring out how to become happy, they somehow understood that one of the ways to get to ‘becoming happy’ is by making other people happy, by doing whatever these others expect you to do so that when their expectations from you are fulfilled, they will be happy and hence you will become happy. Of course, this is just one of the many ways that humans believe that they can become happy. There are a lot of other things like buying branded stuff, going on expensive vacations, buying expensive beauty products, buying and showing off expensive jewelry, living in expensive homes, driving expensive cars etc. etc. that people believe also make them happy. I will talk more about this in one of my next posts but for now let’s just focus on how ‘making others happy’ plays out in our lives.
So, before I philosophize any further, let’s try to first understand the difference between the 2 approaches – ‘taking care of my own needs first and then helping others’ vs. ‘putting others needs before my own needs’. And let’s try to understand this through an example. Let’s imagine that you have a very dear friend who lives alone in the same city as you and this friend is single and has been going through a serious health crises. And you have a family with spouse and kids and may be you work outside of your home in a corporation. So, even though you would love to help out this friend by calling them frequently or may be even visiting them just so you can be there for them in their time of need, but because your own life is so busy, you are hardly able to find time for your dear friend. So, when you are operating from the mindset of the ‘putting others needs before my own needs’ approach, you will feel an obligation to help your friend and you may think ‘oh I should really help my friend because that’s what a good friend is supposed to do’. However, because of your own busy-ness in life and the fact that you can’t find the time to help, you will feel guilty about not being able to help. And this feeling of guilt may bring along other negative feelings like feelings of helplessness, feeling that you are not a good friend, feelings of fear about what would your friend think of you etc. etc. Thus, in this case, even if you somehow make time to be available for your friend, you will continue to feel all these negative feelings and this will prevent you from being fully there for your friend! So even though you may be desperately trying to help your friend and make them happy by being there for them, you instead would end up achieving nothing because you are operating from fear instead of the love that you have for your friend!
Now let’s understand how ‘taking care of my own needs first and then helping others’ approach would play out in this same example. So if you are operating from this approach, you would first acknowledge the fact that your own life is very busy and even though you love your friend dearly, you won’t be available for them most of the times. And you will also acknowledge and understand that helping your friend is not an obligation rather something you would love to do if you have the time. So in this approach, the kind of thinking you will have is, ‘let me take care of my own things first and as soon as I have the time, I will chat or may be even visit my friend, however, in the meantime, I will remember her in my prayers and send her healing energy through my prayers/meditation’. Thus, in this approach, you will not only be kind towards yourself for not having enough time for your friend but will also be fully present when you actually find the time and your friend will notice your help in the form of your complete and undivided presence! And this approach will be a win-win for both you and your friend since you will already be happy about being available for your friend and you will not be trying to make your friend happy first so that you can become happy yourself!
So folks, I know another aspect of this could be that your friend expects you to follow the first approach and wants you to drop everything you have going on to be available for them but I honestly think if this is a friend that really loves you the way you love them, they will understand and empathize with your situation and be grateful for whatever little time you are able to spend with them. But remember healing always starts with your own self, so, before you begin to blame other people for expecting things from you, you better start reviewing your own expectations from them! More on this next time.
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Sep 23, 2016 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week instead of examining another belief, I examined what ‘practicing mindfulness’ looks like and in the process pointed out that when we learn to practice mindfulness, the biggest thing we learn is to respond instead of reacting to any situation or person. However, this approach could be misunderstood as ‘allowing people to walk all over you’ especially if this is a difficult person that you are dealing with. Therefore, this week I would like to take a step further and examine who exactly is responsible when you are in a situation where someone is mistreating you and how is it that you can use mindfulness to address it.
Belief: Since I am trying to be more mindful, I should let people walk all over me.
Absolutely NOT!! No human being regardless of where they come from, how much they earn, what their job title is, how amazingly intelligent or beautiful they are should ever be allowed to walk all over anyone else!! Literally no one should ever be given the right to walk all over any other person – period! However, interestingly, if you ever feel that you are or ever have been in this situation and feel that another person is/was walking all over you or mistreating you, always remember that you play a very important role in this situation and also that it’s you who has given them the permission to do so!! Yes it is you!! And you give them permission because you choose to not speak up for yourself. You choose to not protect your own self. You choose to believe that somehow you deserve to be walked all-over. You choose to believe that somehow this other human is more powerful and important than you are. Most importantly, you choose fear of that person over love for your own self!! And that’s right there is the reason why you let anyone treat you badly.
I know folks, the truth hurts especially if you are that person who is realizing this right this moment as you are reading this blog! You may feel angry at this very moment may be because you don’t agree with me. Or you feel guilty for not standing up for yourself when you were mistreated by someone in the past. Or you may feel uplifted now that you know you play a very important role in how people treat you! There may be a variety of feelings you may be feeling and it’s completely ok to feel them because you are human! But like I always say, the ultimate choice is yours – the reader of this blog and if there is something you don’t quite agree with, let it be. My experience of life has been that when you are ready to learn something, the wisdom will appear! So, if you are not ready this time, read something that resonates with you.
Alright, now let’s explore how is it that you give people permission to mistreat you in the first place. So let’s imagine you have a very smart colleague or a boss or a spouse or anyone else for that matter with some kind of authority. And if this colleague or boss or spouse is the person who is not treating you with respect, have you examined your own belief system and identified that belief which tells you how all these people that I just mentioned are more important than you are? Have you looked at that belief which tells you how much better these people of authority are as compared to you? That belief that tells you that you will never be better than them because they are superior to you just by virtue of the ‘roles that they play in your life’!! Dear people, if I could see you right now, I would just give you a big hug because these are exactly the beliefs and may be a few others like these that hold you back from speaking up for yourself! These are the kinds of beliefs that do not let you stop the people who mistreat you right in their tracks. These are the kinds of beliefs that allow you to be mistreated by bosses or colleagues or anyone else for that matter. These are the kinds of beliefs that give you permission to stay in an abusive personal relationship. These are the beliefs that infuse your minds with so much fear – fear about what would happen if you did speak up, fear about losing your job, fear about ending up being lonely without a personal relationship, fear about not having what it takes to endure whatever happens after you speak up!! And the kind of culture I come from, where women are considered inferior to men, women are especially vulnerable to these kinds of beliefs and therefore end up in these kinds of situations more often than men and to my amazement it doesn’t change much even if these women may now be living outside of their country!! A humans beliefs follow them wherever they go until they take the time to examine them.
Let me tell you one thing folks – from my own example of not choosing to stand up several times in the past vs. standing up for myself for the first time recently and speaking up when I was being mistreated at work; a lot of people in this world have such low Emotional Intelligence (EI) that so many times they don’t even realize that they are mistreating someone! People like these are completely clueless about others feelings because they have never taken the time to acknowledge and feel their own! However, other times, there are people in this world who are real bullies and they know exactly what they are doing and will continue to prey upon you until you muster the courage to stand up for yourself! And it’s not just the adults who belong in this category, even the kids at school end up being bullies! And such adults/kids feel very powerless in their own environments which is why they like to bully someone else which gives them a sense of being powerful! However, regardless of the category the person who is mistreating you belongs to, it’s you who is responsible for protecting your own self, for standing up for yourself, for asking the person mistreating to stop but you can only do that if you feel inside that you are worth standing up for, you are worth protecting! And if you are one of those people who mistreats yourself, criticizes yourself, finds faults with yourself, then, you are more than likely to allow someone else to do the same to you! So the bottom line is, if you really want people to respect you then respect yourself first. If you really want other people to love you then love yourself first. If you really want other people to accept you then accept yourself first. And when you are able to love yourself and accept yourself, you will expect the same from others that you work with, interact with, and are in personal relationships with. And when others know that about you, they will not dare mistreat you and even if sometimes they do, you by practicing mindfulness, will gently but very firmly be able to remind them that you deserve better!
I have shared this poem on this blog before but I would like to share it again because I think it’s very appropriate for this week’s topic.
It doesn’t matter whether others believe in you
What matters is whether you believe in yourself
It doesn’t matter whether others trust you
What matters is whether you trust yourself
It doesn’t matter whether others accept you
What matters is whether you accept yourself
It doesn’t matter what others think of you
What matters is what you think of yourself
It doesn’t matter whether others love you
What matters is whether you love yourself
This life belongs to you, you are the most important character in it
Even if you have not lived this way before
You can make this choice today
Don’t give away your power to another human
Who is exactly like you are because we are all the same
We come from the same source and go back to the same source
So start believing in yourself, trusting yourself, accepting yourself and loving yourself
And no matter how much fear you feel when you are trying to take that first step
Keep trying because you will get better at it
And gradually one day, you will come to realize that you by practicing this,
You are already LIVING FEARLESSLY!
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
