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 🙂
