Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
Over the past two years, I have done a lot of things that I was too afraid to do before. I built my courage one brick at a time, by doing what I was not comfortable doing. Every single time, I was able to beat my wavering self and do what needed to be done, despite the odds, I built a little bit of trust in myself. Until this point in time, right now, when I am at that point where I have indestructible trust in who I am, what I am doing, and where I am going.
It doesn't mean that I don't have moments of doubt or I don't falter at all. I'm still human, after all. But overall, if I take the average of all of my motions and my movements, I realize that I believe in myself.
This belief was something that I was searching for, for a long, long time. 30 years to be precise.
I'm Better Than Ever In My 30s
I find that as time goes on, I am getting better and better. I don't want to compare myself to an aged cheese or a bottle of great wine, because they aren't conscious of their changes. But I was absolutely conscious throughout every single change that I went through.
There were a lot of years in the past when I despised myself. I didn't like who I had become, a snivelling, anxious, inconsistent, lazy, impatient, and mean human being. Little by little, I worked on each aspect of myself, and even though, as I said I'm not perfect, I have stepped closer to it. This is if I compare myself to my past selves.
I didn't like myself in the past. No one really did. I lost friends, I lose my family members, I lost jobs, I lost partners. Everything came enthusiastic to spend time with me, and then went away worse for the experience of having spent time with me.
Once, I realized that the common denominator was me, I started changing myself. Until I had that realization, I blamed everyone. Everyone else was at fault, but not me, of course.
Taking back responsibility for my faults and then changing them was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
We Are Always Watching And Grading Ourselves
Everything that I did, or didn't do changed me for the better or the worse. The reality is that there is an observer, a deeper self of ours, who is watching everything! We could hide from our parents, or our teachers, or our friends, or even sometimes our outer selves.
Photo by Crew on Unsplash
But we cannot hide anything we do from our deeper essence. It sees all of who we are. It sees what commitments we missed and then logs it into the records. If we are mean to someone, it records that as well. When we aren't loving towards ourselves, it sees that as well.
It misses nothing, and it logs in everything.
We cannot hide from our deeper selves. If we are not living up to our potential, it will see that and it will get more and more ashamed of who we are becoming.
When I lived like I did in the past, I was ashamed to be who I was. Even if everyone else saw that I was fine, or saw that I had a job and was living an okay, mediocre life, I knew that it wasn't enough and I knew that my deeper self saw that too.
There was no hiding from her.
She didn't berate me, though. She just became sadder and sadder. More despondent. She knew I was better than this, damn it!
Change Happens One Moment At A Time
Thank God, we can change, and we don't need to change everything all at once. I decided to be the best version of myself in each and every moment.
Every moment we have a choice to either take a step forward towards the actualized version of ourselves, or to take a step backward towards destroying ourselves. We make that decision unconsciously most of the times. There are certain forces and mental grooves that we follow, and we just go along with what our zombie brains tell us to do.
Photo by Chengming WANG on Unsplash
But sometimes, rarely, but it does happen, we wake up. Meditation helped me with the waking up process, and once we wake up, we cannot see the lies we tell ourselves anymore. The truth gets illuminated, and we see ourselves as we truly are - horrible beings, or actualized beings.
I decided in each moment, in that choice that I was making, I would try to do the best I can. The best I could. That's all I could aspire to do. I wasn't going to be perfect, but I could do the best I could.
The very best.
Thus, moment by moment, I built up this actualized, glorious version of myself. The version I love, admire, and aspire to be.
When We Are The Best Version Of Ourselves, We Have Indestructible Trust
A lot of decisions I make in my life are highly unpopular with the people in my life. They don't like it. I am doing too much, or being too different.
But I know myself. I trust my judgement impeccably now. I know what my purpose is and where I am going. Thus, I know what I need to do to get there. Wherever there might be. I trust I know what path to take, and I am taking that slowly, but surely, one plodding step at a time.
In the past, I would have been swayed by the condescensions and degradations of the masses. Oh no, they don't agree with what I am doing, I would say, perhaps I should change my decisions. Thus, like a leaf swaying in the winds, I would move from one decision to another, having no solid backbone, no anchor.
Now, my anchor and backbone is titanium. This is my path. You can go to hell if you don' t like it. Once that happened, the trust that I had in myself grew, but astonishingly, the trust others had in me grew as well. My credibility grew because I do what I say I am going to do, because that is the only thing for me to do. There is no swaying happening here. No going back and forth.
I know what to do and I am going to do it, dangnabit.
Our Journey Is Long - The Only One We Have Is Ourselves
I realized this truth a long time back. No matter who comes into my life, or leaves it, no one is going to stay forever. No one. They will come and go, and then come and go. But they will never be with me forever.
The only person that I have forever is me. Me, myself and I. So I need to get used to the idea of hanging out with her, and also, listening to her needs and desires.
Photo by Alan Labisch on Unsplash
Someone in my life might disagree with me, and I might do something to placate them. But then a year later, they are gone, and I had ended up taking part in a ritual because of a person who is no longer even part of my life! What bullshit! Don't I feel like a fool now?
So no need to placate others. They aren't going to be around forever anyways. Let's just placate and live with ourselves. Our highest, truest, actualized version of ourselves. That self that we trust impeccably. To the bones. To the core.
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We go through life alone. Yes I agree.
Life is hard, and I do like having a partner, even if it's not forever... even though it's imperfect.
Structuring such arrangements outside of the state, and outside of religion and traditions, can get tricky...
People do it though all the time and that's what gives me hope. :)
I love this. we are so hard on ourselves, sometimes.
I, too, love being around this planet for a while and appreciate myself more and more every year!
Trusting yourself is the key to each next step. It's badass! Thanks for this reminder!
Thank you!! Yes, we need to stop being hard on ourselves and realize we are all doing the best we can day in and day out. That's all we can really do. :)
I am so glad that you are happy with yourself now and brought such amazing changes to yourself. We are all work-in-progress and I went through some major changes in life too. Wasn't that helpful and supportive before as I am now and honestly, one really has to pay attention to their own behavior to bring positive changes in life. Great post! Do visit my blog too :)
Thank you so much for your comment!!
You have broken out of the "cult", congratulation. "Spectator's sport" isn't fun anyway, true and reel experiences is!. The most of the time people gets frightened on your behalf, when you go against "the norm", but it is actually a reflection of their own uncertainty and loss of deeper self.
Great post
Love the phrase spectator's sport, and I am glad I am not in it anymore. It's so much fun to be in the battle field, grinding it out with other players. :)