My Therapist Told Me to Feel My Feelings & That Changed My Life

When I went to therapy, my therapist told me something very basic but it was also a statement that explained SO MUCH to me: I wasn’t feeling my feelings. This wasn’t something I recognized until I took up her advice to journal every time I FELT something. When I took up the habit of journaling, I found it difficult to stop myself from writing. 

This taught me something:

I was blocking a lot of feelings and emotions that I didn’t feel safe enough to voice. However, I did find myself feeling safe with the idea of writing them down. The inability to feel my feelings was unintentional but it was also a reaction to abuse. There were so many versions of abuse and/or pain that I’d lived with and around. The brain, from what I understood, caused me to dissociate from the pain and to rely more on comedy and humor. Those methods of seeking refuge, against my surroundings and reality, affected me in many ways. 

An abused individual’s system is a reaction to his/her/their circumstances. It is because of the lack of safety (any version of safety) that their mind and body reacts- because they never grew up in a safe environment. They grew up in an environment where they were always made to feel unsafe, one way or another. 

I’d grown up in a system and around people to whom blocking emotions was a defense mechanism. Cracking mean jokes was a defense mechanism. Backbiting was a defense mechanism. Passive aggressive behavior was a defense mechanism. Saying or doing things to cause anxiety was a defense mechanism. Judgment was a defense mechanism. Backhanded comments and compliments were defense mechanism. 

By virtue of growing up in or being part of that system, I, took was a part of it but I always found there was something wrong with it. I didn’t understand it. Why did adults tell their children not to lie but then, lied to everyone, every single day? Why did they crack cruel jokes about someone, only when they weren’t around? Why did they confide in one another about a third individual but not say anything directly to that third individual to his/her face? Why was telling someone they didn’t look good wrong but saying awful things about their dresses or makeup, behind their backs, right? Why was telling and laughing at sexist jokes funny? Why was laughing at the expense of another’s religion, creed, race, faith, status or outlook normal? Why did I feel unsafe around the people that told me they loved me? Why did they use the words ‘love’ or ‘family’ or ‘friends’ or ‘humanity’ and then, abuse me and those around themselves in the most awful way/s? Why was it normal to laugh at or not care for the loss or well-being of someone who wasn’t a friend or family member but expect others to treat you with the love and care you denied them, in their hard times? Why did people marry one another and say cruel things about one another, when either person was out of earshot?  Why were the people who said “the world is a cruel place” the very people who were/are cruel? Why was a person’s job what made them worthy of respect? Why was a person’s capacity to care joked about? 

None of it made any sense. 

Every time I tried to understand this, a part of me tried to help me access my feelings and pain but my brain wouldn’t let me get there. When I’d ask about these feelings or about something/someone that felt wrong, I was always dismissed. When I tried to understand why I felt that way, I couldn’t. Not mentally. The brain does that, you know? It is, like any other organ, made for survival and so, will keep you in circumstances that it feels comfortable with (comfortable and safe are two different things). Comfort is survival and survival is to make do with what you have. The brain gets used to dealing with the pain either by making you forget about the trauma OR by turning you into the kind of person that does to vulnerable people, the same thing that your abuser did to you (or worse). It’s your heart and soul that brings you to a point where you recognize that something needs to change. 

I didn’t have the answers in my mind but I knew how I felt well enough to be able to say something about it. I would press my mother to explain why someone was sad or why they were angry. She would find it strange that I knew- even as a child- that something was off with someone and dismiss it by saying “No, nothing was wrong. (Insert name/s of person here) is fine”. Sometimes she would say the same thing about herself. As I grew older, I noticed this in many clients, I trained as a trainer, too. 

You can always tell someone who’s living in that sort of environment or has been affected by it. They laugh but there’s no mirth in their laughter. You can tell it in pictures and get-togethers, too, when you see individuals who smile but the light doesn’t go all the way to their eyes. There are those awkward spaces and/or overcompensating hugs but something seems empty about those circumstances. You can sense it in the way they walk. There will always be a slight slouch in their walk- if even to the smallest extent. You can sense it in conversations. When you ask them ‘how are you?’ they answer “I’m good! How are you?” except the answer isn’t a heartfelt one. It’s a reflex because they were never really given the space and permission to feel it’s alright to NOT be in a good place, if even mentally and emotionally. 

You can sense it in the way they carry themselves. They space out mid-conversation, all the while looking great (and sometimes not) and if you catch them, while they’re away from social facades and conversations you can see the pain they carry in them in the way they stand or sit or eat or simply position themselves. They’re there physically but mentally and emotionally, they seem to be elsewhere. Their responses and emotions don’t match the event or conversation you might catch them in the midst of. 

I also found every single person that I felt unsafe around (from childhood to present times) carried with them a version of an unidentifiable and un-understandable darkness. They didn’t seem that way- because their smiles hid their truth and the people around them supported them (knowingly and unknowingly) and so masked that darkness. The people and system that supported them gave preference to the more superficial aspects of life- money and other versions of wealth, education, ‘looks’, occupation, family name, politics, etc. 

Everyone holds some amount of darkness in themselves but there’s something about someone who chooses to participate in their darkness to the extent that they cause pain unto others. You cannot mentally fathom and know how they participate in that darkness and your mind, and other people, might have you believing that the person that has participated in that darkness isn’t really as bad as you know them to be. But when you’re around them, you know, not in your bones or heart but in your soul that you’re in the midst of something that isn’t just ‘bad’ or ‘unfair’ but that you’re in the midst of an entity that is so far off from being human that the only way they know to exist is to go beyond that point of balance between darkness and light (human) and that it is in their nature to be cruel. 

You can’t always put your finger on what’s off about them but, in your soul, you know you’ve been touched by the presence of something not exactly out of this world and yet it is something so unfathomably inhuman that they only being that can truly relate to it is someone who participates in that darkness, too. They depend on the blindness and fear of others to mask themselves. They depend on the silence and shame of their victims and they feed on the vulnerabilities of any being, person or object, whom they can use to unleash their cruelty on. They’re evil. 

They don’t even have to say anything or take action to prove that they are. They can emulate the kindest people but there’s something in them that won’t let you feel safe or right or good. 

It was only after therapy that I recognized what that darkness was- abuse. It was only after I was advised to feel my feelings that I realized how much of it I was surrounded and affected by. These individuals were human beings that carried everything that other people and society and/or religion and faith deems ‘right’ but there’s something deeply damaged and broken in their souls. They lack soul and are willing to, in some way or the other, take advantage of the vulnerable.

They are emotional, physical, mental, verbal, sexual, spiritual abusers who had, if even in the smallest way, committed an atrocious crime against humanity in abusing and injuring the humanity contained in the people they found vulnerable enough to abuse. 

There’s something deeply wrong with the fact that people like that exist in such large numbers that to be un-you is considered normal. There’s something deeply off about the fact that the existence of such individuals in families is not questioned but normalized either by omission of their actions or by creating a facade to hide their truth. 

I didn’t even realize the extent of what I had been through. When you go through abuse (of any form) the only thing you know of is the abuse you survived. The abuse- any form of abuse- isn’t something you study or recognize. It’s something you live with, as a survivor. You become a shell of your own truth. The shell, being the pain and the truth being, the person you really are but are too afraid and traumatized to reveal to the world.

I didn’t even know the extent to which my mind had blocked everything out. When I revealed to my therapist all that I’d been through, she would, at certain moment, ‘tsk’ or confirm what I had been through was deeply traumatizing by saying “yes, that was messed up”. She would often ask me how something or someone made me feel. Up until that point I didn’t know, really because my mind preferred to stay where I was than to allow itself to see the extent to which it was affected by abusers, trauma and the pain that I was around and the pain that was inflicted upon me. 

When I familiarized myself with my feelings, it took me a while to understand what it was that I was experiencing- a normalization of my inner responses to the pain and trauma that was often inflicted upon me, in various ways. 

I didn’t know if what I was feeling was, in fact, WHAT I WAS FEELING, earlier on. Gaslighting and passive aggressive behavior can have that effect on the survivor of abuse. You constantly question yourself, to the extent that even your sense of reality is warped in and by your own mind. 

I had to ask my therapist to verify if what I was saying and feeling made sense. It was when I started owning how I felt to the enablers and abusers that I started seeing and understanding something pretty basic about all abusers, in general- their (and their supporters’/enablers’) WORST fear is cutting through the BS, getting straight to the way they wronged you and to drag it out to the center of the stage. 

The problem with NOT doing that is that any sense of pain will ALWAYS be hidden behind their illusions of love (not real love), YOUR pain and it is the body, mind and soul that takes the brunt of what you, as a survivor, go through. An abuser cannot love because it is not in their nature to love anyone- even those that do pander to their ways. They only know what it is to enforce and impose themselves on to others. 

The PAIN caused by them IS very real, long-lasting and something that a survivor will always carry with themselves. Feeling my feelings and uncovering a lot of the pain, in therapy allowed me to build the vocabulary I needed, around the world of feelings I ALWAYS experienced. 

I could, now, call abusers out on what they had done. Feeling my feelings also showed me how much power my silence gave them and how much that silence affected my reality. It was overwhelming to the extent that I was reliving the past with them and they made sure I did, too. In calling them out, I learned something else: an abuser has no fear. It’s unfortunate but it is also true. It’s the survivor who suffers and lives with the shame. 

Abusers do what they do and move on, while pretending nothing has ever happened but the survivor always lives with the recognition of the fact that they were wronged in SOME way and yet THEY feel that THEY were/are wrong. They do what they do because they can do it- if even to the smallest extent. 

The system they live in allows them to live without any sense of accountability and they will use anything, from society to religion to cover up a basic fact- they abused the person before them because he/she/they were vulnerable and the abuser was/is aware of this fact. It is because of this very reason that they, if even subconsciously, choose to abuse a vulnerable individual or group of people. 

After my therapist told me to feel my feelings, I started coming to terms with the ways in which I was abused. I had conversations with other survivors, too. Some of them are survivors of sexual abuse and physical abuse while others are survivors of psychological and emotional abuse. Then, there are those that have faced (or continue to face) all forms of abuse. 

These were people who seemed happy but in allowing myself to feel, I found the ability to feel what others felt, too and I would, subconsciously, have conversations about abuse and pain or they would just happen one way or another. 

I wondered why no one had ever had these conversations and what it was about the truth that bothered people and found that most people don’t talk about it either because they don’t know how dark their path has been (through no fault of their own) or because they ARE the abusers and enablers of that form of abuse (and therefore, benefit from hiding behind secrets, lies and deception). 

It wasn’t until a while after that I found out why that was the case- because the truth is too painful for anyone to accept, which is why, a lot of people choose to not feel their feelings. It is also far too convenient for the abuser and his supporters to ignore the truth than it is for them to own up to it. After all, why would they want to walk away from something that has worked for them and for people like them, when it has enabled them to get what they’ve always wanted?

And the abused are too ashamed, traumatized and, at the same time, dependent on their abusers to know that feeling their feelings would and could save them. 

Un-becoming

Maybe the idea is not to be certain but to be uncertain; not to become but to unbecome. Because everything we think is real isn’t really real. We want to believe it to be such because that adds some spectrum of certainty to life but then, even certainty isn’t real. If it were, we wouldn’t strive to make it happen or to make it real. It would exist and we wouldn’t be threatened by it. But even certainty is threatened by uncertainty. No matter how much certainty there is, the reality of uncertainty will always exist and will always be real. 

Maybe the idea is not to become something or someone but to unbecome- to unbecome the person you thought you were. Because that wasn’t who you really were. It was what OTHERS wanted to believe you to be. Maybe the idea is to unbecome everything that you once identified with because the things we identify with fall apart easily. You wouldn’t have to strive so hard for those things and roles to exist, if they were a part of you. You don’t strive to keep the parts of your body that you do have and you don’t strive to breathe but maybe you’ve been striving so hard to be who you are that the only way you could find WHO you are, without all the things and people- the outside noise- was by recognizing the person you are on a core level. 

Maybe, in trying to find the person you are on the outside, you were so lost that the only way life could catch your attention was by making you turn to who you are inside. That’s what happens, when you fight so much and so hard that everything that you once identified with and strove to be disintegrates. The more you fought to keep it alive and going, the harder it became for you to exist as the person that you are and the more your soul felt drained. Maybe that’s why you had to unbecome that version of what you thought you were. Because, you were playing a role- for others- but not recognizing that your soul wasn’t happy with what you were doing. Maybe, even you didn’t know that you were unhappy because you were surrounded by the people and circumstances that made you feel you had to BECOME something. 

But then, why is it that the more we identify with what we become, we tend to forget that everything or everyone that has become something or someone was once no-thing and no-one? Why is it that everyone that tries to become someone or something is constantly threatened by uncertainty? And the more they seek to BECOME something, the harder it gets for them to find themselves? And the more certainty they try to incorporate in their lives, the more uncertainty actually takes over them? 

Maybe that’s because you’re not supposed to BECOME something. Maybe that’s because you’re supposed to UNBECOME everything because when you unbecome, you can BE anything you want to be and embrace uncertainty. Maybe that’s because when you strive to BE something you don’t actually fulfill whatever purpose you want to in that moment because you use your mind, which is an organ that craves certainty and so, in order to make life comfortable, it keeps you stuck to the patterns and thoughts and circumstances that you thought would benefit you. But anything that becomes to comfortable where it is, is threatened by some degree of discomfort. Water becomes poisonous and toxic, when it stays in the same spot for too long. Relationships became cyclical and toxic for the same reason. Because when they’re contained, there’s no room for evolution and growth. 

Maybe, you’re unbecoming because you’re supposed to unbecome the person you are so that your soul and life can flow through the BEING that you are. So that you can become a HUMAN BEING. Maybe you’re unbecoming because you’re not Being but because you’re too focused on identification with things that are essentially human-made and therefore, are likely to perish and in unbecoming you will see that everything essentially came to and comes to you from a place of Being and from a place of dis-identification. 

Maybe when you do that you will stop fearing the Being you truly are on the inside and will allow life to flow through you rather than striving to be someone or something. Maybe, it’s when you stop BECOMING that you actually just COME TO BE.

COVID Taught Me It’s Necessary To Walk Away from Some Battles

“Pick your battles”. 

I don’t know who said that nor why they said it but the connotation seems to suggest you need to conserve energy where the ending is just not worth the trouble. Some battles are necessary- not because it’s about the need to get into your ego space and fighting everything and everyone that comes in your way- but because it’s important to do the right thing. 

Some people battle depression but make choices that enable them to live. Some people battle anxiety but make the choices that allow them to bring about some sense of certainty and clarity in their lives. Some people battle with eating habits because those habits were once their crutches that they, now, feel the need to outgrow but cannot. Some people battle with themselves because they are so used to instability and chaos that the only thing they know to do is to live in instability and to live in a state of constant conflict. Every one of these individuals might not be happy with the choices they make but they make the right choices that is right for them. 

Then, there are battles that we fight with other people. These are usually due to disagreements over values and beliefs. Those battles, too, are about doing the ‘right’ thing- whatever that means for both parties. Either way, the topic is usually the same but the approach by both sides is likely to be different and therein lies a cause for battle. 

But when is it understandable to walk away from a battle? What did it even mean to walk away, though? Did it mean to walk away till the dust settles while holding the space in your heart for hope? I didn’t really know that answer a few years ago but COVID provided me with the answer: when your life, and that of everyone around you, is at risk, walk away because you do not have the luxury to doubt and squabble over the need to make yourself heard.

As I was saying above- when does an opposing view become a battle? When your life is at risk. When you can’t even see the threat ALL OF us face, it becomes even more important to know what you stand for. This isn’t about abstract, unseeable, things. It’s about something very real: it’s about humankind. It’s about life and death. It’s about accepting the responsibility and taking ownership of the fact that every, single, individual has a part to play.

Some people believe COVID is fake and that it’s the product of biological warfare between China and the US and that COVID is a ‘normal’ flu. That doctors and nurses poison the patients that come in with a positive COVID test. Going with that logic, let’s say that’s true, does that make it OK for one person to expose another person to the something that could cause them to end up in the hospital, where they could, by their logic, be ‘poisoned’ by doctors and nurses? Do they believe it is worth playing with people’s lives and landing them in the hospital because of their ‘beliefs’? 

Others believe it is real but find a way to tempt fate just the same. 

Essentially, COVID brought about two sides in humanity- those who were willing to do the RIGHT thing and those who weren’t even sure what the right thing was. The only thing the latter DID know was what it meant to do the things that they wanted to do for themselves- so long as it suited them, whether or not they believed in COVID. 

Picking your own battle is important, yes, but if the battle takes everything away from you, including your life and the lives of the people that you surround yourself with, it is best to walk away and let go. 

When the people that the battle could be fought against don’t know what they want but unwittingly put your (and their own) life at risk; when there is a need to look at the greater good instead of sticking to uncertainties in times of crisis; when you don’t even know or trust that the people that you used to surround yourself with could affect you adversely, it becomes important to walk away from that battle and never look back. 

COVID took away the luxury of living with illusions. 

Couples that had years of “happy” marriages broke up because living together showed them how different they were. Spouses could no longer relate to one another because they realized the only thing that kept them together was the approval of their families. That goes away, when you can’t even meet anyone. Suddenly, you realize, a union that you thought was yours was actually based in your need for the validation and approval of your friends and family. 

The proverbial ‘dust under the rug’ came to the surface where parents, families and children were concerned. All of a sudden, the laughters and conversations you had over the years start to seem cyclical and mind-numbingly empty because you realize you were a distraction to each other and that neither you nor they know what either of you actually, TRULY, feel.

“I love you” is no longer a statement you could just throw into a conversation casually and not mean. “I love you”, in the midst of a pandemic, meant taking action and you realize that it always did mean action but you chose not to recognize that fact because you were living with a version of love that was untrue, unacceptable and meaningless. It wasn’t love but a need to mask your loneliness around people that made you feel lonelier than you ever did when you were ACTUALLY alone. 

Suddenly, the memory lane you’d walk down, in conversations with the people you thought you trusted, seem different. They look like gardens of death because you start to see the thorns that the illusions of laughter and the ‘good time’ hid. You start to see others and yourself for who they and you truly are, without the illusions and without the facades. 

None of this had anything to do with the virus itself. I like to think of COVID as a metaphor. I’m not saying it’s unreal. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I’m saying that COVID-19 has caused us a world of pain and trauma but there’s so much else that we were holding on to, that we didn’t even notice it until ANY form of movement was restricted. 

Isolation brought all of those feelings, all of that baggage and all of that pain to the surface. Without the distractions of travel plans and mobile phone calls to organize plans and bosses checking in to see if that project was complete, we were left….to ourselves. 

In a way COVID was the hell-sent blessing in disguise because it did something for us- it brought out the truth by making us ask ourselves the question, “Is my life, and the lives of others, important to me?” and “Does my life, and that of others, matter to the people I have in my life?”. 

The answer to neither question can be second-guessed nor proven through battles. 

Because if, in times of a pandemic, you cannot trust another with your life, your relationship really has no meaning to them. Because at the end of the day, laughs, jokes and humor cannot hide the fact that the individual/s you surrounded yourself with were putting you, and your loved ones, at risk. Because at the end of the day, COVID proved ONE thing- what it means, what it TRULY means to love and what it means to TRULY be human. 

If your life doesn’t matter to another person, no matter how many times they’ve said ‘I love you’ and no matter how long you’ve known them, if their actions show the opposite, you’re screwed because a pandemic doesn’t know any of these things. 

The reality a pandemic brings with itself isn’t questionable because it is the only form of reality that actually exists. You can battle over that fact or take a different approach in dealing with the pandemic but at the end of the day, a virus only knows one thing- that a host is available to it and that it needs to get in there to grow. And if the virus, hypothetically, is not real, the reality of a traumatic and difficult situation is- whether or not you believe in or like it and whether or not people are sitting in hospitals, waiting to kill patients- your actions DO matter. 

It was when I reconciled myself with this fact that I learned to walk away from battles I could have fought. Because, at the end of the day, whether or not I picked a battle, my life, my physical being could, would have been and actually was threatened by the people that I could have battled with. 

3 Relationship Advices I Wish I’d Been Given When I Was Younger

I don’t have regrets because I think that the Universe and life has their own way of bringing us to ourselves. But there certainly are lessons, I think, that I could have learned that would have saved me a ton of time and energy, where relationships are concerned.

Here are the top 3:

Advice #1: DON’T Spend Too Much Time With Ambivalent People.

People that dislike you (or who you dislike) are easy to deal with. You draw boundaries with them and limit interactions to social gatherings and/or work, if at all. There’s a mutual dislike between you and the person you dislike. That undertone allows the two of you to be civil, when need be.

The people you like are easy to deal with, too. You lower your guard with them because you know they have your back and you have theirs. There’s a mutual bond of friendship, love and care between the two of you, which allows you to interact with one another in an amiable, frank and open manner.

Ambivalent people (parents, friends, partners, colleagues or/and acquaintances) are difficult to deal with. You never know where you stand with them and everything they do- from the way they deal with you or other friends to the way they talk about their own troubles and deal with their own woes and concerns- is based on ambivalence. They treat themselves ambivalently and that lands them in hot water and often.

Gaslighting, passive-aggressive domestic environments and friendships and the inability to see themselves objectively causes them to look at the world through an ambivalent lens. This impacts you because, even with the best of intentions, you might want to or try to help them but they will stay ambivalent thus impacting your mental health and energy.

In other words, they make you feel the way they feel themselves (except ambivalence is so normal to them that they don’t even see it as unhealthy or wrong): confused, frustrated and doubting yourself. The best thing to do is to walk away from ambivalent relationships.

At the end of the day, you’ve only got so much time in a day and life’s too short to be spending it getting stuck in a rut that’s not even of your own making.

Advice #2: If You Feel Something Is OFF About A Relationship Or Person, Walk Away From It Or Them.

Thank GOD (or whatever Deity you believe in) for intuition and the body’s own intelligence. The ONE thing that I wish I was told was to trust my gut, when it came to other people and to my decisions.

It’s easy for people to perform and get others to like them. We live in a largely (and unfortunately) superficial world. A large number of people crave approval and that means that they surround themselves with Yes-Men and Yes-Women who are enchanted by what’s on the outside.

A conventionally good-looking person is considered to be ‘a good person’ just because of how they look. A wealthy family is considered to be honest because of the amount of wealth they have. A man is considered to be respectful because he seems amiable. An individual with an Ivy League education is considered to be the ideal ‘mate’ because of his or her college education. The entire world’s a stage and most people don’t even realize they’re merely puppets, playing roles that others have told them to play or have subjected them to since birth.

I emphasize emphatically on this point: IF THERE IS ONE THING I WISH I HAD LEARNED, IT’S THAT IF SOMETHING FEELS OFF ABOUT SOMEONE WALK THE FUCK AWAY BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

Your body ALWAYS, WITHOUT FAIL, tells you when something is off.

Here’s the thing: it’s easy to present yourself as something or someone that you’re not, nowadays. Social media filters, public opinion and the media make it easy for people to present themselves as something that they’re not. Additionally, cultural beliefs- about family roles and identity- play their role in contributing to such systems too.

In a world filled with man-made artificialities, concepts and grays, allow your intuition to show you black and white. ALWAYS. SIEMPRE (Just learned that from a telenovela I caught on Netflix). HAMESHA.

Advice #3: Your Emotional Well-Being Is Yours To Take Care Of & The Person You’re In (whatever kind of) A Relationship With Is Responsible For Their Own Emotional Well-Being, Too. Therefore, Be Honest With Yourself AND Them, Too.

No matter WHAT anyone says, your well-being is your own responsibility. No one- not your friends, relatives, colleagues or anyone else that might be a part of your life- can be, has to be or is responsible for your emotional well-being.

No one knows you like you yourself do. It is only if you are honest with yourself and take full responsibility of your own emotional well-being that you can form healthy relationships.

Many people don’t know themselves. A person who spills secrets is likely to be have grown up in a household where interacting over other people’s fortunes and misfortunes was the only way of gaining attention. You can’t do anything about that.

A person who encourages others to sacrifice themselves in and for a relationship is (almost always) likely to have felt that they compromised or are compromising in a relationship that they’ve been a part off. You can’t do anything about that.

Our parents grew up in a time when marriages were kept together for reputation and having children was the only way of keeping up with society. Upcoming generations will have their own ways of being. Nothing can be done about that.

Blame games start when you expect the other person to take care of you as you would take care of yourself. You see and think of yourself as a victim and the other person as a savior. Not only does that affect the quality of the relationship but it also becomes a repetition of a past relationship, where expectations weren’t met.

Essentially, you’re stuck in the same web but you’re expecting the players to be different. The only way you can change things around (or keep them the same, if you want) is to take responsibility and to be honest with yourself.

That means to accept yourself for who you are and to accept the other person for who they are. That means to be honest with yourself about how YOU feel with the other person as opposed to how they MAKE you feel. That means to be honest with yourself over why you’re in the relationship as opposed to expecting the other person to read your mind about your wants and needs. That means to be yourself and to allow the other person to be themselves, without expecting either to change so that your relationship can EVOLVE rather than breakdown or cease to exist.

18 Lessons In 21 Days

(Before I Turned 31)

Lesson 1: Life IS vulnerability and so, to live life is to be vulnerable.

Elaboration: It’s difficult to be vulnerable in a world where we’re shamed for being any emotion or expressing ourselves or our truth. Okay, not difficult but certainly challenging (difficult suggests that the source of resistance is on the outside- it’s not) because challenging suggests not everyone is open to your truth but guess what?

Life IS vulnerability. You’re born into existence and whoever you are or whatever part of the world you might live in, who you are right now and WHERE you are in life IS WHO you are right now and WHERE you are in life.

You. Just. Simply. ARE. Beyond the labels and judgments, beyond the egotisms and conditions and barriers, you just are a being that exists. Sure, you face challenging moments but you can walk away from them, when you confess to yourself that being in the situation is difficult. OR you can continue being in that moment and accepting responsibility over it for what it is (to you).

The only way to resolve or deal with that situation is by being vulnerable to yourself. Life has practically brought the entire human race to it’s knees. Some of us needed that experience to avoid numbing our pain. Others needed it to deal with pain differently. Either way, it’s in moments such as these that one realizes how short life really is and how important it is to take care of yourself.

Why would you choose to take care of yourself, if you didn’t actually care for your well-being? And what does it mean to care for yourself? It means to be vulnerable enough to yourself to recognize you need to take care of your cup before you exhaust yourself helping others. To see yourself as a being that needs care is to be vulnerable to yourself and to be vulnerable to yourself is to FEEL. When you feel within, you’re able to feel FOR OTHERS and that awakens a sense of compassion within.

Therefore, to live life is to be vulnerable and to live life is to be vulnerable.

Lesson 2: Mind, body and soul are connected.

What we expose ourselves to, on a daily basis, has an impact that’s far deeper than we know, on our well-being. The thoughts we have, the way we treat our body and the way we react to the universe and the opportunities it brings our way is so much more than what we can comprehend on a conscious level.

The mind comprehends what it can, to whatever (albeit limited) extent it can. The body reacts to it and the soul, in those moments of silence that we frequently reject as useless or ‘waste of time’ speaks to us and guides us. The only thing that matters to all 3 aspects of existence is presence.

To be present is to be aware and to just be. It is to look beyond what happened or what will happen and to bring focus and attention to what IS at this very moment.

Lesson 3: Let go of anything that doesn’t work for you.

This can be something as small as a habit or something as major as a relationship. If a person, being or object adds stress to your life and there’s nothing- absolutely NOTHING- you can do about it, let him/her/them or (in case of an object) it go.

No matter what the nature of the problem or how it came about, the basis of your relationship with that person or object is problematic. If the basis of the relationship is problematic, it requires more upkeep and upkeep means more effort. After all, you can’t build a house on a weak foundation. That applies to all other aspects of life too.

The minute something starts to feel like it requires more energy than you’re able to expend, is the very minute that your relationship with it has become too demanding.

The best thing to do, for yourself, is to accept that there’s not much you CAN do and to let things be and to let them go.

Lesson 4: What You Do Matters. What You Think Really Doesn’t.

Everyone suffers due to some version of self-doubt and self-sabotage. The brain, like any other organ, is material and susceptible to skewered perceptions and damage. What the mind sees, thinks or believes is rooted, more often than not, in the past or in OTHER people’s perceptions. So, what we think isn’t always reflected in the way we live our lives.

You might think you can lose 10 lbs by the end of the month and focus on that with all the positive thinking content and inspirational content in the world. If your actions aren’t matching up to that thought, it would be physically impossible for you to meet that goal. Or you might think you’re a good friend, in general, until a time comes where your actions prove otherwise.

What you do matters because it is through action that you put energy out into the universe. It is through action that you accept what WAS but no longer is and it is through action, not thought, that you change the only version of reality that exists: the present.

Lesson 5: Accept The Apology You Didn’t Get By Forgiving The One Who Wronged You.

Waiting to get an apology is pointless, when it doesn’t come from the person that wronged you. Carrying the baggage of expectation just re-invites the trauma and pain of the past. You might not get the sorry that you wanted but waiting for it is a long, arduous, draining process. The pain of the past doesn’t go away and therefore, the past will repeat itself one way or another.

The faces and places change but, essentially, you relive your past because you’ve never moved beyond whatever hold it had over you.

That’s just how Nature works: what you resist persists.

The best thing to do is to analyze your own involvement in a relationship and understand what it was that caused and allowed you to play the part that you did in persisting a pattern. This allows you to break yourself free of the other person by viewing your own actions and contribution. Secondly, it allows you to take ownership and to deal with similar circumstances differently, in times to come.

Part of this is to stop waiting for the apology you expected to get and forgive your wrong-doer while accepting, stating and taking direct action to deal with the circumstances by talking to them.

If THEIR pattern persists, you can decide whether to stay in that relationship or to walk away. If yours does, you can accept it for what it is and make decisions in alignment to your true feelings.

Lesson 6: It’s Ok To Breakup With Your Past Self & Accept Who You Really Are.

There’s a version of ourselves that is conditioned to be a certain way around people and then, there’s the real person behind all that facade and conditioning. The past feels like the past because the version of you that existed back then, was conditioned to accept things or people, after keeping a checklist of standards in your head.

The real you is eternal and free of that sort of conditioning. Think of it this way: if your existence is dependent upon time, people, objects, events and anything that ISN’T you, you’re not being yourself anyway! Those are just contents of your existence- they’re things that exist and will eventually either fade away or lose importance. The real you is timeless and isn’t touched by conditions. It isn’t defined by what’s on the outside but it lies on the outside. The real you is eternal and everything that makes it up stays true from the point that you are born till the day you die. That’s why the little things in life matters.

Having all the money in the world will make you happy but only for a bit, until you realize paper and plastic is a part of life but doesn’t make life better or worse. Having the best job in the world will make you happy but for a bit until you realize it doesn’t anymore because it’s becoming draining. Being in certain friendships or relationships might seem exciting or great at first until you realize that they don’t. All of these realizations kick in when you start to see your life doesn’t resonate with you. In fact, it doesn’t feel like your life at all. It never did because what is truly yours would fulfill you and exist without conditions. And that’s what the little things are: condition-less. They come with ease. 

When focus is shifted from what’s within to what’s on the outside, life steps in, strips away anything and everyone from us, who or that doesn’t serve us and it is in such moments that we transform and become our real selves. For some this can be the passing of a loved one or the loss of a job/career and for others it could be a pandemic or the sudden realization that the life that they’re living doesn’t resonate with them. You kind of feel like the object of your life rather than a human being that’s living it.

Lesson 7: Do Something You Everyday.

Every individual is made a particular way and fulfills their purpose their own way. Finding purpose in the things you do has an important impact on life: it grounds you within yourself. It gets easier to center yourself and to act from a place of awareness rather than to live life blindly and/or for other people.

We’re born with souls and the purpose of a soul is to live through us and to express itself. Doing something You means to indulge in activities that you enjoy; conversations that interest you; hobbies that feel like they’re extensions of you; partake in company that you enjoy; watching films or reading or playing sports that ground you; taking on projects that are in alignment with you and doing everything that makes you feel like you’re putting YOURSELF into your day. You allow yourself to LET YOURSELF BE instead of seeking control over life or giving control over your life to others.

We’re all in charge of our own lives but it’s when we do things (or avoid things) that don’t sit well with our conscience that we feel like we’re betraying ourselves.

Lesson 8: Everything Is Always Working Out For You, Even If You Don’t See It.

We tend to want to make sense of things because thinking and drawing conclusions is the mind’s way of protecting us from danger. Essentially, it is an organ that is prone to stress- be it physical, psychological or emotional- and it acts as a troubleshooter, when we’re conscious and awake. That’s why we have 70,000 thoughts a day- because the mind is constantly in search of a way to make things predictable.

Life, itself, however, is unpredictable. What didn’t work out 10 years ago might manifest itself in some way today or what did work for us, at one point in time, might not anymore. Life, itself, has ways of confabulating with the universe to guide us and bring us to our truest, highest self. It does so in several ways. Sometimes the journey is difficult and other times it seems easy.

The difficult times seem difficult, when we’re not willing to let go of the things and people that are inauthentic and therefore, not in alignment to our truth. The easy times seem easy because every decision we make; every person we include in our lives; every choice we make is in alignment to our truth and therefore, in alignment to our truth.

Want to know if something is working out for you? See how it makes you feel and take ownership and charge of yourself and of your feelings in those moments!

Lesson 9: You Create Your Reality.

The word ‘want’ denotes a wish for something or someone but it also means to be dissatisfied with things for what they are. One can want a six-pack or to be a millionaire but, in fact, do everything contradictory to that desire. To want something without acting on it is to wish for a result without recognizing the control we have over our circumstances. Oftentimes people say they want something and then, act in a manner that is contradictory to what they say. Consequentially, they lose what they wanted in the first place!

To want something other than what IS is to dismiss what exists for a time that does not exist. It is to distract yourself from reality for an illusion and to run after a mirage. The outcome of something motivate by fear, pain and scarcity and/or lack of acceptance will only increase the intensity of those feelings.

Ever noticed how a person that wants to lose weight will frequently complain about their bodies, while saying they want to be thinner? They aren’t comfortable with their weight but will continue eating in a manner that ensure they don’t lose weight at all. The action contradicts their desires. The reason they eat MORE is because they’re usually dealing with some form of unresolved stress. So, the action isn’t so much about weight loss or gain but it’s rooted in the past while their intentions are for the future- “I WILL lose/gain weight”.

Creating your reality requires being aware of yourself and being aware of your life for what IT IS and then, taking steps to ensure your actions and words are in alignment with whatever it is that you want, at this moment. That can be accomplished by taking the smallest, simplest, seemingly most inconsequential and insignificant step such as waking up or brushing your teeth, first thing in the morning.

Lesson 10: Fall in love with life for what it is- yours.

Your life is yours and anything that isn’t part of it or causes distress, internal turmoil or discomfort- from people and circumstances to your own thought patterns and action or thoughts- is just noise. The problem with noise is that it can make you lose focus and so, instead of focusing on yourself, you find yourself partaking in things that have nothing to do with you.

The deeper you get into the noise, the more noise you’ll have to hear. Hanging out with a batch of people that causes distress and emotional trauma will reintroduce you to pain. It’s possible they don’t even know they have that affect on you (or that you’re unaware of the impact you have on them). They might not even be aware of what they are putting you through but to fight them is to resist yourself- because you’re unable to be or listen to your truest, highest self- AND to resist change- because you stay in their thought and relationship patterns and they in yours.

Detaching from people and circumstances that cause distress and doing the things that you WANT to do will allow you to let go of all the noise and find your center. It is from the center that you can, then, take action and live your life for what it is: YOURS.

Lesson 11: When The Past Repeats Itself, Life Is Giving You An Ultimatum.

Ever thought why the same issues or problem patterns seem to re-enter your life, no matter how much you change it? You could go to another city or get another job or make a new batch of friends and yet face the same thematic issues you did, when you were younger?

Here’s why that happens: Life will keep throwing the same circumstances at you till you deal with them. All that time you thought you were ‘changing your life’ or taking steps to make changes to life itself, you were resisting circumstances in hopes that life would change on it’s own. You can’t change life but life WILL change you one way or another. You WILL have to deal with your problems and take SOME action to deal with them. Those people that bother you can either be accepted and you can change your ways with them or you can walk away from them, knowing they’re not good for you. That job that you don’t really want to do can either be accepted for what it is- a way to earn- or you can give it up to look for something that satisfies you.

You might think you don’t have a choice in such matters but here’s the thing: you make a choice, even in not making a choice. The only one who can change that is you. Thinking, fretting, complaining or ignoring it won’t change things because you’ll find the past will keep haunting you, like a child that keeps poking you.

Lesson 12: There’s No Point In Taking Life Seriously Because You Have NO Control Over It.

For reals. The more seriously you take life, the less likely you are to learn from it. As human beings, we like to believe that’s not the case but if there’s anything that pandemics, crashing stock markets, universally ruined economies and life changes on a personal level, has taught us it’s that WE have no control over it.

Life’s whimsical that way.

The good part about living life is, as is, as you go along, dealing with things that you CAN deal with, things start to get clearer. You begin to find purpose and create a flow that moves everything along. You can’t change people or material (wealth, objects, etc.) but you CAN change the way you see your life and that change of perspective can either be empowering or incredibly painful. That’s when things start to ‘fall into place’.

Lesson 13: The Truth ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS Comes Out. ALWAYS.

There is and always will only be one thing that matters MORE than anything and everything else in life: the Truth. You can deny it to yourself or use others to justify why you did something but there is always ONE principle that Life’s foundation is based on- The Truth. ALWAYS.

Honesty, unfortunately, has become a choice- you can either be honest or not- but the Truth isn’t and it never will be. Honesty is the ability to do what you say and to say what you do. Anything short of that is either due to lack of clarity or a desire to live by untruths that do not serve you anymore. They never did.

Nature, the Universe and God (or any being or deity that you believe in- or not) works through it’s creation. It’s engine will always be the Truth. A fish cannot fly and a fly cannot survive in water because it’s not in their nature to do so. They are what they are and function according to their natures because they do not have the mental faculties that we do, as human beings.

Anything and anyone that we surround ourselves with exists in our lives because we allow them to but everything including your family name, family members, job and money and all else in between, is an illusion. No matter what you say, think, do, hear or choose to believe, there is a Truth to life.

You can either contribute to the illusion and keep up the facade, which life will keep knocking over OR you can accept the Truths to and of your life and live it, honestly. It really isn’t as scary to be truthful and honest as we make it out to be in our heads. If you’re unhappy about something or someone, it’s because you’re not being honest to yourself about how you feel towards them or it.

Lesson 14: You Are Exactly Where You Need To Be.

We tend to REACT to life but the more we react to life, the more we’re reacting to ourselves. That way we shift the focus off of the main subject- ourselves- and blame everything and everyone else for our woes, worries and form attachments to the people, things and circumstances that we think make us happy. Life ends up becoming a cesspool of complexities because we assume we have no choice to make. The choices we do make are reactionary- they’re responses we’ve learned in the past and apply it to the Now.

In other words, we become prisoners to our pasts and assume where we are, right now, is some form of a punishment or that we could change our lives had we made better choices. Do you know what you call a moment that you could predict and trace? The past- a time that no longer exists.

Whether you like it or not & agree or not, you are EXACTLY where you need to be this very moment. Only you can decide what choices to make and whether or not to recognize what and how you feel in this moment.

The more you react to life, the more it repeats itself. The sooner you accept it, the more capable you are of making choices while being centered in the moment that can either change your life for the better or keep you stuck in the past.

Lesson 15: Life Won’t Always Go The Way You Want It To Go But It Will Get You WHERE You Want To Go.

The bigger picture is always important because, frankly, it’s the only place where things make sense. You might want to get the kind of job that gets your heart singing but that might mean you will lose the job you have to venture through life, so you can know or realize what job that might be for you. You might want honest friends but that might mean you have to lose the friends you already surround yourself with, because they aren’t good for you. You might want the life of your dreams but that could mean losing the illusion that you refer to as life, right now.

Life will alway get you to your destination but it’s got this in-built filter system, where it will get you to eject everything and everyone that doesn’t work for you, at this moment. You’ll recognize those moments in the times that you’re undistracted and turn inwards.

All of a sudden things- losses, gains, patterns, life cycles, repetitions of themes, pain, anger, joy and hurt- start to make sense, when you bear in mind the fact that it IS working to get you where you want to go.

A change of perspective is all that’s needed.

Lesson 16: There Is No Shame In Confessing How You Feel.

There’s a stigma attached to feelings and preference is given to things that make sense. Sidelining and burying your feelings has an adverse impact on your physical AND mental health. The more you hold on to things, the more they affect you. The LONGER you hold on to them, the more serious it’s impact will be on your health overall. It’s kind of like holding on to a piece of coal, expecting it to transform into water.

Everything and everyone has it’s own nature. Feelings have theirs and if they aren’t given healthy outlets, they WILL manifest themselves in unhealthy ways.

Confessing to and taking charge of your feelings allows you to be honest with others AND yourself and to live in the now, without allowing the past to haunt you or the future to scare you.

It’s not that what has happened or will happen isn’t important but when you’re open, honest, upfront and self-responsible, you KNOW where you’re headed and how to deal with the murkiness that your thoughts might bring with themselves.

Lesson 17: Pick Your Battles.

There’s no point to arguing OR staying silent, passively, if what you’re doing is just going to make you feel disrespected, unheard or drained of energy.

Some battles have nothing to do with you. Whether or not you voice your opinion, those battles are already going on within the minds and bodies of the people that pick them, intentionally or unintentionally. There’s nothing you CAN do about them.

After a certain point, you feel and become like a child asking others to hear you, when the best thing you can do, for yourself, is to know that the only person you’re hurting is yourself. Other people need to go through their own journeys, joys and pains before you can make a difference in their lives or to your own.

The best thing to do is to pick your battles and ask yourself if the energy spent into talking to others is beneficial or pointless.

Lesson 18: Self-doubt Is Normal But

Before you make a decision, ask yourself if self-doubt is affecting your decision or if you truly feel like the decision you’re making is one that is good for you. Most people don’t realize the decisions they make come from a place of ego.

Perhaps, you’re making the decisions that you’re making because you want to prove to others that you’re better than what they think of you. Or maybe, you’re convinced that by choosing the job that you have at the moment, you have and hold a certain amount of power over others. Perhaps the way you spend money is more about escape than it is about self-love or the habits you’ve developed was a reaction to an unhealthy domestic environment.

When you act from a place of self-doubt, you’re acting from a place of pain and therefore, all that ensues is and will be a level of pain and anxiety.

24 Things The COVID Lockdown Taught Me

(That Had Nothing To Do With COVID or The Lockdown Itself)

1. When something feels forced or coerced- be it conversation, a hangout, an emotional Netflix binge watch, binge eating, gaming or such like- allow yourself to just be. Accept the knowledge that you’re feeling stressed and/or bad. When you’re all cried out and find it easier to accept your feelings, ask yourself “What will make me feel better?”. You will, without a shadow of doubt, get an answer that only acceptance will allow you to hear.
   
2. Accept EVERY situation and person for what it is and for who they are. Listen to them but don’t attempt to change anything or anyone. Everyone has a different path than yours and forcing him or her to see things your way won’t help them and will only make things difficult for you.
   
3. Everything happens for a reason. You won’t know the reason today, tomorrow or maybe, even a year from now. You don’t need to know the reason for an event to impact you. Maybe, it’s meant to change you as a person. Maybe, it’s meant to change your perspective on life or maybe, it’s just something you need to go through to understand your flaws and strengths. There’s no shame in accepting your flaws and there’s no reason you shouldn’t accept your strengths.
   
4. There are things you can control and then, there are those that you cannot. In times of uncertainty (and I’m paraphrasing Anna, from Frozen II) it helps to hold on to the certainties that you are certain about. Because those certainties make you who you are.
   
5. External circumstances are just those: external circumstances. Whether you feel good or not is not dependent on those circumstances. What you feel within impacts how you deal with external circumstances. Being honest about those feelings will help you confront such circumstances and allow you to actually do (or not do) something about them.
   
6. Do the things that you wish to do for the sake of doing them- no matter how big or small the task or undertaking might be. When you do things for the sake of doing them, you do them in an honest manner and without expectation or an agenda, regardless of how many obstacles and challenges might come along the way. When you do something with an expectation or agenda, you’re bound to fail from the get-go. Why? Because expectation, resentment and anger are like knots: the more you act on them, the tighter the noose gets around your neck. At some point, the noose will strangle you because that’s just how things work. The cause for the action must be the cause for the ending of the action because for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, save for the things that you do because they make you feel present, wholesome and in the Now.
   
7. Not everything goes the way you want it to but that’s not a problem because the stress of making things go your way is alleviated by Life. When you focus on the fact that you’re living Life for the sake of living Life itself, you become one with the moment. You become one with yourself and that’s how you find who you are.
   
8. There are, on a basic level, two feelings you will experience in life: tightness and openness. Tightness is a product of stress. This is why people who tend to take on a lot of stress experience some form of ‘tightness’ or ‘tension’ in their bodies and minds. Openness is a product of being true to who you are. That is why you when you do things that make you feel good about yourself or surround yourself with company that you genuinely enjoy, you are ‘in the moment’ and feel like yourself.
   
9. Expect NOTHING when you take on an endeavor or of people. When you expect you do so because you want things to go your way. When that expectation isn’t met, you get angry because you are confronted with the fact that you are not in control.
   
10.  Acceptance means to know what’s in the past is in the past. You cannot do anything to change it but you can learn from it. The sooner you accept things and people for what they are, the sooner you’re able to see what purpose they served in your life- good or bad. When you do not accept, you continue running into a self-made wall and are unable to grow and evolve. You become a product of and a reaction to your past. Every person or event that you haven’t accepted will continue to haunt you and every choice you make will have nothing to do with you and everything to do with a time (or even person) that no longer exists.
    
11. Whatever relationship or endeavor has, at it’s basis, stress, as a starting point, will and must end because of stress. Why? Because stress was the only constant in that relationship or endeavor. Therefore, in an attempt to avoid feeling stressed, you make decisions that are still, actually, a product of stress. In other words, you’re acting like a moth to a flame. No matter how hard the moth tries, it cannot get to the flame and if, somehow, it does, it either burns, tires itself out or dies because of the flame.
    
12. Expect nothing from anyone or anything and that includes you. The more you expect of yourself, the less likely you are to forgive yourself and when you’re unable to forgive yourself, you’re unable to forgive others. Forgiveness and acceptance enables you to move on, for your sake. Anger and resentment will keep pulling you back into the past. So, while faces and places change, people and circumstances will always play the same roles in your life because you never really moved on from the past.
    
13. Don’t take life or yourself too seriously.
    
14. The mind is a place of bias, prejudice, concocted circumstances and lies. Don’t believe everything you think because it is likely to be tainted by something or someone else. Actions speak louder than words. The action you take matters because it adds to the reality of your life. Your thoughts, on the other hand, entrap you.
    
15. Trust your feelings and instincts, always. Your feelings make you who you are. They motivate you to take action and to move. This helps build momentum. Your thoughts, on the other hand (if unmonitored) invite self-doubt, self-loathing, resentment and anger. Thoughts cause stagnation and stagnation is death. Movement causes change, momentum and is the energy behind life.
    
16. You’ll experience barriers and internal conflict. Instead of escaping from them, embrace them and then, decide what course of action to take to overcome them.
    
17. Everything is always working in your favor, even when that doesn’t seem to be the case.
    
18. Know what you feel without trying to understand or rationalize it.
    
19. If you feel like doing something- no matter how big or small- act on that feeling without trying to make sense of it. Things become clearer along the way.
    
20. Everything you do and say has or creates an impact. You might not know the impact but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. A small act of kindness- like a smile- can make someone’s day. A nasty comment or action can hurt them deeply.
    
21. Be kind to others but first, be kind to yourself. Draw boundaries with people. Do the things that you want to do, if they make you feel good about yourself. Fill your cup because it’s the only one that you’re responsible for and can do anything about.  
    
22. Circumstances present themselves to you for two reasons: to help you build momentum and live your truth or to show you the people and circumstances that keep you from living your truth. Either way, acceptance is key.
    
23. Accept the path of least resistance in every aspect of your life. That doesn’t mean you should be lazy. What it does mean is to do the things and make choices that add flow and momentum to your life.
    
24. If something isn’t going your way, let it be and let it go.

10 Things The Coronavirus Teaches Humankind

1. It’s the small things that matter in life. Being with your loved ones, joy, laughter, compassion, your health, food, water, cleanliness are all aspects of life that we take for granted. These things matter because we don’t need to put effort into looking for them. They either exist or they do not. When and where they exist, we feel joy in a way that revives us. Where they do not, we feel drained, in a way that prompts us to take action and change things around, for ourselves.

2. Nature will flow because that is what she is meant to do and where she experiences resistance, she will eradicate the threat to ensure continuity in the flow state. Those that flow with her grow. Those that go against her perish. The bigger the threat, the louder she gets. After all, her purpose is to create harmony and equilibrium. That will be achieved through any means necessary.

3. Nature doesn’t need us. She doesn’t care about carbon emission limits, carbon footprints, the greenhouse effect or anything else that we’ve imposed on her. She is more than capable of taking care of herself and she is unlimited in the way that she exists. In a mere 5-month duration carbon monoxide levels have decreased. Nitrogen oxide, a gas that causes acid rains, levels have dropped and the production of green house gases have reduced. Smog and air pollution levels have gone down, as well. She doesn’t need to be understood nor does she care for what we do understand of her.

4. Humankind is myopic in its way of thinking and being. We give preference to everything and everyone outside of ourselves because we’ve lost touch with ourselves, as a collective. Any state, person or circumstance that is outside of our comfort levels is treated as a threat. Thus we pass laws and regulations; write books and articles; focus on the threat to the point of madness and hysteria and assume that in doing so we can outsmart Nature. Nature is a part of us just as we are a part of her. It is because we refuse to accept this fact that we continue to wreak some form of havoc on the ecosystem and spread dissatisfaction and disharmony in the world.

5. There is harmony, even in disharmony. What starts off with fear-based energy (anger, anxiety, panic, etc.) must end and discontinue to give way to stronger foundations. Discord exists so we can return to our natural state of harmony.

6. When a purpose, motive, goal or relationship (with anyone or anything) has its roots in love, it will flourish and thrive because that is the nature of love. Love is not ownership nor is it based on fear. Love is based on and allows a state of flow. Love and Nature are unconditional and do not care for good or bad, right or wrong or any other label that humankind might assign to any object or being that exists in the world. Because the purpose of love and nature is the same: harmony. Love just ‘is’. What we are going through, in this moment, too, is meant to return us to a state of harmony. Harmony will only be achieved when we come to terms with the fact that we have, by treating Nature as a threat, failed her.

7. One can have nothing, physically, and still have everything just as one can possess everything and still feel that they have nothing. We tend to think of the outside world as something that is separate from us when, in fact, it is a part of us. It is an extension of our Being. We are, currently, experiencing a pandemic because of the way majority of the individuals, who form the collective, think. In other words, we are our own worst enemy.

8. Our laws and rules, conventions and societal norms, concepts of good and bad, religion or lack of adherence to any particular faith, globalization of businesses or human-made structures do not matter. All can be discarded by Nature within a day. That is how temporary the existence of these goods and our attachment to these principles and concepts are. The only factor that does matter is the law of Nature. Darwin referred to this as the survival of the fittest. What this means is that creatures that go with the flow of Nature evolve. Anything that evolves doesn’t see Nature as a threat and therefore, doesn’t treat her as a threat. Anything that doesn’t evolve adheres to it’s own way of being and treats Nature as a threat. Currently, humankind treats Nature as a threat, which is why we experience some form of disturbance, every year (or arguably, even every day).

9. The health of each and every individual, from a newborn infant to an elderly person, matters. Everything and everyone is part of the collective, simply because they exist, regardless of faith, creed, color, status, job or social standing.

10. We assume the death of a person in another continent has nothing to do with us, just because we didn’t know them. We assume the happiness of another person has nothing to do with us because we do not know them. Everyone feels sadness, happiness, remorse, joy and all other emotions in the same way. It all boils down to how they perceive the world that they grow in. That thought process affects us as a collective and navigates the world in a particular direction, which affects its existence as a whole. We ARE one with everything and everyone in the world but since we do not understand and respect this concept, we always experience and create some form of discord and disharmony.

Wanting Something Is Half The Journey, The Other Half Is Oftentimes Not Hard Work But Faith

The notion that you have to work hard to get what you want is one that we’ve all heard. There’s one problem with it though: most people don’t know what they want. They know what their teachers want. They know what their parents want. They know what the people around them and the circumstances that surround them demand of them.

What anyone, truly, wants gets buried into an entire list of voices that has absolutely NOTHING to do with their individuality. In fact, they want to please other people, who want to please other people, who want to please other people.

The façade is cemented by years of denial of the truth and acceptance of the denial that carries on from one generation to the next: most people want something that others want for them because they do not know what they want for themselves.

What Does It Mean To Want Something?

Everyone wants something for himself or herself. Inner peace, joy, happiness, love, material wealth, spirituality, etc. are all examples of what we WANT.

You know whether you, truly, want something when it is something you take time out for, every, single, day. You don’t know what your end goal might be & the only factor that keeps you going is faith and an inner knowing that everything will turn out in your favor.

Everyone, consciously or subconsciously, does something that reflects whatever it is that they, truly, want. When they do not partake in activities that resonate with that purpose- whatever it may be- they experience a sense of dissatisfaction and discomfort within. When they do partake in such activities, they experience joy and satisfaction.

It adds meaning to their day and they can sleep at night, knowing they are a step closer to accomplishing their dreams. To want something or someone is to give life purpose.

I wanted to train myself, at the gym, every day. I still do. I would collect magazines, read articles and interviews and buy books on what it meant to be fit.

I wasn’t very fit, when I started, but I was clear on where I wanted to be. When I wasn’t actively engaging in content or material that was fitness-related, I found myself daydreaming about my end goal.

Fitness was something that my life revolved around, in every way. In many ways, my life, actively and passively, still does revolve around fitness. It is the only aspect of my life that I give time to, on a daily basis. Fitness, in many ways, was my first love because it helped me transform myself mentally, physically and emotionally.

Everyone has that ‘first love’ career that comes naturally to him or her. Chris Hemsworth’s first love was acting. Steven Spielberg’s ‘first love’ career is directing and he was quoted as saying “I dream for a living”. Oprah’s ‘first love’ career involved talking to people. She didn’t know what she wanted to do until she was put on a talk show. Her employers didn’t know what to do with her.

Every person takes time out for something. Whether or not they realize it that very thing is what they love to do. They have unconditional love and faith in that thing- a talent, product, business, etc.- against all odds. They partake in it- not for money, wealth, fame, approval, validation- but for themselves.

It makes them feel good about themselves. It gives their day and existence a sense of purpose.

HARD WORK Means You Don’t Want What You Think You Want

Hard work is work that feels hard because it does not resonate with who you are. It is when what you do feels like an obligation that it becomes hard to do. It is when what you do feels difficult that it starts to feel like work.

Everyone is blessed with his or her own flaws and strengths. It is when they are unable to apply their knowledge, flaws and strengths that a task or goal becomes ‘hard work’ for them.

As Einstein, said: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”.

Hard work means effort and the application of effort, to do something that does not come naturally to you, is what causes friction. This friction manifests itself in the form of uncomfortable relationships, self-deprecating thought patterns, the development of self-loathing habits and dissatisfaction with life and ultimately, failure.

This applies to every field of life. A relationship feels hard when both individuals are unable to communicate their truth to one another. Your job or business requires hard work, when it doesn’t resonate with what you truly want out of life. You feel the need to keep up with a version of yourself that feels fake and unreal. Being yourself feels like hard work, when you spend time and energy on being someone that everyone, except you, is happy with.

Faith Equals Want Because What We Have Faith In Is What Comes Easiest To Us

You want what you want because you know you deserve it.

There is absolutely zero proof that you will achieve your end goal. Somehow, what you DO know is the very first step that needs to be taken, to actualize that goal.

To every person, the first step is an inexplicable nudge that they know to follow. The nudge doesn’t feel outwardly. It feels like a minor sense of knowing or a confirmation to follow a passion, dream or project, from the soul. Every person experiences these nudges, in their own way.

A nudge can come in the form of a compliment or in the form of a monologue. It can come in the form of a character, on a television show or a statement passed by someone you know. It can be experienced in the form of a dream or even as a recurring idea or thought.

My nudge came in the form of glossy Men’s Health Magazines. I stumbled upon a magazine, back in 2006, and I spent days, looking at a workout program that I wasn’t familiar with. I had never worked out or set foot in a gym. I didn’t understand what I was doing or what repetitions or sets were. I had no idea what proteins, carbohydrates, fats or food had to do with anything.

Up until then, the only exercise I did do was a 3 minute walk, downstairs, into the kitchen, for food items. It was only when I took the time out to read on a variety of material regarding diets, diet plans, workout plans and such like, that I learned the basics of fitness.

The destination isn’t always clear and the trials and tribulations of the journey are unbeknownst to the receiver. The ONLY thing you DO know, in the moment that you commit to that innate knowledge, is the smallest step you need to take, to get to the end goal.

The smallest step I took was to purchase the aforementioned magazine.

The unwavering belief, in the end goal, acts as a driving force. This is referred to as faith. To have faith in the end goal is to accept and believe in the end goal, before it has actualized.

Everyone has one of those goals that they would like to accomplish. New Year resolutions, post-birthday decisions, divorces and marriage and other such occasions are testament to that fact. The difference between want and would like to lies in how much commitment, determination and faith one has in a goal that, truly, matters to him or her.

All I knew was that the model’s physique was my end goal. I didn’t know how I was going to get there but I DID know what my end goal looked like. I didn’t achieve what I wanted for myself, until 2 years ago, but the journey was worth it. I learned what it was to discipline myself, how to control my anger and appetite, what to eat and how or when to eat it and most importantly, how to conquer myself.

When you know what you want, you’ve already laid the map out, for your journey. Life will put you through tests and trials to ensure what you want, really, does matter to you.

If not, you are likely to give up whatever goal it is that you thought you wanted to pursue, midway.

If it is something that you DO wish to pursue, you will pursue it against all odds. The trials won’t feel like tests that demand effort but like a journey that you are willing to embark on.

Look At 2019 To Know Where You’re Headed In 2020

2019 hasn’t been an easy year. It came with a theme: the loss of life as we know it. Every person, of every age, who I bump into, meet at the gym or come across at get-togethers and hangouts, has pointed this out, in some way or the other.

Their cadence might be different and the way they think might conflict but what everyone says is “My life took a hit and I want to know how to fix it”.

The Power of 3 Will Set You Free

I never really had much of a reason to believe in numerology but that has changed, particularly, over the last 3 years. This year just solidified my belief in the concept.

You see, if you add all the digits in the year 2019, it will amount to the number 3. In numerology, it is believed that the number 3 is one that urges us to place faith in ourselves. It encourages one to self-reflect and grow internally but there’s a flip side to the energy of the number: if you don’t allow yourself to grow, you some form of depression, frustration, anger and unhappiness ensues.

Incidentally, everyone I know, has had to make that choice: confront themselves head-on or to stay stuck in a life pattern that has bound them.

3 is a number that demands self-discipline and self-expression. It pushes you to recognize your talents rather than let them go to waste.

What Does This Have To Do With 2019?

Consciously or subconsciously, everyone makes choices.

You choose to follow one path or the other. You choose to follow a path laid out for you by the people that you’ve grown up with or to follow one that you know is good for you. You choose to go for the options that make you feel unhappy or one that truly resonates with you. You choose to stay stuck in a job or business that makes you miserable or to give time to your talents.

2019 has been, at least in my experience, all about choices. There’s a difference between making a choice, consciously, and reacting to your circumstances. I recognized I wasn’t making choices, consciously. I was reacting to my life and the beliefs that my circumstances instilled in me.

I felt like someone who had been to the grocery store to buy chocolates but left it with a maxed out credit card, after spending everything on food items, clothes and products I didn’t need.

Simply put, 2019 was a year that showed me I had spent so much time on REACTING that everything HAD to come crashing down. I had exhausted myself and I had a lot of unresolved baggage.

Thankfully, therapy helped establish the tools I needed to move on, in life. Yet, it still was emotionally painful to see every strip of the life I thought I had made, revealing itself to be a reaction to a past that was not of my choosing.

I assumed, until very recently, that I was in a rut but then, it dawned upon me: 2019 was eradicating remnants, every last bit of them, from my past, to give me a clean slate.

Everyone, I knew, had his or her own rut to deal with. That was something that everyone’s Instagram accounts made abundantly clear. Not a day went by, where some form of self-help content wasn’t shared by Instagram accounts, on their Stories.

While some managed to find their way out, others still had to find a way to recognize their inner strength.

2019 As A Year of Revelations

My grandmothers said, at least once a month, in their own ways, “You will know who is true to you and who is not, in trying times”.

I understood what that meant but I hadn’t had the chance to experience the essence of the statement. 2019 changed that and in many ways, I’m thankful to have gone through it because it did reveal a lot to me.

2019 has been the kind of year that makes you stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself: “Am I happy with where I am, today? Or am I trying to convince myself that I am?”

The year threw me into the deep end and I, now, had to ask myself, “Is this, really, what or who I want to include in my life?”. It was ruthless because I was no longer in a place where I could sit back and make assumptions. I believed I couldn’t take action either.

It was as if 2019 was taking me through everything I had experienced and all the relationships I’d established, including my relationship with myself. I was being given a choice: see everything for what it is and evolve OR to adhere to previous life patterns but with a sense of self-awareness.

Difficult times are difficult, not because they are unforeseen, but because they reveal lessons that you might not have been ready to accept. I found that to be true for myself. In all honesty, it wasn’t as if anything or anyone changed towards me. I just started to see things and people for what they were. That has had a big impact on the way I chose/choose to lead my life.

I was forced to take the red pill because the illusions of the blue pill ceased to exist. This is why everything had to crumble and the facades had to reveal themselves for what they were: illusions.

2019 seems to have had that sort of impact on many people and their lives. Businesses and economies have taken a hit, some way or the other. Individuals have had to recognize their inner voice and strength, too. People of all age groups are considering changing their jobs, the trajectory of their lives or giving up an identity that they created that wasn’t true to them.

Why Look At 2019 To see Where You Will Be In 2020?

A difficult and grueling journey is meant to be transformative.

Life is only difficult, when you live it for other people. I didn’t take the time to recognize this fact but I wasn’t very happy in the life that I thought I’d made for myself. It never really WAS my life. It was a life that I was used to living and one that I had acclimatized to.

The fact that I was unhappy wasn’t clear to me but the past 1 year has made me confront myself in ways that I never had before. It enabled me to filter out the aspects of life that mattered from those that didn’t.

2019 has been tough but it has, personally, been one of my favorite years, for this very reason. It helped me see where I was to where I can be by embracing myself where I am now. It gave me a choice and one that I know to exercise.

Transformation isn’t good or bad but it is a necessity. To transform is to evolve and to evolve is to live with a better, healthier perspective on and to life. To transform is also to embrace your life for what it is: YOUR life.

Recognizing this fact is empowering because it allows you to see how much agency you DO have over your life. It helps you get over yourself and over the difficulties of a life that was never really yours to begin with.

Ignoring it will keep you stuck where you are, until you DO confront yourself head-on.

Why It Is Ok To Be Scared, Not Complacent

Complacency is a disease. We do not think about it that way because we use another, a synonym, to mollycoddle it’s effects: comfort. Don’t get me wrong- there’s nothing wrong with being comfortable but it is when we become slaves to comfort that we stop enjoying life. You know what’s another way to describe that situation?

Taking life for granted.

Our relationship with life is much like our relationship with any other individual out there. What you make of that relationship is for you determine.  You add life to the relationship- not forcefully but because you genuinely want to- or you just stop caring, in which case you start to take your partner or friend for granted.

Practically, those are the only two options, right?

How you treat anyone and anything (wealth, health, money, business and even the things you purchase) is dependent upon your relationship with YOUR life. Complacent people are people who stop caring about life. They care more about the things it has to offer (comfort and security, usually). This approach makes them prisoners to their circumstances. Such people are enslaved by the illusion of comfort.

Every action they take, every thought they think, and every decision they make is the product of the desire to maintain that illusion. They meet people and partake in activities, that drain them, because they HAVE to.

The mere fact that one HAS to do something to keep an illusion alive makes them slaves. What keeps them going? Complacency. In other words, they take life for granted.

This is when life steps in to show them what really matters. Those areas of life that are taken for granted become more important. It is in those moments that you start to pay attention to the micro-chasms in friendships that you, once, thought mattered.

The micro-chasms become bigger in the form of ‘fallouts’ and friction. The work you, once, considered important starts to matter less. The effort you, once, put into keeping face and impressing people, starts to take a toll on your well-being.

When you fail to take action and notice these changes, life becomes even louder to attract your attention.

The people you once considered to be loved ones, make you anxious. The work you devoted so much energy to, affects your health and stresses you out. Your health- that you took for granted- deteriorates. The life you, desperately, held on to, loses it’s charm. Everything and everyone it came with becomes toxic.

Life, itself, starts to matter more than the temporariness of the things that it once offered. How does it do so? By pushing you a little closer to death. In some ways, everyone dies with every second. No one is or stays the same person they were 60 seconds, minutes, days, weeks or years ago. Everyone evolves and when they don’t life does everything it can to attract your attention to the inevitability of death.

You recognize all along you feared the loss of comfort until life steps in and shows you how it was all an illusion. That’s when you start to regret your past and ‘wish’ you had a little more time. THINGS lose their important. That is when you realize the cost of complacency: life itself.

The opposite of complacency is appreciation. This state allows you to embrace the uncertainty of life. Sure, you might get frustrated, annoyed, irritated and bothered, every now and then, but you WANT to come up with solutions.

There is life in the decisions and choices you make. You value life and learn to give the quality of your life preference. You are no longer held back by what other people think of you. You focus more on the little things life has to offer and cherish the relationships that bring you joy. You feel ALIVE and every thought, action and decision is imbued with the essence of life.

You feel scared but inspired, at the same time. You are not paralyzed by the fear of loss. Nothing and no one is taken for granted. You spend time and energy on everything that adds to the richness of life. Of course, money, wealth and work are important factors but they no longer enslave you.

Circumstances might seem or get challenging but you become comfortable with who you are. You start to own your truth and are thankful for whatever life has to offer.

You life, in its entirety, matters to you. Respect, love and care become important factors. Since you stop caring about the THINGS life has to offer you, there are no conditions on what it means to be alive. Rough patches are treated as learning curves and you allow yourself to LIVE.

Being scared means you care and every time you stop caring, life will scare you into doing something that makes you feel alive. When you are complacent, you place conditions on life. No matter how many of these conditions are fulfilled, you want more to add to the illusion.

When you are scared, you are motivated to live life, with everything it has to offer, authentically and truthfully.

Why The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves Matter

Everyone has a backlog of experiences and trajectories that are accumulated over the years. Each experience comes with a lesson and each trajectory has it’s own purpose. Everything, combined, has an impact on us and the impact is the story that we tell ourselves, about our lives.

When I look back at time, I feel like every moment has been a chapter to bring me where I am today. Yes, there were terrible, horrible, moments that I went through. However, there are those that I am happy to have lived, too. Each one of these stories matter and every, single, second of every story has had an impact on who I am.

The problem with stories is that we tend to re-live them, over and over, again. We choose a moment- often a painful one- and typecast ourselves into that role. We tell others the same stories, about ourselves, at every dinner, lunch, get-together, wedding parties, divorce parties and brunch but only because we do the same to ourselves: we believe what we tell ourselves about ourselves. That is where the typecasting occurs.

Some people call this an identity crisis while others refer to it as procrastination or laziness. Some might make this out to be a temporary hiatus while others may call it a transition. When I was a trainer, I’d assumed I would own my own studio, someday and conduct a variety of fun classes. It wasn’t that I WANTED to own a studio but I had fit myself into this box, in my head, where my role was typecast to ‘fitness trainer for life’.

In this past year, I have had to do a lot of internal work. I mean A LOT. You know who else has to do a lot of work on themselves, constantly? Addicts. One way or another everyone is addicted to something but the biggest addiction of all is an addiction to an identity that no longer exists.

Recently, an opportunity presented itself to me- a fitness-related one. I didn’t quite feel right about it but I decided to go with the opportunity because I was still a fitness trainer in my head, in October. The question “But do you even want to do fitness?” hung over my thoughts, like a dark cloud. The truth was I didn’t but I was so addicted to my past identity that I was ready to take on a fitness-related venture. Guess what?

Things didn’t work out.

I was addicted to my identity to the extent that regaining even a semblance of who I used to be excited me. My heart and soul warned me, “Don’t do this” and I was anxious at all times, about the venture, but it wasn’t until the 3^rd meeting that I realized my time with fitness was over.

However, I had been telling myself the story “I’m a fitness trainer” for a long time. This story kept me from being anyone else and from accepting the fact that my life’s trajectory had changed. I’m no longer a fitness trainer. I don’t care to be one either and that chapter is over for me. I was relieved to have walked away from fitness, as a career.

I do not have the same motivations as I did back them. My life has evolved because I’ve evolved. For evolution to take place I needed to embrace change. To, truly, embrace change, I needed to dissociate from my past.

I needed to tell myself a different story.

Telling yourself a different story can be difficult. Life throws you into the deep end, when you don’t know how to swim in unfamiliar waters. It’s the stories that we tell ourselves, in those moments, which define the trajectory of our lives.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves Either Keep Us Where We Are….

Every individual has a narrative that changes from time to time. It HAS to because that just is how life is- it makes you evolve. One option is to stick to your old ways. This is something that most people do, not because it is good for them but because it is the discomfort that they are comfortable with.   

The former overweight person is forever frightful of an extra bite of chocolate. The former lover of an infidel is entrapped by their past and so, finds it difficult to move on to a healthier relationship. The former businessman becomes frugal in the way he spends money due to fear of loss.

What is common for each individual is their commitment to a past that no longer serves them. Their actions, decisions and choices revolve around a time that doesn’t exist in reality. The only place where that story exists is in their heads.

Every minute is dedicated to keeping the previous chapters, of their stories, alive because they do not wish to embrace growth. Every thought they have is influenced by this story. Their present is a regurgitation of the past. They steep themselves in the past rather than accepting the present.

This allows them to typecast themselves into the role of the ‘victim’. They do not wish to take responsibility for their actions nor for their narratives.

Or They Help Us Move On

Another option is to accept the past and to move on. The journey isn’t easy but it beats steeping in unfortunate circumstances and imprisoning yourself in the past. This is a choice that people, often, view negatively. It is assumed that moving on means to go on to better things.

It doesn’t.

Moving on requires coming to terms with what is, by having a look at what was. This is called introspection.

Moving on requires us to stop blaming others for the decisions that we know we could have made, to make things better for ourselves. This is also known as accepting responsibility.

And finally, moving on requires us to come up with a better story- one that allows us to learn from our past and make healthier choices- so we can be our own heroes. This is called evolution.

Conclusion

Life requires us to take a different route, when the choices we make do not resonate with us. These choices might be reflective of what others want of us or with what ‘makes sense’, in general, but they do not feel wholesome or true.

That is when and where life shows us that the stories we’ve been telling ourselves need to change.

Those stories belong to and are imposed upon us by circumstances that we have no control over. What we choose to do is on us. We can either tell ourselves a story that will help us move on or to stay where we are, as prisoners to the past.

Some people put a bookmark in the middle of their stories and leave it there. Others carry on, creating stories that resonate with their truth. The stories we tell ourselves help us redirect the trajectory of our lives, so that we can make that choice for ourselves. It can either contribute to our betterment or lead us to doom.

That is why the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves matter.

Why We Often Get What We Don’t Want

The greatest tragedy and pain of life is knowing what you want, knowing what you need to do to get there and yet getting what you DO NOT want out of it. That’s why we start to believe ‘life is unfair’ or ‘the world is a cruel place’. Both of these are sayings by people who, probably, were not honest enough with themselves. To get the life you do want, that is EXACTLY what you need: honesty.

What, really, is honesty? Some people make it out to be open communication while others believe honesty and bluntness is the same thing. Honesty must come from a place of complete and utter clarity from within.

You need to be honest with yourself before you can get honest with the world. That means to be completely and totally ruthlessness with yourself. That means calling yourself out, at all times without seeking to blame anyone else or anything else but the enabler of the life that you have built for yourself: you.

I do, frequently, refer to unfortunate past circumstances, in my own life, in real life and in my blog posts. That doesn’t mean I am or was without fault: after all, I didn’t take a stand, when I should have.

What does this have to do with life?

Everything.

It is not uncommon to get into jobs, relationships, friendships, and places and into trajectories of life that conflict with our interests. However, unless duress and force is involved, the fact of the matter is most people make choices that they DO NOT WANT TO.

Why?

Because in making that very choice, they still get something you DO want. Whether or not one is honest enough to admit this to themselves, there is ALWAYS a choice.

Sugarcoating and lying to yourself about a decision, too, is a choice that you make to cover up the truth. Eventually, the truth catches up to you, like a boomerang, as the pile on the “Do Not Want” list grows.

When My “Do Not Want” Pile Became Unavoidable

I had taken a few months off, at the end of 2018, intending to kickstart a few projects of my own, in 2019.

I assumed I would do something related to fitness and take on clients online. I got into talks with various people about classes, personal training sessions and such like. I spoke to people about ventures I was interested in and reached out to all kinds of people- friends, family, followers, etc. I did my research and went to a few meetings with people interested in fitness and in other ventures I thought I was interested in.

I did everything that one should do to make a dream come true but the fact of the matter was, I no longer wanted to have anything to do with fitness. This was a fact that I just couldn’t and hadn’t made peace with until a certain incident, not too long ago, made it clear to me that my decision to walk away from fitness was one I needed to stick to.

That it didn’t work out, bothered me but to be fair, I did know this would happen. I just hadn’t yet accepted it. I recall a very specific moment of clarity, in my last week at the fitness company I worked for last year, recognizing the possibility of a struggle in 2019.

Somehow, I knew this wasn’t a struggle over a job or over one aspect of the life that I had lived but that it was going to be a life-altering, transformative, one instead. It was going to be a struggle that would require me to dig SO DEEP, into my being, that I would have to look into the crevices of every decision I had ever made in my life. I would have to look at the bottom of my heart and pull out every choice I made, consciously or subconsciously, and study it. In detail- EXCESSIVE detail.

What I discovered was that, for the most part, I had a life I was comfortable with. It wasn’t a life that I was happy with- since it caused so much anxiety and pain, in the past- but it was a life that I had lived.

When I look at who or how I was, prior to November 2017, I, sometimes, do not recognize who I used to be. It feels as if though I’m looking into a broken mirror: I can see and recall what life was back then, but I can never put the pieces back together and make sense of it. It wasn’t until 2019, post-therapy, that I had the chance to take a stable version of myself on a test-drive.

Who I used to be might not have been healthy or stable but it was his mess that I was dealing with. He was also the person I used to be. So, his mess was my mess to fix. I had to confront myself for what I had made life out to be.

Sorting Out The Pile

The life I had lived, suddenly, made sense to me. I chose the jobs that I did because of money. It never came from a place of want but from a place of fear of lack of money and security. I had fun doing what I did but because of the people I met and worked with, not because of the jobs themselves.

This was something I hadn’t come to terms with until my health was affected. I was anxious, angry and irritable and my body was aching. I wasn’t sleeping well either. My KNEES hurt, even though I’ve got good form at the gym. Ironically, my diet, routine, vitamin levels and such like, were on point.

Also, I was earning a good amount of money and met people from all walks of life. I’m still in touch with them. Everything seemed to be great on paper but the truth that I was leading a life that was, now, impacting my health.

I recognized, too, the fact that most of the relationships I had formed were the product of fear and the need for validation. That meant I could justify the need to keep my opinions to myself rather than calling others out on their statements and actions. I wasn’t honest with myself nor was I honest with others. It wasn’t as if I was lying to them but I did pretend as if I was fine and happy, all the time, when I wasn’t. In trying to win other people’s approval, I lost myself. It was in therapy and the recognition of this fact that I saw and felt the dire need to change the trajectory of my life.

I just hadn’t had the time to absorb this fact.

Working, earning and living the life that I did meant I could run away from it. It meant I could run away from the need to acknowledge it, too, but my mind, body and soul wasn’t allowing me to do so, anymore.

2019, whether I realized it or not, was going to be (and has been) a year where I would be forced to look at my past for what it was. It wasn’t the easiest year but it has been a year of many, many realizations, epiphanies, experiments and truth-telling moments.

Life Isn’t Unfair To Us Unless We Are Unfair To Life

Life isn’t unfair because it just is such. Life is unfair because the people who tell us it is never put any effort into rectifying the trajectories of their own lives. They never took ownership of their own lives for what it was nor for what it is nor did they teach us to be such.  

Life seems unfair, when we see that it never resonated with who we are as individuals. Life seems unfair, when we do not live it on our terms and choose to allow others to dictate it. It seems unfair when we seek to dictate it. Nothing and no one, under a dictatorship can live nor grow and life is the same way. When we no longer see or come to terms with this fact, we are brought to a standstill and must surrender.

Surrendering to life means allowing ourselves to open up to life and all that it has to offer and allowing ourselves to treat life in a manner that resonates with our truth.

The more you do the things that you do not want to do, the more you will focus on the things that you do not like or enjoy, in life. Focusing on what you do not want, consciously, means accommodating what you resent, dislike or are uncomfortable with, into your life, for temporary returns, subconsciously. At a subconscious level, you must attract and accommodate more of what you do not want so that the need of your conscious mind (to accommodate what you do not want) is fulfilled.

This is why most people have no qualms with the trajectory of their lives until they hit a roadblock. A roadblock is only experienced as a roadblock, when you lead a life that you do not enjoy, for all that it has to offer and for all that it comes with. Resentment, pain and anger are experienced, when you lead a life that is not aligned to your wishes, needs and truth.

Living a life that does resonate with you might not be easy but every challenge is welcomed. Every moment of happiness is celebrated. Anger and resentment is replaced by the understanding and you live life on your terms.

This isn’t even self-help material. It’s basic psychology. Most people are led to believe they MUST do what others want them to do, at a very young age. Children are made to believe they cannot do what they want to do and that they must follow their parents’ footsteps to live a secure life. Such life might offer an illusion of security and comfort but, for the most part, it is also the kind of life that causes stress, heartache, anger, anxiety depression, pain and resentment.

The fact of the matter is, in this time and age, we are uncomfortable with the idea of leaving the comforts of the life we know. As a result, we attract more of what we do not want. Life, for the most part, might stay and remain what it is. Objectively speaking, everything looks the same. You’re surrounded by the same people, circumstances, opportunities and events, as before.

It is when you recognize just how much of what you have is a product of fear, pain and unresolved emotions and anger, for comfort and convenience, that you realize the life you have is neither one you wanted nor signed up for.

How we live our lives boils down to a choice:

A) Live life, doing the things you do not want to do, for temporary gains until it, blows up in your face and impacts your mental and physical well-being or

B) Live your life, doing the things you DO want to do, keeping your end goal in sight.

Option A seems more attractive but only because of the short-term benefits. It’s when the short-term happiness subsides that the pain of living an inauthentic life creeps in. Such people tend to live life to gain approval, validation and inauthentically.

People who opt for B, live on their own terms and achieve their end goal because they, subconsciously and consciously, make choices that are in line with their truth.

What We Want To Do Comes Naturally To Us

Everyone is exposed to a set of circumstances or to a particular type of people growing up. Where we are born, and to whom, are factors that are out of our control. You cannot choose your choose the family that you are born to nor can you choose the circumstances that led you there.

I believe everyone is born with a purpose. We don’t always know the purpose but that’s what life is about: purpose. No one creates something or someone ‘just because’. At some level, everyone knows why they create what or who they create. They may not know it at a conscious level but the evidence is obvious in their actions.

One cannot help but be obvious in their actions, even when and if they say something else. The action you take is the choice you make at a visceral level. You cannot help but to take that specific action. It is so true to who or what you are that you might not even realize how deeply embedded your responses, thoughts, actions, beliefs and mere BEING are.

When you act in contradiction to your truth, resistance ensues. This happens because your heart isn’t in the life you lead. It is in direct opposition to it. What happens in moments of opposition? A reaction, to bring you back to your truth and the further you get away from it, the more difficult and complicated life becomes. Life will, then, continue to react until you are finally willing to embrace what comes naturally to you- your truth- and are willing to lead a purposeful life.  

Likewise, there are certain talents that everyone is born with. We often don’t know what these talents are because we have never been acquainted with them. I like to think of these abilities as superpowers. Everyone has one and it is something that comes to use when one has to express themselves. That, after all, is magic: the use of energy to express yourself.

Every person just knows HOW to express himself or herself. The question “How do I paint or cook, draw, sing, write, etc. to express myself?” doesn’t occur to them. They just know to express themselves with the tools available to them. That ability is a part of their existence and their being.

The first time I knew to write was when I was going through a rough patch in my life, at the age of 7. I had moved from Dubai to Lahore, in 1996. I had become accustomed to the life in Dubai and so, moving here was a culture shock. The environment was different. People were different and how everyone interacted with each other wasn’t the same either. At the age of 7, I was enrolled in a school, with a large but diverse group of boys. It was an all-boys college.

I wasn’t used to that either because I had grown up in a mixed-education system. I was quite lost and I would regularly take my lunch and eat under a big, ancient tree until ‘lunch time’ was over. I didn’t have any friends and I was very, very shy (a fact you wouldn’t believe, if you met me today). I didn’t talk much but the one thing I do remember doing was to pick up a pen, when I went home and to write in my diary. That was the first time I knew I wanted to express myself. Writing came naturally to me, then. I did well in English classes but I was horrible at Math and Urdu- again, because I spent the first 6 years of my life with children and teachers who either spoke English or Arabic.

My life had brought me to a point where I felt the desire to shape my feelings so I could express them. I didn’t know what to do or how to go about it. All I saw was a journal and a bunch of pens that I just knew to write in. It came naturally me to do so. I wasn’t trying to do well or to write. I just did. It came so naturally to me that it wasn’t about ‘want’ or ‘need’ but about expression. I didn’t know or care if I was good at writing. The thought that I had to be a certain way about writing didn’t come to mind. I didn’t know what it was to be good or bad at writing. I just knew to write. It wasn’t a thought but action that came from the heart, causing me to get lost to and in the moment.

When you get lost in the moment you are creative and free. No form of voice, judgment, thought or effort comes to mind because you are at one with your ability to express yourself. What you do, in that moment, feels like a dance with the universe and alignment with the heart. Nothing feels forced and every action you take, to express yourself, feels as if it flows from within.

The first word a writer writes, till the last period in his or her writing feels natural, because it comes from within. The first stroke of a brush to the final image, on a canvas, feels like a moment of unity with what you feel, as a painter. The way a character speaks to the way he or she moves, lives, dresses, thinks and feels is natural to an actor. The knowledge of the basic ingredients of a food product to the most complicated dish in the world will come effortlessly to a cook.

No effort or resistance is involved here. There exists only 2 factors: the person who wishes to express his or her feelings and the object that enables them to do so. What you do and create in that moment comes from the most basic and natural part of your existence: the soul. 

3 Questions That Can Help Make An Important Decision In 3 Minutes

Life throws various situations at us, at all times. Sometimes, making the simplest decision can seem like a task and by the time a decision needs to be reached, we either get frustrated or go for the option that makes us uncomfortable.

Here are a few questions that could help make a decision, fast.

Do I feel relieved or troubled about my decision?

Chances are you already know the answer to the question but past experiences make you doubt yourself. Generally, a good decision is one that makes you feel calm and relieved, even if your mind, peers or logic says others.

An unfavorable decision is makes you feel anxious or uneasy.

Where am I feeling my decision- in my head or in my body?

Some people make decisions on the basis of logic while others follow their feelings. The problem with following logic is that the same reasoning doesn’t always apply to everyone. Also, the mind can only process and handle information to a certain extent. Paying attention to how you feel allows you to assess how comfortable you are with your decision.

If you know, in your bones, without a shred of doubt, that your decision is the right one, that is your body’s way of guiding you to go for it. The right decision usually FEELS right because your gut and body are comfortable with it, even if your mind isn’t. It makes you feel calm and relieved. Every fiber of your being screams that it is the way to go, no matter what logic, people or history might say. There is no rationale to it but you just know to follow it through.

Am I willing to accept complete and full responsibility of the outcome?

The outcome of a situation- whether you apply logic or not- is not something that you can control. What might seem to be the logical way to go could lead you to a horrible outcome (vaping pens are testament to that). What might seem incredulous may actually turn out to be the right option in the long run.

Of course, not everything is in your control. That is why and where it is helpful to question how willing you are to accept responsibility of the outcome. Even delegating the decision-making aspect to someone else is a choice. You, of your own volition, place the responsibility on another person. Whatever the outcome, you still are and will be responsible for it, by association.

When Positive Thinking Just Doesn’t Work

I used to be a big advocate of positive thinking, because what could be better than thinking positively, right? There’s a difference between positive thinking and optimism, or so I’ve learned.

Positive thinking is a very specific, confined, way of thinking. It demands you consider the positives of an uncomfortable situation, instead of accepting it for what it is.

This was something that books, such as The Secret and The Law of Attraction propagated. In their own way, such content does make sense. Think positive and you will attract positivity. Think negative and you will attract negativity into your life. That’s the basic gist of the matter and it’s something you may have heard from your elders or cartoons, too.

There’s a fine line between thinking positively and being in denial. Most people tend to substitute positive thinking because they want to stay in denial. Therein lies the very problem with positive thinking.

If your partner cheats on you, there’s nothing positive to be gained from the experience. Sure, it’s better to learn and break up with them earlier than later but what of the time you have already given them? Sure, it’s better to look at everything you have gained from a failed or failing business. What of the time, money and effort spent on the business?

You ARE human, after all. The time, energy, effort and money spent on your relationship with your career or partner IS gone. There’s no way you can get that time back. Those people or things became part of you because you invested so much of yourself into them.

You can accept the loss of people, things and circumstances but that doesn’t take away the pain of your past.

That is when positive thinking doesn’t work.

Get To Know Yourself Better

What helps is taking some time to mourn the loss you have experienced. For that, you need to be willing to be completely, brutally, honest with yourself.

You need to ask yourself the tough questions to get answers. Maybe you didn’t like your partner because he was too possessive. Perhaps, you couldn’t stay with your partner because she was too demanding.

It’s possible that you didn’t want that job but did it only for the money. Or maybe fame was your end goal.

Either way, life has a way of pushing us to be our best selves. Life is the police officer that you never knew you needed. It is ruthless in the way it operates but its methods are effective.

It brings you to those seemingly, never-ending red signals that require you to sit just a little longer so you can learn a little more about your likes and dislikes.

The problem is we live in a world where everyone wants to cross the green signal, when they aren’t ready to. Some people choose and are willing to learn about themselves, at a younger age. Others may go through life, enjoying each moment, for what it is, till life brings them to a point where serious introspection is of importance.

Positive thinking isn’t the solution here. You can’t smile in the face of heartbreak or professional disappointment. You can’t get over them by denying anything ever happened and then, applying positive thinking as you would a whitener, over an error.

What you DO need to do is to face the heartbreak and failure for what it is. The more time you take to accept things for what they are, the more time it will take for you to become your truest self.

The Whole ‘Truest Self” Notion

Your truest self isn’t an angel nor a famous trillionaire but it is a version of you that is complete. It makes no apologies for who it is. It does not change for people nor does it seek to appease anyone.

It speaks up, when it needs to and exercises compassion. It cannot be fake because it is whole, authentic, real and willing to take on any challenge that life throws your way.

It makes room for the life that matters by minimizing the time and effort spent on anyone or anything who drains your energy. It is self-aware of it’s ticks, strengths, weaknesses and it is uncompromising, even toward itself.

Life will continuously push you to be this person because this is who you, essentially, ARE. This is who you knew yourself to be, as a person, when you were a child. If you find yourself in a career or lifestyle that doesn’t resonate with you, chances are life will take those away from you. If you are in a relationship that was toxic and inauthentic, you will find yourself feeling the need to break up. And when you don’t quit that job or leave that person, you will find yourself getting stuck in an unhappy rut. This will, then, affect you mentally, physically, emotionally, psychologically because you simply aren’t accepting the fact that you are clinging to something or someone that isn’t healthy for you.

The only way you can get out of this rut is to embrace your true self.

Some people do accept this version of themselves while others don’t. The latter commit themselves to a draining, superficial, unhappy and illness-inducing lifestyle. The former category surrounds itself with people that are authentic and is aware of its choice. What is a rut to one is merely a temporary process of self-exploration to the other.

You can’t think positively to become your truest self. To get to know that version of yourself, it is important to understand your pain, sorrow and grief. It is when you understand the positive AND negative emotions that you can work towards bettering yourself.

Positive thinking doesn’t change what you went through. You must, first, accept the pain. It is the pain experienced that allows you to transform yourself and bring you a step closer to your authentic-self. Then, and only then, can you think optimistically and transmute your pain into something far more meaningful.

Positive thinking doesn’t save you.

Your authentic-self does.

How Embracing Anxiety Could Help You

Anxiety is something that I grew up with. Having a genetic predisposition for both, depression and anxiety, was not easy. What is worse, and more painful, is the fact that there wasn’t much awareness regarding anxiety, depression and other aspects of mental health. As a result, I never was made aware of the fact that I had anxiety-related issues.

Everyone has their own struggles and mine was two-fold:

1. My mind was always racing so fast that I couldn’t separate my mind and it’s delusions from my feelings and
2. I was escaping my feelings, in anxiety, to the extent that I was numb to them at all.

This was a vicious cycle and you know what’s the worst thing about a vicious cycle?

It only adds to the desire to be numb and I was a pro at neglecting my feelings.

Sometimes, I would dismiss anxiety-triggered thought processes as ‘overthinking’. However, there’s a difference between anxiety and overthinking. Overthinking is confined to the head while anxiety affects the mind AND body.

One is controllable while the other is not. An overthinker knows when they are overthinking but a person with anxiety may never know they have anxiety-related issues. I didn’t. My therapist told me I had anxiety problems, 3 days after my 27^th birthday, 2 years ago.

Anxiety cannot be eradicated nor cured, completely, but it can be managed. I can’t speak to everyone’s experience but I’ve noticed anxiety to be the problem child of the mind and body. Most people suffering because of anxiety are triggered because of some trauma(s) that their minds and bodies carry, from the past.

You might not remember the impact of the traumatic event/events, on a conscious level. In fact, the trauma might have been so unbearable, that you cannot remember that you were exposed to a traumatic incident, at all. Your body does and always will.

Essentially, anxiety exists because of the problems you went through and faced as a child but never got the chance to confront. Anxiety isn’t just a state. It is a world of emotions, panic and anxiety triggers and mainly unresolved emotional, physical, psychological pain, due to exposure to some form of abuse.

It could be the product of an unhealthy, volatile, domestic environment or sexual abuse. It could be the product of an unhealthy relationship with one, or both, parents. It could be the product of a single incident or recurring ones, too.

Once you become conscious of the impact of your triggers, it becomes easier to deal with them in a manner that is beneficial to you. Anxiety, then, no longer controls you but you can decide whether or not to react to your triggers.

In other words, you can make a conscious choice and act on the options available to you, in the moment. Here are a few ways I’ve discovered to be VERY useful:

I Choose How To React To Handle Anxiety- triggering Circumstances

I had several fears and my body still reacts to certain environments that it is triggered by. My heart will beat faster than normal and my thoughts start to race uncontrollably and my eyes well up, involuntarily. Earlier on, I would ignore these ‘get out NOW’ cues from my body, only to end up feeling exhausted and drained.

Now, I listen to these cues. If someone or something makes me feel that way, I listen to my body and make a conscious decision, based on that cue.

The one time I didn’t listen to my body, in recent times, was when I gave in to my mind’s justification for a cheat meal. I didn’t really feel like giving in to the urge but I allowed my mind to take over. I didn’t feel comfortable cheating that day.

Something inside of my body made me feel uncomfortable. It was as if my body was just waiting for the shoe to drop. My ignorance led to a horrible, weekend-long, case of food poisoning- an illness I haven’t been acquainted with since 2008.

To make your anxiety a superpower, you have to own and recognize its effects on your body. Instead of second-guessing your gut, listen to it. Instead of rationalizing what you feel in a circumstance that you aren’t familiar with, accept the feeling for what it is and act on it.

Instead of dismissing what you feel, own the feeling and be aware of it. Your body KNOWS what it feels and all you need to do is to allow it to guide you. If you feel an opportunity is too good to be true, it is. If you feel that an opportunity would help you, even when others contest your decision to follow it through, listen to that feeling.

I Know Who To Trust & Who To Keep At Arm’s Length

I used to have ‘rescuer’s syndrome’ which means I wanted to, and thought, I could help people with their issues. I was tolerant of all kinds of people, because I thought it was the right thing to do, to a fault.

I realized some people genuinely, subconsciously or consciously, thrive off of drama. They cannot help but to repeat the same circumstances in their lives, because they get validation, approval, attention or a kick out of it.

I was getting pulled into drama and circumstances that had NOTHING to do with me. I chose to hang out with such people, even though my body would react to the presence of such individuals from the get-go. I would get anxious around them, without being aware of the impact they had on my well-being and yet I devoted time and energy to ensure they didn’t suffer, voluntarily.

These were people who I gave time to but who were never really there for me, when I required support. At some level, I knew this to be the case but didn’t really act on that knowledge. Recognizing how I felt around them made it easier for me to choose how I wished to handle the situation. Now, I consciously choose to be around people who don’t make me feel anxious. I have learned what it is to be at peace.

If someone disturbs that peace, I keep him or her at arm’s length or I confront them. Either way, I get to make a conscious decision on how I want to process the information my body relays to me.

There’s a reason you feel excited around some people and calm around others. The former category awakens your anxiety while the latter is genuine. You might feel anxious around someone you know and not know why but listening to that feeling will save you from trouble. Another’s presence might make you feel more relaxed and at ease. Your body picks on the fact that this category genuinely cares for you, even if neither one of you is consciously aware of this fact.

Again, your body just picks on their vibes and communicates that knowledge to you. All you need to do is to zero in on that feeling and decide whether or not to act on it.

I Can Decide How To Go About A Situation Beforehand

I had never travelled before 2018. I had never made the effort to but, for the first time ever, I decided to apply for a visa to Europe (something I will cover soon). Most people went on about how difficult it was to get a visa on the first try and how the lack of a travel history wasn’t going to help my case. Even people who support and love me were doubtful of my chances of getting the visa on my very first attempt.

I had already started therapy by this point and I realized that I didn’t feel anxious about applying. I was extremely calm and whenever someone asked me whether I thought I would get the visa, I would say “I KNOW I will. It’s just a matter of when”.

This was 2 months before I applied. I did everything I could and collected the required documents. There was a delay, in confirmations and rejections, that particular summer. I got to know the embassy had too much work and too little staff to handle the large influx of cases at that point. I still felt extremely calm about my decision to apply. I just KNEW I was going to get the visa. I could feel the calmness in my bones, literally.

Lo and behold, I actually got the visa that year. All I had to do was to follow my feelings and then, consciously, do the work required for the application process.

The body of an anxious person carries a lot of anxiety, obviously. There are certain situations in which you will get anxious, even when it seems you have no reason to be. In other situations you will feel calm and at ease, even when and if others lose their cool under those circumstances. You might not know or realize this but your body knows exactly how it feels under every circumstance. The past traumas and memories are a part of your body.

You might feel something is ‘off’ about a person or situation. Taking on a, seemingly, might make you feel calm, instead of triggering your anxiety. A family member or friend, you’ve known since a decade or so, might make you uncomfortable, while the presence of someone you barely know might calm you down.

Instead of ignoring those feelings and acting on other people’s advice and suggestions, trust your body. It guides you every second of the day. All you have to do is to tune into it and not second-guess what you feel.

When you become aware of your triggers, it becomes easier to make choices based on your feelings. The mind’s intelligence is limited and the brain only gets the information it is fed from the outside via books, the internet, gossip, basic chit-chat, television shows and such like. The mind is impressionable.

It is a brat in the sense that it always wants to gain your attention. The more attention you give it, the worse matters get. The ironic part is more often than not, what you imagine or think might not be true, at all.

Our bodies are far more intelligent and in tune with nature. The language of the human body is feelings. When you pay attention to your feelings, it becomes easier to decide how to handle a situation or person.

Don’t criticize what you feel nor seek to justify it because that just makes you a slave to your mind. Embrace how you feel, good AND bad, and make a decision based on those feelings, instead.

It Is Alright To Not Be Always Alright

There’s a general notion that to express any emotion- good or bad- is weakness and that putting up a façade is a necessity. We live in a world where someone admitting to not being “alright” or happy is thought to be ‘abnormal’ or wrong.

To cry means to be unthankful but to smile through clenched teeth, at people we dislike or know have harmed us (or have tendencies to do so) is considered ‘normal’. To express genuine happiness is thought to be ‘extra’ while maligning someone in his or her absence is thought to be a way of bonding with another. To show vulnerability is thought to be an excuse while nervous breakdowns, depression and anxiety are dismissed as “dramatic behavior” or “craziness”.

At some point, everyone wants to believe that they are happy and have full lives, when the truth is there are times when they are anything but.

Somehow and at some point in time, becoming a robot to please other people became a norm. It became a norm to sit with unexpressed emotions and resentment. It became a norm to subject oneself to occasions and people that made you anxious. It became a norm to be the norm to avoid upsetting anyone else. It became a norm to not be true to who you are.

The irony of the matter is there is strength in admitting that you don’t feel happy or alright- no matter how trivial the case. There is strength in accepting the fact that some people just make you uncomfortable or unhappy. There is strength in admitting that you simply do not want to think positively because you just aren’t in that headspace, right now. There is strength in accepting the fact that you are stressed out because of your friends, family, work or just because someone stole your pen. These causes, often, indicate that the backdrop of the problem is much bigger than it seems to be.

The need to be perfect, happy and ‘alright’ all the time plays a key role in our decision-making skills. There’s a reason emotions exist- to be felt. There’s a reason one person might find flying scary while another finds it riveting. There’s a reason one person likes to write while another prefers to paint. Everything is connected to the way we feel.

I didn’t recognize this until I turned 27. I had bottled up a world of emotions that just hadn’t been expressed nor accepted but, upon my therapist’s suggestion, I just lay down to face every emotion I had ever felt. It wasn’t easy but it was important. In doing so, I recognized something: every feeling and every emotion I felt had relevance.

I didn’t have to act on every emotion but recognizing what I was feeling made it easier for me to understand myself. I learned I don’t like to laugh all the time. I learned there are times that someone pisses me off just because they are in my proximity, on a bad day. I learned I much prefer sitting at home, gorging on a huge burger and French fries while watching The Holiday (true story) than to talk to somebody. Likewise, I discovered I do like to talk about my issues with a fingerful (because handful is too big a number now) of people because I do feel comfortable with them. This made it easier for me to be true to myself, too.

Acceptance of the fact that you’re not alright is empowering. It allows you to forgive yourself for neglecting your health and well-being. It enables you to create an authentic life that resonates with who you are rather than to create one in which you feel like the victim. It allows you to truly love yourself in illness and in health.

It is only when you accept yourself for who you are, completely and fully, that you create a life that is a true and authentic reflection of who you are, as an individual. Sometimes everything feels great while at other points they don’t.

It is alright to not feel alright just as it is ‘normal’ to celebrate the happy moments of our lives.

Life Happens When We Need To Learn More About Ourselves

It’s typical and normal to expect things to go the way we consciously want them to, isn’t it? Every turn in life is expected to turn out in a manner that is known and familiar to us.

Get a degree, go to college, get a job and make money (at the risk of your health and relationships but no one tells you that part) and flourish. That’s what we are taught nowadays.

Each passing generation expects the upcoming generation to repeat their footsteps and thrive. Each upcoming generation buys into the notion that experienced people, who seem (operative word) happy really are such in life.

The post-industrialization human being expects everything to go the way he or she wants them to. We’re essentially born with a sense of entitlement- we expect things to go the way we want them to because everyone and everything around us tells us that it WILL work out the way we want them to.

Entitlement and expectation is ingrained into us from the moment we’re born till the day we die. Consequentially, we take relationships, our health (mental and physical) and ourselves and our lives for granted.

The unspoken truth, no matter how much wealth, success or experience one has, is that we’re all going to die. In a way, we die with every passing second because nothing really ever stays the same. No one likes to talk about life and death as facts because, again, post-industrialization entitlement makes it easy to forget that life has and runs it’s own course.

No one wants to think about nor approach the fact that life and death are, actually, TOTALLY out of our control. You never know what might happen within the next 10 minutes, let alone next year. 2008 is testament to this fact. One minute everyone was sitting behind their computers, speculating stocks and thinking about promotions, bonuses or daydreaming and sleeping in the comfort of their homes and the next, the whole world experienced a recession. The world still hasn’t recovered from it.

We want to think and believe that everything is predictable. We want everything to BE convenient from relationships and conversations to food delivery and the way we administer our health. We want to believe things happen because they ‘just do’ but the truth of the matter is this: every event- foreseen or unforeseen- happens because life or the universe or God or a Higher Power (whatever deity your faith- if any- accommodates) is bigger than the confines, labels and humanistic approach that we adopt towards it. The way life works is bigger than the way we want it to.

Things turn out the way they do because there are lessons we need to come to terms with. Most people are less concerned with the lessons and more worried about the immediate outcome of a circumstance. There’s a need to keep things stable and to reflect what we want our lives to be. That, too, is because of the entitlement etched into our systems.

At the end of the day, what matters is not whether your expectations of life are met but whether you are truly happy with who you are as a human being. The more you expect life to go the way you feel it “should”, the less likely you are to be happy. The less you expect out of life, the calmer and happier you feel. The former category doesn’t learn from life but resists it on a continuous basis. The latter learns from life and grows because every twist and turn is seen a learning curve and not as a threat to his/her sense of entitlement.

10 Lessons I Got From Candy Crush

1. The simplest, smallest, most basic step you take in your journey, matters. Acting on an impulse that feels good can go a long way, even if you don’t realize or see how your contribution affects you in the long run.
2. It is important to make do with the tools, weapons, guidance and circumstances you have than to bash your head into a wall.
3. Sometimes, you will experience some form of resistance. Instead of going against the flow, wait for a couple of days, before you return to a circumstance that doesn’t require your immediate attention. The break will help get some perspective on a matter or issue and you can use these lessons to take a different approach.
4. You will experience blockades, resistance and some form of irritation in life. This only means you haven’t yet clarified or resolved issues, which need to be dealt with, before you can move on.
5. There are certain challenges that you will experience in life. Those will seem like ‘nightmarishly hard levels’ or ‘hard levels’ and then, there are those levels that aren’t as frustrating or aggravating. The only difference between the difficult levels and the easier ones is how you perceive them. The difficult moments aren’t such because you can’t handle them. They are difficult because you just have to find a more efficient and effective way of tackling them.
6. Some circumstances and people enter you life to teach you a lesson that you might not have learned, if you hadn’t encountered them. These lessons prepare you for something better and bigger, even if you don’t see it yet.
7. Work SMART, not hard. Working smart means to utilize the lessons life has taught you to make the best possible use of the resources provided to you. Working hard means putting in more effort than is possible to the point of exhaustion. This is neither healthy nor does it ensure results. In fact, it causes more frustration, resistance and anger.
8. Enjoy the process rather than focusing on the result. The result seems intimidating and far-fetched, when you don’t pick a starting point. The process seems easier and provides moment, when you go along, because you focus on the things that matter IN THE NOW rather than those that can be dealt with later.
9. The best way to gain perspective on a difficult matter is to take a step back to consider your options. This way you can weigh out the pros and cons and how your choice of action could contribute to the result that you seek.
10. Focus on the details but not to the extent that you forget the bigger picture. Focusing on details will get you lost but focusing on the bigger picture will help remember why you embarked on your journey in the first place.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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You Have ONE Job….To Live YOUR Life

What does it really mean to be ALIVE?

Social media adds a reductive angle to it by making us believe everything has to be documented and hashtagged for more likes. Institutions have us believe it’s about formal education. Some parents believe it’s about turning their kids into carbon copies of themselves.

Children believe it’s about getting their parents’ approval and that affects them, as they grow older. The corporate world has us believing it’s about making money and investing that money into our futures or into the lives of those that matter (be it loved ones or charity). The ‘follow your passion’ believers will have you believe it’s about a passion. The opinions of people (who don’t matter) will have you believe it’s about impressing them.

Studies will tell you it’s about bookmarking that study that was carried out by Harvard 3 years ago about how too much green tea can cause testicular cancer. The pharmaceutical industry will have you believe it’s about watching out for that medicine that could save you 10 years from today.

The internet will have you believe it’s about reading all the information in the world, so you can find an article you agree with, in order to use their argument against someone you don’t like or agree with.

SO MUCH NOISE, SO LITTLE TIME!

First things first: no one CHOOSES to be born. It’s not as if we sit up in Heaven or down in Hell and wait for someone to tell us “Yo, bro, it’s, like, your time to be born. You’re going to be brought into the world by Mr and Mrs. Just Want To Have Kids”, when we’re not yet born or brought into the world. If that were the case, we would be familiar with the concept of what it means to be born BY CHOICE but that’s not the case. Mr and Mrs. Just Want To Have Kids don’t go window-shopping for their unborn babies either. The only option they have is to have the kids that they think they want.

At the end of the day, every individual out there, from the beginning of time till the end of the world, is similar to an online product: they are delivered to your doorstep and then, that’s it. You can do whatever you want to with it…..except, we have choices to make, as human beings.

The biggest choice to make is whether you want to live a life coloured by everyone and everything, which does NOT include you or one that is fundamentally yours to live. In the former instance, you get lost because everyone is just as lost as the others out there but they try to seem like they aren’t. Baby Boomers face the same issues that Gen Z does. Gen Z suffers the same issues millennials do. Some people just have more experience living life, because they were born earlier than others, while others are still just getting the hang of things.

Who’s Life Is It Anyway?

Regardless of what category you fall under, the truth is we’re all going to die. It’s not something people confront or they do, but it’s not a reality they incorporate into their lives. I loved both my grandmothers and both of them lived their lives to the fullest but they shared a form of ending no one saw, anticipated or was ready for (because neither of them was ill): they died suddenly. My maternal grandmother passed away early in the morning, in 2008, and my paternal grandmother passed in her sleep, in 2016. Both of them also lived life on their own terms, as far as I know.

That’s the thing about life: it’s fleeting. One day you’re there and the next, you’re not but the only option you have is to do the one job that life offers you: to live it. It’s a challenging job description and no one is qualified but everyone is born to do it. Problems arise when we tie the expectations we have of ourselves and of our lives, with what other people want from us. It’s easy to complain or talk about the economy failing or about how things aren’t what they used to be in the 1960s or 1980s. It’s easy to complain about how parents force everything upon us or about how much money families spend on their kids’ weddings. Ironically, the difficult part is living life on your terms.

Living life on your terms doesn’t mean to react and burn everything or everyone that comes your way. Nor does it mean to become a doormat or that you have to prove yourself to the world. It simply means to use what YOU know about YOUR life to LIVE it to the fullest, without encroaching on anyone else’s life or allowing them to encroach on yours.

Think of it as a job, if you will: you’re less experienced than some but more experienced than others. You have one authority to answer to- LIFE itself- and then, you’ve got peers. No one has chosen to be a part of the organization but everyone comes with his or her own experiences, skillsets and lessons. It has it’s basic terms and conditions: don’t kill, don’t be a hypocrite, don’t betray people, don’t lie, don’t be hurtful, etc.

How anyone chooses to live is something only they can decide but the only form of retirement is death. Also, the only option you have is to live life. You have no one else to blame for how you live it but yourself. You can blame others, all you want, but even the people and circumstances life introduces us to are meant to teach us something. You don’t just “become” friends with someone nor do they happen to just “leave”. There’s no such thing as ‘coincidence’. In fact, even the word, coincidence meant “occupation of the same space”. Therefore, any person or event you encounter, occupies the same space as you do in your life. For the form of connection to form, a cause must exist. A cause ALWAYS exists, even if we don’t see or know it yet.

Life’s the boss and it can’t reprimand you as a human boss would but it WILL tell you whether you’re fulfilling YOUR role by living it truthfully and authentically.

When you’re not living it in alignment with who you are, it’s going to throw curve balls your way. You might not be hanging out with people who are right or healthy for you. What does Life do? It gives you this uncomfortable, heavy feeling when you’re around them. You might be doing a job, which isn’t in line with your nature, only for the money. What does Life do? It will create a set of circumstances that make you reconsider your options. Maybe your boss demotes you or your salary gets slashed or someone else might be brought in to replace you, instead, or you might find yourself sitting at work in the wee hours, neglecting the people that CANNOT and WILL NOT replace you, within 2 seconds, if you die tomorrow because they genuinely care for you. Whether you choose to take these factors into consideration is your decision to make. Life will keep throwing curve balls your way.

Life speaks clearly and most audibly, when you sit or lie down, even for a few seconds, and introspect by running The Reel of Your Inauthentic Life in your head. Life doesn’t mess with you. It will just show you when you’re on a path that is right for YOU and it will make things uncomfortable, when that path isn’t meant for you. You have no excuses to make. You can’t blame Mr and Mrs. Reproduce A Lot for your demise nor can Mr. and Mrs. Reproduce A Lot complain about how you don’t fit their definition of what is right and wrong. Everyone is different and everyone is unique but in some ways, everyone is the same because all that we know is that we are born, not out of choice, because two people happened to bring us into this world.

Your job is to make a choice: to live YOUR life on YOUR terms or to allow others’ opinions and advice to colour what it means to live life. YOUR life is YOUR teacher When Life Says: “You Have ONE Job….To Live YOUR Life”, it will throw as many curve balls your way to bring you to a point where you learn what that means. You can’t really blame other people nor the universe nor your colleagues, friends, parents and job for bringing you to where you are today.

Life will show you who and what is good for you because those will be the only things and people that will stay by your side. It will show you who and what isn’t right for you by taking those things and people away. Your main job is to figure out what it means to live your Life because it is only when you learn to live WITHOUT attachments that you learn what it is to live a life that is in alignment with who YOU are as an individual.

9 Things Smiling Depression Taught Me

1. It is easy to mistake numbness for happiness. If hollowness is experienced within, you are numb. The cause for this numbness is disconnection from your feelings.
2. Painting a picture to be seen by others can be appealing. There’s an appeal to making others believe that you are happy, when you are not. This comes from the need to ‘prove’ to others that you are happy.
3. No one but you are in charge of your happiness. Some relationships and circumstances cause anxiety and smiling depression, too. In such instances, severing ties that make you unhappy, anxious or the need to hide your authentic self, is necessary and healthy. This is because these relationships are formed on false pretenses, where either you or the other individual, or both parties act in a manner that reinforces the façade.
4. Smiling depression is an illusion. The need to cover up how you truly feel is affected by your environment and who or what is part of those surroundings.
5. Anger, rage, anxiety and the need to take drastic (not necessarily life-ending) measures is a reaction to the ‘normal’ state of a person with smiling depression. Such emotions come from a place of deep-rooted, unresolved, emotions. The more you stifle such emotions, the more likely you are to suffer psychologically and physically, too.
6. Individuals with smiling depression do not ask for help. This comes from a place of feeling the need to prove that they are ‘fine’, to reinforce the façade.
7.  You are likely to shift focus from yourself in an effort to avoid talking about your emotional state and health.  When someone does manage to get past the façade, you are likely to rationalize your emotional health to invalidate ‘negative feelings’ such as anger, anxiety, hurt and depression.
8. You seek to numb your emotions because you do not think them important enough to address and recognize. Hence, you feel the need to put on and maintain a mask.
9. Since you have never confronted your negative emotions, you are likely to develop a pattern. This pattern continues to repeat itself due to unresolved issues. The pattern is fueled by the unresolved emotions. Once you confront your emotions- positive and negative- you will be far more in tune with your feelings, health and your authentic self.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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Smiling Depression: When You Smile But Not Because You’re Happy

Smiling depression.

It is a term I came across, recently. The term appealed to me because it combined the product of a positive emotion (smiling) with a deeply misunderstood but real state of mind and being (depression).

I never even realized it was possible to be depressed and smile at the same time. I DID recognize the fact that a smile can be used to mask depression- because I did it all the time- but I didn’t realize I was becoming one with the mask.

The Mask I Created

Creating a mask wasn’t very difficult. In all honesty, it was the easiest task I’d undertaken.

Growing up, I focused on comedy shows, movies, cartoons and on people who seemed happy. The fact that anyone could or was wearing a mask, myself included, never struck me. I was very gullible, at the time, because I believed what I saw.

The process of paying attention to a mask, that seemed happy, enabled me to create my own mask. I didn’t realize that I was smiling on the outside without being happy on the inside. Others believed I was happy ‘all the time’ because of the image I’d created.

Someone asked me how I could be happy on a daily basis. I wasn’t but the fact that people recognized me as a pleasant and (always) happy person made it easier for me to buy into a self-created image.

I became my own creation but something still felt off: I didn’t feel like the person others thought me to be. It was easy to ignore this recurring thought because I had numbed myself completely.

Numbing myself was just as easy. It was easy to laugh, jest and partake in jokes (a lot of which I didn’t find funny, by the way), activities and company that fueled the self-created image. The more material that image was provided, the more real it became.

Additionally, numbing myself from what I actually felt made it easier to convince everyone that I was my mask….that I was happy.

Was I, really, happy?

When The Mask Wasn’t Set Away, The Demons Came Out To Play

When you believe in something or someone, there is no room for doubt. A bond of loyalty and commitment is created between the subject and the belief.

I believed I could achieve the kind of body I wanted (which wasn’t part of the mask). I didn’t know when, how or why I would get in the kind of shape that I wanted to be in. I just knew that getting into that shape was not impossible. In fact, it was completely possible, even if I couldn’t see it at the time. No questions, facts, scientific research or discouragement or opinion would affect that belief. It was just a truth that I’d known and achieved.

When you try to convince yourself of something that does not resonate with you, your consciousness steps in. A very real, almost palatable, hollowness is felt within because consciousness does not allow you to accommodate something that is not true. You feel like a doughnut: your desire to convince yourself is supplemented by sugarcoated lies (that you want to believe to be the truth) but what you actually feel within is emptiness. This emptiness is home to demons, facts and the truth: what you’re saying to yourself is simply NOT TRUE.

I enjoy being by myself. I always have.  However, there’s a difference between who I was pre-mask and who I am, today. Being by my lonesome meant I could focus on making my mask a reality. It meant I could spend more time in denial, trying to convince myself that I was always happy.

However, the more time I spent on constructing a reality that did not resonate with me, the unhappier I became. I felt disconnected from myself because I had disconnected who I was from what I felt. Instead, I felt what I wanted the image to feel. This was clear in the way I behaved.

I was becoming more agitated and irritable but the mask enabled me to justify my emotional state. It made what I felt and put everyone, myself included, through seem like a passing phase. I’d pass snide or passive-aggressive comments and smile. I’d use humor to hide just how angry I was at someone. I’d laugh, instead of revealing how I truly felt about certain jokes and statements, because I wanted people to like me.

Deep down inside, I felt miserable. I was miserably happy. I did all that I could to hide what I was going through. It was when I realized how much effort I put into hiding the truth that I recognized I had, what is called, smiling depression.

The more I smiled, the less people could see it. The less people could see it, the less vulnerable I felt and the emptiness within could be dismissed as a temporary phase…except that it wasn’t.

I Decided To Turn Life Around

I didn’t want to show anyone that I was sad and depressed. I didn’t want to acknowledge it myself because the reality would be far too difficult to bear. Coming to terms with the fact that I was suffering on the inside meant showing the cracks in the image I’d created. It meant letting myself break down and become vulnerable. So, I took small steps.

Fortunately, I had a great support system, which included friends who suggested I give therapy a shot. I was reluctant, at the time, because I wanted to believe I didn’t need help. I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need therapy, even though, deep down, I knew I wanted to give it a shot.

There came a point when I realized I just couldn’t handle the accumulation of unresolved emotions anymore. That was when I took a therapist’s number, from one of the friends I mentioned above, and made an appointment.

I’ve mentioned therapy, in my blog, numerous times, because it truly was a life-changing experience. It was through therapy that I realized I had created a façade to hide the truth: I was unhappy but only seemed happy because I was ignoring what I actually felt.

I spoke to my therapist about myself and confronted everything I felt. I allowed myself to feel everything I had held on to and ignored, for 27 years (I was 27, when I started therapy). I stopped looking at what life did to me and started focusing on how I felt about the illusion I had created.

That was when I realized I had constructed an image that was easily manipulated and could be adjusted so that I looked happy. I didn’t want to look or be sad. I wanted to convince myself that I was happy and that sadness, anger or any other negative emotion, on the spectrum didn’t exist. In a sense, happiness would be immortalized but the truth had a way of making me aware of just how temporary and empty that image was. It did for me, at least, and that was when I realized I had smiling depression.

It all came crashing down on me. A lot of the anxiety-triggering relationships I’d developed were products of my lack of awareness. I smiled, not because I was happy, but because I was depressed and smiles can be used to distract people. A lot of the choices I’d made were products of my desire to maintain a life that seemed happy and unaffected. Everything started to make sense. I wasn’t a fake person but I had created an artificial life that had nothing to do with who I was, as a person.

In other words, I was smiling a smile that didn’t belong to me but to an image of who I wanted to be. I was smiling but I was depressed.

The Image Broke And I Was Finally Happy

Over the next few months, I worked on myself and paid more attention to who I truly am as a person. The friends, who stayed on, gave me space to accommodate the realizations I’d come to terms with, through therapy, in my life.

I started to see how easy it was to let an extended, unreal, un-fake but artificial, version of myself, take control of my life. I realized how empty so many friendships and relationships, that I’d developed to maintain the image, were. I saw how anxious I felt every single second of every single day.

I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t happy with my life. I recognized that I didn’t need to prove to anyone that I was happy. I realized I didn’t have to be polite to people that mistreated me and that I could stand up for myself. I understood and came to terms with the fact that there were times when I mistreated others, too.

I was finally able to tell the difference between the life that I’d created for the longevity of an image and the one that truly resonates with me. It’s odd to go through a transformation of this sort.

Sometimes, I recall my past but I can’t associate with that version of myself anymore- not because I regret being who I was- but because I can’t go back to feeling the way I did back then. It just isn’t possible for me anymore. I was the person that I wanted others to think I was and that was what fueled the image.

When I came to terms with the fact that there is nothing wrong with accepting my feelings- positive and negative- I learned how to deal with my emotions and mental well-being. I stopped doing things that I thought I HAD TO do to keep the image alive. I stopped ignoring my feelings and emotions and embraced them and the more I did so, the happier and healthier I felt.

A person with smiling depression has a tendency to numb their emotional state with a smile. It’s in the name after all. They tread a very fine line between the reality they want to believe in (that they are happy) and the reality that actually exists and persists (that they are depressed).

Some people believe reality to be an absolute. Smiling depression has a tendency to blur the line between reality and a self-created image, for the sake of an illusion, that seems convincing and real. They smile to make others believe that they are happy to convince themselves that they are not depressed.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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29 Things I Learned About Happiness When I Turned 29

1. Allow yourself to experience the negative emotions. Experiencing the negative feelings enables you to acknowledge and appreciate the positive ones.
2. I thought happiness was something I had to work towards. It wasn’t and isn’t. Anything and anyone that didn’t resonate with me caused me distress and unhappiness and anything or anyone that did made me feel happy.
3. Happiness is more than a smile on a face. It is a lifestyle that seems stressful for others to achieve. A person who experiences happiness merely partakes in company and activities that he or she finds effortless. Those activities are usually linked to talents that are natural to said person.
4. I used to think anger was the antonym to happiness. It isn’t but indifference is. Indifference is a state in which any and every emotion and feeling is completely numbed so that one feels nothing but complete hopelessness.
5. Happiness and optimism isn’t the same thing. There were moments when I was happy but not optimistic, when I was younger. Today, there are moments when I am optimistic but that doesn’t always mean I’m happy.
6. It wasn’t and isn’t my responsibility to make people happy. Likewise, it wasn’t their responsibility to make me happy. The choice to search for happiness in places and company that couldn’t provide it to me (or I to them) was for me to make.
7. Oftentimes people want others to be happy on their own terms. One person’s state of happiness isn’t the same as another’s.
8. I assumed happiness was a state to chase and accomplish. I recognized I had things I thought I wanted and yet was unhappy. Ironically, the less I ran after everything and everyone I assumed would make me happy, the calmer I felt.
9. It really is the small things that matter. Today, I think about the things my grandmothers would say to me- from the jokes to the more serious conversations- and those moments make me happy, to date.
10. It is possible to be surrounded by people and to feel lonely, just as it is possible to experience happiness in your own company.
11. Happiness and perspective are correlated. When I was younger, I was furious with the people I surrounded myself with. This state was a product of expectations that I had placed on them. Today, I thank life for introducing me to them because I know what I don’t want in the friends I surround myself with.
12. Not everyone who seems happy is.
13. Security doesn’t ensure happiness. I assumed seeking security was the same as seeking happiness. It wasn’t. The search for security was actually a search for a past that no longer exists. Hence, I couldn’t evolve and see how much life had to offer me than what I had known happiness to be in the past.
14. The more I accepted myself for who I was/am, the happier I felt.
15. The process matters more than the result.
16. It is easy to mistake happiness with denial. You can tell which of the two you feel by paying attention to the thought processes that accompanies the emotions. Denial feels restrictive and it tends to make one irascible and easily agitated. Happiness has the opposite impact. It makes you feel light, clear and there’s a sense of knowing that everything has and will turn out the way you want it to.
17. To be truly happy, it is important to know yourself. Comparing yourself to someone else will never make you happy because everyone has a different journey and experience.
18. Social media makes happiness a commodity. The further I get from it, the better I feel.
19. Having a vision for what I wanted my life to become enabled me to get through the tough times. I was aware of how the light, at the end of the tunnel, looked for me. Therefore, no matter what happened, I knew I would get there.
20. There is nothing wrong with accepting and acknowledging the fact that you’re unhappy. Sometimes that’s the only thing you need to do to change things around. This removes the illusion that you’re happy with a life that doesn’t resonate with you.
21. It is not possible neither healthy to always be happy.
22. The company we surround ourselves with does matter. People who aren’t happy with who they are tend to pull others down. People who are will seek to lift you up.
23. To be happy, it is necessary to be selfish. To give of yourself to others, you must fill your own cup first.
24.  Life has a way of revealing the people and experiences that makes us unhappy. When maintaining a particular lifestyle or relationship FEELS burdensome, let it go. An experience and lifestyle worth maintaining feels good and healthy, even in difficult times.
25. Making others unhappy affects your happiness, adversely.
26. Being kind ensures happiness. Kindness comes from a place of knowing you have enough time/experience/knowledge/material wealth to help others accomplish goals that make them happy.
27. Revisiting your childhood can provide clarity regarding what makes you happy.
28. Presence makes a world of difference to our emotional state. Being present means to know who you are, outside of the box that the world puts you into. It means to be at peace with yourself and relieving yourself of expectations and reactions.
29. The more you care about what others think of you, the less likely you are to be happy. Being happy means to know yourself so fully and completely that you need no one else to validate you or your experiences.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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12 Things I Learned When I Started Feeling My Feelings

1. Every feeling comes with a message. If I felt uncomfortable around someone or something, the discomfort came with a message: I was not in the midst of someone who could be trusted.
2. How I felt and what I thought were two different circumstances and experiences. Thought was prompted by judgment and preconceived notions. Feelings were prompted by the way my body felt IN RESPONSE to a person or situation.
3. The need to ignore my feelings came from a place of fear of what others would think of me. I wanted to live up to an image not realizing that the image only existed for what it was: an image. It wasn’t who or how I truly was as a person.
4. Anger comes from a place of hurt. It is a state that I would get into because I wasn’t acknowledging the hurt or the pain that I faced in my relationships and career.
5. The way I felt about myself spoke volumes to the way I felt about life. Anxiety was the product of numbing those feelings out of fear of being who and how I truly am as a person.
6. Feelings come with a truth that cannot be explained by logic. Just because someone looks happy that doesn’t mean that they are. Just because someone seems sad that doesn’t really mean that they are such.
7. Thoughts require proof and lives on because it derives proof from the past or from an assumed future. Feelings require one to be present and in the Now.
8. There is nothing wrong with feeling negative but a lot can go wrong if that emotion goes unfelt and ignored. It is better to recognize the emotion and deal with it than it is to bury it.
9. Numbing negative feelings caused me to numb positive feelings, too. As a result, not only did I stop feeling upset, hurt or angry but I no longer recognized happiness, joy or love either.
10. Everyone is addicted to something or the other, when they want to numb their emotions. Overworking, the need to intoxicate one’s self, overthinking and the desire to always stay busy are various versions of addictions. However, since mental health is still not considered to be a serious problem, most people tend not to recognize how addicted they are to NOT feeling their emotions.
11. The human body picks up on vibes much before the mind does. The mind is only a construct of what it knows itself to be.
12. We are not our thoughts but we are our feelings. Your mind might make you believe that you aren’t good enough, even when that isn’t the truth. However, if you feel sad, that feeling stems from somewhere: the fact that something or someone has caused you to feel that way.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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3 Questions That Could Help Reach A Decision On Anything

There is so much white noise and material that can affect one’s decision-making skills. This could come in the form of news, opinions of loved ones, articles and studies, expert opinions and, worst of all, self-doubt.

We like to think answers don’t exist to a circumstance, when most of the time the answer is known to us. In moments of uncertainty, it is better to accept circumstances for what they are than to resist but we refuse to do. That makes the decision-making process that much more difficult.

The best way to know whether a decision is in line with how you feel is to ask yourself the following questions:

Do I want to make this decision?

The word ‘maybe’ tends to keep you in the grey area, when it comes to making any decision. There really is no ‘maybe’. You either make a decision to do something or you don’t. This might sound simplistic but that’s because it is.

Do you want to lose or gain weight? If yes, then, you need to take measures to achieve your goal. If not, you can stay as you are while accepting the fact of the matter, which is fat loss or gain is not an important factor for you.

Who am I making this decision for?

There are two possible answers to this: yourself or someone else. When you make a decision for yourself, you will follow through with it.

On the other hand, when you make a decision for someone else, you aren’t as likely to adhere to the processes that will take you to the end goal. That’s when accomplishing the goal is less about accomplishment and more about forceful effort.

A typical example of this is parents, who stay together ‘for the kids’. While their decision to ‘stick together’ is mutual, their actions and the nature of their relationship prove otherwise. “The kids” become collateral damage in an unhappy, doomed, miserable marriage between two individuals, who can’t stand one another.

Of course, there are instances where making a decision for or with someone else can affect you positively. However, under such conditions one usually takes it upon themselves to achieve a goal. For example, you might decide you want to travel to meet your friends or significant other, in another country. Making that happen is upon you. There’s a positive drive and motivation behind that decision.

What is the first step that I can take towards accomplishing my goal?

I’ve found a clear answer to the first two questions helps come up with a solid plan. You hold yourself accountable and take the necessary steps towards accomplishing a goal. The white noise is canceled out and you achieve clarity on how to get to your destination. On the other hand, you might decide not to bother yourself with the decision-making process at all.

Individuals who are unaware of their actions and the implications of their decisions create a world of chaos. This doesn’t affect them individually. Their decision creates a ripple effect and affects everyone else adversely, too. What matters, more than anything else, is whether you are WILLING to make a decision or not.

Decisions are like manufactured products- if one person in the chain of production messes up, the quality of the product will be poorly affected. The market doesn’t care about the ‘maybe’ or ‘could be’ factors. All it cares about is the product that you’ve created and put out there. The universe works in the same way.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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29 Lessons Life Taught Me By The Time I Turned 29.

1. You lie to others because you’re lying to yourself.
2. Feelings are the heart’s way of telling you the truth about a person or situation.
3. Carrying anger never helps as much as confronting the problem or issue.
4. The mind is limited by it’s own knowledge on a matter which is why it is important to recognize that you are not your thoughts.
5. Your intentions don’t matter, if your actions aren’t matching up to them.
6. Arrogance doesn’t help. Instead, it entraps you in a box that drives everything and everyone good away.
7. People who are brutally truthful and honest to you are worth keeping in your life.
8. If you don’t feel like doing something, don’t do it because it will and does take a toll on your mental health and it affects the quality of the work you are willing to put into doing said act.
9. Read, a lot, because it opens up your mind to a universe of possibilities.
10. Respect isn’t a birthright or something that you owe someone. It is earned.
11. Never take your health for granted because it can deteriorate within days.
12. If you feel drained in someone’s presence, trust that feeling. Feelings are your body’s way of communicating with you.
13. It is not your job to rescue anyone especially if it’s at the risk of your own well-being.
14. Teach and learn from people and circumstances rather than belittling them.
15. Exercise restraint on days you feel angry or low rather than losing your temper at others. You never know what they might be going through.
16. Judgment is the death of the desire to learn. The desire to learn is the death of judgment.
17. Your internal narrative matters. If you believe you can do something, you will. If you believe you can’t, you won’t.
18. Never attempt to hurt someone or to seek vengeance. Karma WILL have its way with you and them, too.
19. The duration of your friendship doesn’t matter as much as the quality of the bond you have with your friends. Sometimes people you’ve just gotten to know can be far more caring and accepting of who you are than those you grew up with.
20. Always be true to yourself.
21. Sometimes what you do might not make sense to others. Do it anyway. If it feels right, it is the right decision to make. Intuition never lies.
22. Always be honest.
23. Don’t change yourself for approval or validation.
24. The life you want is a choice away. You have to decide whether to appease people or to live your truth.
25. Crying doesn’t make you weak and hurting others doesn’t make you tough.
26. Your happiness is your responsibility. Be picky when it comes to friends.
27. When people show you who they are the first time, believe them.
28. Be your own best friend by treating yourself with the same love, respect and love that you would the people closest to you.
29. If something or someone causes anxiety and a sense of discomfort within, take that as a sign. The right opportunities and people make you feel calm, not anxious.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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Don’t Know What To Do? Just Surrender!

Somehow, the concept of surrender has become synonymous with that of loss. I assume it has something to do with pop culture, cartoons and television shows that make it seem like surrender is a ‘loser’s’ way out.

Yet most of the charismatic and successful people in the world, from prophets and saints to media giants and multi-millionaire television producers, got their best ideas, when they surrendered themselves to a Higher Power or, for those who don’t believe in one, to the universe.

Even fictional characters such as Elsa (my personal favorite), from Frozen, learned to let go. That was when she embraced herself and her powers!

The Real Battle Lies Within

We live in a world where most feel the need to ‘win’ or to prove themselves to others. Not many people entertain the possibility that their choices, and inability to let go, have brought them to where they are today.

They choose to live in denial about their failures because accepting failure means accepting defeat. Accepting defeat means accepting that their way isn’t working for them. Accepting that their way isn’t working for them means not living up to the image they have created of themselves. Most people would rather be seen as success stories than be at peace with themselves. The problem lies, not in accepting defeat or success but in the fact that everyone wants validation, approval and to prove themselves to everyone else.

I used to think that if I continued fighting, I would succeed and get what I wanted out of life. I HAD to get things my way because, if I didn’t, I’d get irritable or angry. Life didn’t change. In fact, the two times I fought and resisted life the most, were the two times I fell extremely ill. I’ve never been as ill or psychologically, emotionally AND physically affected as I was then.

However, life went on and I had two options: to continue fighting a losing battle or to surrender. I chose the latter. I became calmer and learned more about myself. I didn’t know what to do or how to go about living my life but inner peace was/is important to me. I stopped fighting and just gave in to life because nothing I thought, believed, knew was working for me anymore.

I chose to align myself with who I am as a person, on the inside, rather than allowing external circumstances and people to dictate my life. I let go of any and every expectation I had of life, myself and of my relationships and embraced all aspects of my existence, personality and life rather than fighting myself.

I did the things that brought me joy and spent time with people who made me feel better about myself, rather than those who sought to bring me down.

What didn’t work for me just gave way to the things that did. The friendships, relationships and career path that had become toxic faded away and gave way to healthier ones.

Sometimes You Just Do Not Know What To Do In Life

The one thing I’ve learned is this: sometimes you don’t know what to do in life but it’s better to surrender than to make a decision out of fear. Decisions based on fear have a way of catching up to you and the scary part is you will never recognize this fact until it’s too late.

You might get a great pay but at the risk of your well-being. You could enter a relationship that seems amazing, only to discover it was all a façade. From personal experience, I’ve learned that what is felt or seen as security in the short-run could just as easily be a façade for a world of turmoil in the long run.

The best thing to do, when you don’t know what to do, in life is to surrender. You fight life when you’re fighting against yourself. A part of you is still stuck in the past and believes whatever worked then, should, would and could work, today, too. You’re resisting life for principles, beliefs and reactions that do not serve you anymore.

Surrendering enables detachment from the past that no longer serves its purpose and the future that isn’t yet here. It brings you to a place of peace and complete tranquility. When you surrender, you let go of everything that was and everything that could be, so you can focus on what is.

Surrender is an end to the battle. It helps to surrender because you no longer are a slave to what you’ve learned or assume. You let go of the control that you assume over life to focus on this very moment.

The mental noise fades away because you give your attention to what’s in front of you. The past no longer haunts you and the future doesn’t seem daunting. The psychological pain and attachment to the past no longer overwhelms you. Your emotions are no longer being controlled but can be channeled into creative pursuits. Most importantly, the internal void that craves battles and reactions is filled with a sense of awareness and consciousness.

The internal conflict and battle ends for a calmer, peaceful present. You enjoy what and who you already are rather than constantly fighting who you were. Additionally, the image of who you need to be for a perceived future, which doesn’t exist, subsides, too. You break away from what and who you were and make peace with life and who you are today.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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3 Things That Happen Because Of Anxiety

I grew up with anxiety and still am affected by it. I don’t suffer because of it, as much as I used to, seeing as how I decided to take it upon myself to see a therapist, in 2017. However, it still is a part of my psychological structure and therefore, a component of my mental health.

It wasn’t easy to relate to boys, girls and adults, who didn’t seem to worry, as much as I did. I became friends with people, who only contributed to it further. I developed eating habits and ate a ton of junk food, just because I believed it was something that I needed, to deal with the anxiety. I gained a ton of weight because of anxiety, too. The most difficult part about anxiety is that it BECOMES you.

Every decision I made; every friendship I got into (not all); every choice I made and every thought was a product of anxiety. Even the way I spoke and processed my thoughts affected by anxiety.

Anxiety is a condition in which, even the smallest decision feels overwhelming. The worst part is, it isn’t something that you become aware of. It’s something that you live with and become conscious of (if you decide to take steps to cope with it). That makes it easier to handle but it isn’t a condition or state that can be ‘cured’.

Here are 3 things that happen because of anxiety:

Indecision Is A Norm, Not Temporary Nor Circumstantial

The mere thought of having to make a decision- major or minor- tends to mentally and emotionally exhausting. The thought that setting your foot down could affect you or someone you care for, negatively, is a difficult one to deal with.

You are likely to delegate the power of decision to others or you might leave everyone, including yourself, hanging. This is reflected in so many aspects of your life – career, health (mental and physical), and relationships and even in the way you interact socially.

Everything is a ‘maybe’ because that sense of not knowing appears to be safe. It is easier to live with a lack of consequence than one that might not go the way you want it to.

You Doubt Yourself Because You Pay No Attention To Your Feelings

Anxiety clouds your judgment, gut feelings and the way you might deal with any and every situation, at ALL times. I made unfortunate decisions that affected my sense of self-worth and health, in countless ways.

I hung out with awful people because I didn’t listen to my gut and feelings. I didn’t want to offend them or hurt them. At the same time, part of me sought their approval. The lack of approval was connected with my sense of self-worth. The less I got it, the more I wanted to be approved and validated.

What others thought and felt mattered much more than what I thought or felt. In many ways, I became a doormat and comforted people who I knew would never be there for me. I spent time and energy on them, though I knew how temporary those bonds really were.

The problem with anxiety is that it isn’t just a psychological state but one that governs every aspect of your life. It divorces you from your feelings and inner peace. As a result you pay more attention to how others feel, or what they say, because you seek peace and comfort in their validation and approval. The grass seems greener on any side that isn’t your own.

You Are A Natural Self –Saboteur

Lack of stability becomes a state of stability. Instability feels so normal that stability actually starts to feel uncomfortable and unsettling. Any individual or circumstance that could bring about stability or peace is seen as a threat. Chasing your dreams and going after what you want or love isn’t very easy either. This is because you’re so used to putting yourself down that you accept defeat beforehand.

You are attracted to individuals and circumstances that have an air of danger or threat about them. You opt for relationships that are likely to end on a bad note. On a conscious level you will do everything you can to maintain the relationship. On a subconscious level, you are already aware of the fact that these relationships will end.

Your psyche is so entrenched in and cemented by the anxiety that you cling on to hurtful circumstances. You push away everything and everyone who can help you.

This stems from a place of feeling worthy of such circumstances. Since you’ve known instability, pain, discomfort, anxiety and lack of self-worth for so long, the idea of parting with it can feel uncomfortable. Therefore, maintaining instability feels normal because you’ve never known what it is to be stable. That is how a pattern is formed and repeated, over and over again. You live in your own personal hell because the idea of what might be at the end of the tunnel seems scary and unsettling.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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What It Means To Live A Life Worth Living

I have always been a strong supporter of the statement: be true to yourself. There’s just one problem with the way that statement is (mis)used today: not that many people truly know what it is to be themselves.

Being true to yourself means something: it means putting yourself first and putting everything else second. Anything that harms or hinders you is something that you need to let go of. Anything that feels right (not good nor bad) is something that is likely to get you closer to the kind of person that you know you can be.

I Became Curious To Find My “Me”

I grew accustomed to a lifestyle that wasn’t really reflective of who I was. It wasn’t that I was fake or harmful to others but that I was untruthful to myself, which made me see that I was living a life that didn’t resonate with me.

I would smile or laugh at jokes that I didn’t find funny and put up with people who were/are very different from who I was and am, as an individual. They weren’t bad nor good people. I wouldn’t speak my mind, when I felt something or someone was wrong nor would I take credit for the things that I did right. Gaslighting was a common part of my relationships and I didn’t always stand my ground.

I wasn’t an evil person but I just wasn’t the person that I knew myself to be, inside. I knew I wasn’t happy. It was when the day I turned 27 that I recognized just how miserable I was, deep down. I wasn’t sad or upset, on a conscious level, but I realized just how deeply unhappy I was with myself, at the time. I knew I was happy, on surface level, but I didn’t know that it was what was beyond that level that mattered.

It felt as if a part of me was standing inside, looking at the version of myself, on the outside, thinking “is this really who I want to be?”

The answer was ‘no’.

Most of the time, my emotional state was defined by the way others felt about me and, in turn, about themselves. I was happy, if I could make others feel that way. If I didn’t succeed in that endeavor I would feel unhappy. I believed it was my responsibility to help others, even when it actually wasn’t.

I didn’t realize how much I was still affected by a past that no longer existed. I didn’t realize how much of myself I had yet to discover and take responsibility of. I didn’t have a version of myself that wasn’t a reaction to my external circumstances because I didn’t know what it was to be ‘me’ completely. I didn’t know what it was to NOT seek validation and approval.

In other words, I had accepted responsibility of everyone else’s emotional well-being but not my own. It was in recognizing this fact that I found comfort.

I became curious to find my ‘me’ and what it meant to be myself. That meant taking a step back from the life that I’d created and giving myself the time to see what my life had become.

I stopped going to places and hangouts that drained me.

Life Got Better, When I Let Go of My Inauthentic-self

I stopped meeting people who I didn’t find funny or real. I stopped associating with people to whom friendships were just about having a good time and who made me feel inferior about who I was.

I stopped hanging around or with people who weren’t there for me during the difficult times or who contributed to the pain I felt. I stopped hanging out with people who made it a habit to take a jab at one another for entertainment.

What I’d discovered was a lot of my friendships and relationships were built on false pretenses. Those friendships had no depth and were limited to a few jokes and a past that no longer existed. A lot of the relationships I’d formed were the product of insecurities that no longer existed.

These relationships ended as soon as I stopped forcing myself to put effort into them. I did that because I realized how little those relationships meant to the people I had formed them with.

My anxiety levels were lowered and it became easier for me to accept everything and everyone, for who they were. It became easier for me to accept responsibility over the life I had created for myself. No one but I was to blame for the life I had created. I wanted to believe some of those relationships were good for me, though circumstances showed me that wasn’t the case. I believed in giving people a second chance, when they didn’t deserve it.

The fact that I was unsure and unhappy should have been enough to convince me. A part of me knew this to be truth but the inauthentic version of me wished to hold on to relationships, friendships, circumstances and a past that poisoned my mental health and physical well-being.

Instead of accepting things and people for what they were, I put effort into maintaining relationships that were obviously harmful for me. In some ways, perhaps, I was harmful for them, too. The authentic part of me always showed me cues and signs. Whether to follow those signals or not was a choice that I had to make.

Why Finding Yourself Is Important

Everyone has those moments, where they experience their truest selves.

It speaks, when the people and circumstances, you surround yourself with, do not resonate with you. It speaks, when you experience joy, sadness and compassion and are willing to push forward.

It speaks in the only language that it knows: feelings. The discomfort you feel around inauthentic people is its way of providing you a detour. When you lie to yourself about your feelings, it manifests in the form of physical and mental distress.

Life doesn’t become a bed of roses and flowers but it does feel authentic. Your real self provides you with the comfort, internal guidance and knowledge (that surpasses logic) on how to deal with uncomfortable situations.

Finding yourself means committing yourself to a life that is in harmony with who you really are. It means to know and embrace yourself, outside of the box that people place you in. It means to be yourself, no matter what circumstances, challenges and difficulties present themselves to you. It means building a life that is in line with who and how you are, as an individual. It means committing yourself to a life that is worth living.

You won’t waste time putting effort into factors that don’t really matter or those that harm your truth. Even the difficult moments become learning curves, worth going through, because they are in line with what you have envisioned for yourself.

It isn’t easy to get there but it is worth the ride because you learn to live a life that is true to who you are. You learn to live a life that is worth living on your terms, instead of one that is dictated and controlled by external influences.

A life worth living is a life that is in harmony with who you truly are, as an individual.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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Choose The Lifestyle You Want To Live The Life You Like

Every individual, regardless of age or gender, lives a certain lifestyle. The word lifestyle isn’t something we just read on magazines and websites but it is a choice we make, consciously or subconsciously.

The difference between people who are passionate about what they do and those who aren’t is this: the former knows exactly what they want out of life. Therefore, they make decisions, on a conscious level, which are in alignment with their passions.

They view the world through the lens of their passion. An artist will find beauty in everything around him because that is what his soul calls him to do. A writer sees people, circumstances and nature as words. A singer will view the world around him as something that he can sing about.

An individual who cares about his health will choose a lifestyle that revolves around food options and workout plans. An individual who cares to make a difference in the educational structure and system will choose a lifestyle that revolves around education.

Of course, these fields and the interests mentioned above could overlap, too. A singer can use his talents to promote education. A fitness instructor can use her knowledge to inspire other women, in the world, for example.

However, anyone who is consciously aware of what they want out of life will choose the lifestyle they want to live. Everyone has a driving force that gives him or her a purpose to live, on a daily basis.

In other words, everyone who knows what they want has an anchor: their passion. That anchor enables them to venture into new fields while keeping them grounded, at the same time.

The problem arises when what you want is NOT in compliance with the life you choose to live. The lifestyle one opts for, then, becomes a problem because it doesn’t match up to the reality that an individual knows he or she can accomplish.

You Have To Set An Intention And Go After What You Want

Once you know what you want for yourself, the end goal becomes clear. That’s the vision you want to work towards.

You could be an overweight teenager who knows the kind of body he wants. I was that teenager and knowing what I wanted paved the path to my end goal. I would speak to people older and younger than me about what I could do to deal with my situation.

I would learn from them and apply what they taught, to myself. That helped me get closer to my end goal, which I accomplished, because it was easier to cut past the information, people and circumstances that weren’t helpful. This brought me closer to my goal.

I knew what and who to spend my time and energy on. I’d set an intention and went after the kind of body I’d envisioned.

You Have To Know What You Want Out Of Life

People often know what they want but are scared of standing up for themselves. Or they pretend they want to accomplish a particular goal, when their actions say otherwise.

The intention and reality just don’t add up.

When I was a trainer, people would often discuss diet and workout plans with me. They still do.

One COMMON complaint I get is “I’m doing EVERYTHING I can to lose weight. WHY am I not losing? Should I just go get a tummy tuck?”

I try to understand what they might be doing wrong, to suggest a solution according to their lifestyle and food choices. I’ll start by asking them the following:

1. What diet are you following?
2. What workout do you do?
3. What does an ordinary day look like for you, where diet is concerned?

Oftentimes the answers I’ll get are unclear. It’s not that they don’t know what they want but that they aren’t willing to go the extra mile to get their. Most people DO want to lose weight and know what actor or actress they want to look like. They just aren’t willing to put the work into accomplishing their end goal.

Fitness IS a lifestyle.

It’s not all about 6-packs, eating healthy, drinking protein shakes and doing crunches on a mat for an hour. It’s not about steroids and performance enhancers either. Individuals that do partake in steroid-use make a choice to take them and wean themselves off the steroids. The 6-packs don’t just come from crunches, diet plans and workout plans. It takes passion, commitment and awareness of the end goal.

The end goal- regardless of what it is- DOES require a change in lifestyle. Getting to the end goal is ALWAYS possible. You are BOUND to get what you want, so long as you are willing to put the work you can to get there.

There’s a reason sayings such as “your vibe determines your tribe” and “like attracts like” exist……because THEY’RE TRUE!

It is virtually, physically, mentally and realistically IMPOSSIBLE to not get what you want, if you aren’t willing to work for it. We live in a world where babies can be born out of test-tubes; an entire reality can be created using VR; airplanes fly on a daily basis; human beings can either inspire or instill fear in one another from one end of the globe to the other and a connection or bond can be formed with others, without ever having meeting them, physically.

The starting point for each of these possibilities was an innate knowing that these dreams could be achieved. Individuals who contributed to each breakthrough knew what they wanted. The only thing they needed to do was to set an intention and commit to getting to their end goal. They made choices and created lifestyles that were in alignment with their vision.

You Will Still Face Problems But They Will Be Worth It

Knowing what you want brings about a sense of clarity. You know where you want to go and what you need to do to get there. Therefore, you WILL act and make decisions based on whatever you have envisioned for yourself.

Any obstacles you face will be seen as learning curves. Every moment that you aren’t prepared for is met with conviction. Every setback is seen as an opportunity to take detours that can get you to the end goal. Hence, every step of the journey is treated as one that is worth the end goal.

I’m often asked what it is that I do to lose fat or gain muscle. Honestly, I follow the same tips and guidance I’ve given clients, over the years. In fact, you could easily get this information from any website online.

The next question I’m asked is “So, like, you eat the same thing, every day? The SAME THING? EVERY DAY? I don’t know HOW you do it. I can’t even wake up without sugar in my tea”. The inquirer has just answered his or her own question: they are not committed to the process. Our end goals differ.

I’m willing to make to my diet to get the kind of physique I want. I can go without carbs, eat salads and go for days, without drinking milk or eating junk. Anything I eat or drink is only a part of my diet because I know my end goal. An individual that does not share the same vision is likely to see these lifestyle choices as difficult.

At the end of the day, this is the lifestyle I have chosen for myself. It did come with hurdles, hiccups and involved a lot of trial and error. What gives me comfort is knowing the effort is worth it. In fact, it doesn’t even feel like effort…it just feels like a process that’s worth the end result.

Being aware of the lifestyle you wish to have and live comes with a sense of empowerment, ownership and responsibility.At the end of the day, knowing what you want and where you want to go, DOES and WILL require a change in your lifestyle. If you don’t know what you want- whatever that may be- you will make choices that aren’t in alignment with any sort of vision or lifestyle.

That is how we dig and create ruts for ourselves. The only way out is to choose the lifestyle you want to live the life you like.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. I hope that it resonates with and benefits you to do so.

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

Instagram: HumzahRaja
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The Power Of Letting Go

Letting go doesn’t demand the same circumstances and actions that ‘quitting’ or ‘moving on’ does. There’s a difference between the concept of letting go and the latter. The latter demands a reaction to circumstances that exist in the lives that we create for ourselves. You can quit a job because of an awful boss. You could move on from an ex because he or she wasn’t right for you. These are reactions to existing circumstances that we’ve chosen for ourselves, consciously or subconsciously.

The phrase ‘let go’ has a spiritual connotation. It requires acceptance of the circumstances that you are subjected to because they no longer serve you. Letting go means to allow what is to be as is, in order to become the person you know yourself to be. Everyone has his or her own version of letting go.

Saints and prophets let go of the lives they lived because they knew there was something more out there. Einstein let go of the standards that schools held children to and became one of the greatest physicists who we know of. Oprah let go of the hardships and restrictions of her life to become one of the most influential and powerful women of the 21^st century. Gabrielle Bernstein (author of The Universe Has Your Back) let go of her dream of having a child because her husband and she were unable to conceive, at the time, and became pregnant shortly after.

When you truly let go, you no longer are affected by what could have been or what was. You accept what IS, without reacting to it, because you’ve truly done everything that you could and can’t do anything anymore. 

If You’re Not Letting Go, You’re Emotionally Attached

We see all forms of attachments everywhere. People cling on to toxic relationships because that’s all they know. Men and women stay in miserable marriages because they are attached to a lifestyle that is socially acceptable. Some people develop an unhealthy attachment to money and material belongings. Parents could develop an unhealthy attachment to their children, rather than accepting them for who they are.

The problem with emotional attachment is that we mistake it for love. Attachment is an emotional state in which we become so dependent on people, objects and circumstances that we end up hurting them AND ourselves in the process.

Love has no conditions and doesn’t cause pain. Attachment does because it evokes a sense of anxiety, insecurity and toxicity in the relationship that we form with everything and everyone around ourselves. This form of emotional attachment is essentially an inability to let go of a toxic version of ourselves.

If You Don’t Surrender, Life Will Make You Do So

Surrendering, to the faith that everything will work out, is part of letting go. I always assumed life was about the ups and downs and that there was nothing else in between. The problem with that sort of thinking, I learned, was that I felt suffocated by my own emotions.

I had woven a web of unresolved emotions and distress. I was attached to the life I had made for myself. No matter what I earned, what job I did, who I was friends with or where I lived, the past kept coming back to haunt me. I never knew what it was to take a step back and think. I had become an angry and reactive person who jumped from one circumstance to another and somehow, all circumstances evoked one sentiment: pain.

Whenever life gave me signs, I ignored them because I didn’t know what was going on. When I lived in a city that wasn’t good for me- a fact that I was aware of deep down- it showed me how and why that was the case through unfortunate friendships and difficult circumstances. I rejected the warning signs only to suffer from a major nervous breakdown and typhoid. The breakdown, as per doctors, was the result of stress and the only thing I could do, at the time, was to move away and so, I did. Looking back now, I realize that was life’s way of bringing me to a point of surrender because I wasn’t listening to the way I felt.

I was stuck in a labyrinth of pain and suffering, made of my own demons and past. When I didn’t surrender and let go, life brought me to a point where I had no other option but to do so.

When we ask the universe for signs and pray for changes in our circumstances, what we often don’t realize is this: the fact that we are so frustrated, put down, hurt and affected by our present circumstances IS the sign that we’re begging for. The only thing anyone can do is to recognize this fact and work towards building the kind of life that they want.

Had I not shifted from the city I lived in, I wouldn’t have been as comfortable as I am in my skin today. Had I not let go of the friendships I formed, I would not have recognized what it is to be secure and happy with the few close friendships and relationships that I’m part of today. Most importantly, had I not let go of the version of myself that was no longer serving me, I would never have been the person I am happy and content with today.

The power of letting go, I’ve realized, lies in the fact that you are willing to let go of everything and everyone that holds you back, from becoming the person you know you are meant to be.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. I hope that it resonates with and benefits you to do so.

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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The Magic Of Feeling Pain

Everyone experiences pain- be it due to the loss of a loved one, a painful relationship with family members or the incurrence of an irreversible loss. There’s a difference between the way we feel and process pain today and the way it was channelized prior to the Industrial Revolution.

Why the Industrial Revolution in particular?

Because that was when mankind transitioned from a lifestyle of lack of structure and lack of cleanliness to one of routine, schedules and technological advancements that made life what it is today. I’m not referring to the one in America (which took place in the 18^th century) nor specifically about the British Industrial Revolution. I’m talking about any form of industrial revolution that led to the creation of any form of industry that created the need and innovation for technological advancements and discoveries.

Why Am I Talking About Technology & Industrial Revolutions?

Prior to the creation of schedules, technological devices and the need for currency that could be used to buy anything in the world, really, the one thing everyone practically fought war for, was resources and land.

Food and utensils were bought via a barter system (who knew I remembered this much history?) and no one really knew what currency, wealth and the need to impress one another was.

Or maybe they did but the number of people who did so, it appears, were fewer than the ones who felt comfortable in their own skin.

It was in this time period that people channelized their pain and emotions into the work that they did. Artists, writers, pianists (blind or otherwise) and anyone involved in any field of work found it easier, to use their vulnerabilities, to give life to their work. They didn’t rely on social media to communicate with one another.

Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo weren’t Facebook friends hashtagging the renaissance period (#renaissance #homies #artists #lezDoDisBro #LoveYouForevs) nor were they frenemies, creating passive-aggressive Instagram Stories commenting on one another’s work. They just hated each other.

AL-Khwarizmi (the Muslim founder of algebra-) and Al Kindi (he wrote about numbers) didn’t create social media content saying “Got that equation wrong, K bro. #Lolz #LoveYou #FeelinDumb” nor did they create YouTube channels and television shows to throw shade at each other. Can you imagine Al-Khwarizmi sitting on a show being “Yeah, man, we were best friends but he said he knew algebra and I was like ‘Nah, homie, you can’t even but the letter b in Al Jabr but I love you to the moon and back’ because, let’s face it I AM the founder of Algebra” and then, go on to explain his stance on a social media post.

Everyone felt a certain way about something or someone and were more obvious, even in their pretenses. Kings and Queens got married to one another- not for love- but for monarchical convenience and, then, had affairs with other men and women who they DID love.

Everything and everyone was a lot more real than they were post-Industrial Revolution.

Today, we live in a world where, it seems, pain and emotional health is put on the backbench for economic convenience, pretense, and socialization and for purposes that don’t necessarily have anything to do with one’s moral compass.

Pain is discussed but not felt. Emotions are known but not allowed any form of channelization because  it is believed that could ruin your chances at getting a job or finding someone who’s willing to spend the rest of his or her life with you.

In other words, everything is about everyone but one’s own identity, health and oneself. What is odd is that we know this. EVERYONE does but no one really wishes to acknowledge the fact that feeling emotions is a luxury.

How Feeling Emotions Is A Luxury

Ask anyone what they want to be in life today, they won’t say ‘healthy’ or ‘happy’ or ‘loved’ but they WILL say ‘rich’ or ‘wealthy’ or ‘successful. Rich, wealthy and successful are all subjective terms that imply some form of comparison. All 3 words suggest an outwardly view towards life itself. You can be successful, wealthy and rich and still be unhappy in life.

The words healthy, happy and loved have an inwardly connotation attached to themselves. You can FEEL happiness, love and health within, even in the absence of money, wealth and success. Healthy, happy and loved aren’t states that NEED riches, wealth or success but rich, wealth and success NEED health, happiness and love, if one wishes to live a content life. These are not human states to be in but tools that just add to life. They are a means to an end.

This is a fact that is forgotten. Children are thrown into ‘the best schools and colleges’ to acquire the ‘best degrees and education’ and yet little to no attention is given to the fact that these kids might be bullied or become bullies. Neither the bully nor the bullied are given a platform on which to talk about their emotions and inner workings. In fact, they are encouraged to ignore their feelings and emotions. Thus they do the only thing that they know to do: to take out the anger and rage on one another in school.

Women and men are told how to lead their lives and yet no attention is given to the fact that either or both genders’ psychological and emotional state is given no regard and so, they COULD resort to more destructive measures  (embezzlement, stealing, etc.) to keep things afloat.

Every sentiment has a condition attached to it.

We live in a weirdly pretentious time where even the emotions we feel aren’t always our own. The moments we live aren’t our own.

A lot of people put up birthday, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day posts and it’s GREAT to promote love but oftentimes the parent is OBVIOUSLY uncomfortable and horrified with being on social media. You can tell just by the way they cringe and yet, not much is done on a daily basis to celebrate the love that is felt for said parent.

Several friends and couples will put up social media posts, hashtagging the hell out of one another’s lives, and talking about how much they love one another, when the pretense, behind the picture, is crystal clear.

There’s a need to share everything, with the world and no need to take the time to sit back and appreciate or inspect the smaller, finer, things in life, which, really, are the only ones that matter in the end…..unless you’re exceptionally morbid and are willing to make death a hashtag (#dying #dyingggg #almostthere #dead).

It’s one thing to inspire through love and the pain we feel but another to numb ourselves to a simple fact: most people are not as happy as they seem because most of them choose NOT to feel their emotions and the pain that they have had to endure.

There’s a universal need to create a façade that everything is perfect and that everyone loves everything, when, in reality, there’s so much bottled up negativity that isn’t acknowledged.

We’re living in a world that has access to so many tools, which can contribute to the denial of our emotions, that feeling any true emotion is now a luxury.

What is even sadder is that the premise of this negligence and ignorance of pain is fear of feeling (read SEEMING) anything BUT happy all the time. Most people are in denial of the fact that they are in denial!

Why Feeling Pain Is Important

I’ve always been supportive of any kind of content (articles, books, movies, television shows, documentaries, blogs and social media accounts) that has anything to do with positivity. I have an entire list of Facebook video snippets, saved under a list entitled “Inspiration” and a ton of self-help books that have helped me over the years.

However, there comes a point when all of that content becomes toxic and counterproductive: when you deny the pain you feel. That’s where you create an illusion, where everything is fine, and believe you merely need to ‘be positive about it’.

That’s what makes it easier to escape the pain when, say, a friend walks all over you or you make bad decisions, when it comes to work, or you choose not to acknowledge the fact that your diet is just not producing the results that you need, to get the kind of body you want.

Sometimes, you just can’t be positive about it. In fact, most of the time, you have to know, feel and deal with the negativity to move on to the positive. Otherwise, you’re just using positivity as a way to numb the pain because you’re afraid of taking responsibility. No, denial is not positivity. Using positivity to justify denial is negativity and it won’t help you, at all.

I had a lot of unresolved anger and pain that I didn’t care to explore until I turned 27. Before I was made to recognize how much pain I was truly carrying, I would seek to put a positive spin on everything. Everything was done, experienced and the negatives were ignored, in the name of positivity.

Toxic individuals were excused to maintain a ‘positive’ spin on everything (consciously and otherwise). Anyone and everyone, from the worst to the best people, were allowed to walk in and out of my life. I sought to maintain relationships with people whose beliefs and mannerisms didn’t resonate with me. There were no boundaries.

Anxiety-triggering thoughts were harbored because I just assumed everything would turn out great but it didn’t. I was in denial. The more I denied the pain I was carrying, the worse everything got for me.

The less I entertained the negative feelings, the harder it was for me to acknowledge the fact that everything WOULDN’T just turn around, without any effort. The anxiety just got worse and it became prominent in the way I dealt with friends, family, work and even in the way I thought or dealt with myself!

I became angrier but didn’t realize why or when. I wasn’t able to focus on ONE task because there was so much else that was affecting me at the time. I couldn’t be present because thoughts about the past and the future haunted me AT ALL TIMES.

Staying positive was just not doing it for me, anymore. It became a façade. I needed to feel the pain to find a way through the darkness and to the end of the tunnel, where there was light. And I DID.

It took a while for me to recognize the denial but when I did, I recognized just how easy it can be to do everything and excuse everyone, in the name of positivity, when really, what I was doing was denying my feelings. Denying my feelings numbed me and the numbness prevented me from feeling or accepting any sense of responsibility over my life.

Accepting it, on the other hand, had the opposite impact. It enabled me to deal with my circumstances in a healthy manner – not just for me but also for the people that were (and still are) part of my life. It became easier to make decisions and to accept that sometimes, you just have to deal with painful circumstances, without looking for the positive in a negative circumstance.

Pain, much like any other experience, exists for a reason, regardless of it’s nature (psychological, emotional, physical or otherwise). It NEEDS to be felt. It HAS to be known and recognized. The whole point of pain is to draw our attention to a circumstance, so that it can be rectified. No one can be happy ALL the time. It just doesn’t make sense to be that way. Even rainbows need rain and storms before they can be seen in the sky.

Denial of pain is not just toxic- it is catastrophic and has a horrible spillover effect. The pain governs one’s relationships; approach to life and themselves, too. Acceptance of pain has a long-lasting, positive effect.

Why Feeling Pain Is Magical

Pain, of any sort, has a way of making things better, once it is accepted.

It helps make better choices.

A person who hasn’t dealt with their pain will, subconsciously, create and unwittingly orchestrate their lives in a manner where a pattern is created and repeated, over and over, again. The pain is reflected in the way they deal with everything and everyone around them.

Why do nice people attract bad circumstances? They don’t deal with the very factors that caused them the pain in the first place. Hence, they will always attract bad relationships, make bad decisions and go for options that don’t resonate with them.

On the other hand, feeling the pain and accepting it for what it is, helps make better decisions because you are fully aware of your strengths and weaknesses. Any decisions you make are, then, imbued with self-awareness and self-love. You become hyper-focused on what helps you grow and are aware of the fact that you have a choice in your life’s affairs.

You become aware of your likes and dislikes and can make decisions, accordingly.

It makes you more present.

Denial creates a vicious cycle, where one is trapped by his or her own thoughts about the past and the future.  It convinces us that our futures will be reflections of our pasts. A person with unresolved issues will, then, do EVERYTHING in his or her power to escape or numb the pain, in the hopes that everything will turn out the way they want it to.

This person becomes a slave to a time that no longer exists and therefore, the present moment is neither enjoyed nor treated as a moment to be enjoyed. The bigger problem is such a person’s relationship with life, as it is now, becomes reflective of the past and a future that doesn’t exist.

This is why a parent, with unresolved childhood traumas of their own, will impose their beliefs and experiences on to their children. These children, then, grow up to be EXACTLY like their parents, because they haven’t dealt with their own pain. This is why formerly overweight people tend to be scared of eating certain foods, even after they have lost weight and look GREAT (speaking from experience). This is why people make poor choices in the way they choose their relationships (any relationship). In other words, denial causes us to impose our fear, pain and traumas on to others.

Dealing with the pain does 2 things:, it draws your attention to the fact that you can make choices, IN THIS VERY MOMENT, to change your past, for a better future.

Second, it is empowering because you are, then, aware of the fact that you really DO have control over your life and can break the vicious cycle of pain.

You waste less time.

As the saying goes: you only have one life. Why waste it on choices that aren’t healthy for you?

As you recognize pain within yourself, you also start to notice what life choices and relationships are good for you and those that are not. Some people are in so much pain and carry so much negativity that they will inflict it on to others via emotional blackmail, backhanded compliments, bullying, etc., effortlessly. They can’t help it because the truth is that they haven’t dealt with the pain they’ve been carrying, all this time.

What does this have to do with you?

It becomes easier for you to recognize the fact that what they say or do is not about YOU but it is about THEM.

This very fact makes it easier for you to decide the kind of company you would like to surround yourself with or be in.

You Learn To Forgive & Love Yourself.

Everyone feels pain, for different reasons, but that very sentiment is personal. It is something that only YOU can feel. The person carrying and ignoring that pain only breeds more of it. It, then, takes over their bodies and affects their physical and mental health.

It stays within and creates patterns that repetitively inflict the same pain that one ignores. The WORST part about pain is that it controls you to the extent that every choice you make or step you take brings you back to the pain you’ve been ignoring. Isn’t that awful? It’s as if you’re stuck in a labyrinth of your own emotions. The only person contributing to the maze is YOU.

The magic of pain lies in the fact that it sets you free from within. Feeling the pain makes you more compassionate, caring, understanding and aware of the fact that it is in being kind to yourself that you can be freed from the hold it has over you. Everything that you do, say and decide is no longer a reaction to what others want or expect of you. Instead YOU lead your life from a place of consciousness and self-love.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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What Life Taught Me About Loneliness

I never knew what it was to be lonely. I enjoyed my company, even when I was 5 years old. I still do. There’s something empowering and enjoyable being alone with the only person who knows me better than anyone else: me. I was my own best friend. If I were sad, I would spend time on my own, figuring out how to deal with that sentiment. If I were angry, I would spend time on my own, figuring out why I felt that way. If I were happy, I would express that sentiment by coloring and/or watching cartoons and movies that resonated with me or I’d play outside.

I had friends but carpooling, play dates and sleepovers weren’t very common back then (‘back then’ is something I can finally say, today, because I am that old). Video games, iPads, smartphones and technological devices weren’t yet as common as they are now, either. So, when I was by myself, I knew what it was to be with myself and who I was as a person, too.

Growing up wasn’t something I regretted, then. I enjoyed growing older then and I enjoy each year that passes by, now. To me, age is and was something to be celebrated because it marks another year of experiences that taught me something about life and about myself.

The problem with growing up wasn’t how I looked at it. I always knew myself for who I was. The issue with growing up is and was the fact that you start to MEAN something to people. I know I did.

I’m not saying the positively nor negatively but in a way that is factual: growing up had a way of making people around me think they could attach certain stipulations to my existence. That might have been the case, when I was a child, too, but the expectations became more pronounced and obvious.

Everyone goes through that. I know a lot of people that I was friends with, back then, did. It was strange feeling for me to know emotions that actually had nothing to do with me and yet were superimposed on my existence by people I didn’t know nor care for, at the time.

However, I was a very unassuming and naïve child. So, I allowed myself to give all sorts of people second chances. I wasn’t familiar with the concept of boundaries or with the idea of standing up for myself. I thought everyone wanted the same things from each other as I did them: friendship, fun and a general sense of togetherness. That’s what it means to be friends, at that age, after all.

As I grew even older, I recognized something- a truth that I hadn’t yet acknowledged but only came to embrace in action, not in words- I was still the same kid who enjoyed his company but just in a bigger body.

The body grew bigger and bigger till clothes my family bought me just 2-4 weeks ago, wouldn’t fit me. I was eating more. As my company grew, so, too, did the amount of food I was eating. As I grew older in age, the expectations attached to me (as they did for people around me- good and/or bad) grew, too.

Emotions became confusing, and not because I was going through puberty, but because people become complicated. It was tougher to understand myself because I was in company that seemed happy and cheerful but was actually lonely and void of any sense of empathy or sympathy.

Adulthood Is Weird

Adulthood is a strange time to be in, today. I say ‘today’ because I’ve read about saints, prophets, artists, authors, writers, etc. who just were who they were, back when everyone wasn’t doing what they were doing to impress people. They weren’t being untrue to themselves to fulfill expectations. Everyone just was who they were. If they were liked for it, great and if not, there was nothing wrong with that either.

Today, adulthood comes with strings attached that you aren’t entirely aware of but, as you grow older, you KNOW and can feel the difference between the way people treated you, when you were younger and the way they treat you, when you become an adult. It’s something like being a coloring book that all the other adults can’t wait to color their projections, insecurities, anger, happiness and other emotional states on to.

Of course, there were and still are wonderful people who support me, and one another, in different, loving ways but they’re not the ones who made me feel lonely. For that matter, the people who were malicious didn’t make me feel that way either.

Loneliness Is Self-Abandonment

There’s a quote (that I loathe): misery loves company. That has to be the stupidest quote I’ve come across because it’s just not true. Misery loves misery. Company loves company.

I believed then, what I believe now: whether we know it or not, everyone creates their own lives and reality. The problem with misery is that it is a void that is filled with pain and hurt that we carry with ourselves but aren’t yet aware of. When several miserable people come together, each one of them carries pain and emotional baggage that they inflict on to other people.

I’d created a life where I was surrounded by such people, too, because I, myself, wasn’t happy inside. I didn’t recognize it, then, but I do recall feeling anxious ALL THE TIME. Deep down inside, I knew who meant what and that certain statements or behavior just wasn’t excusable.

Sadly, I had abandoned myself by this stage, which meant I didn’t stand up for myself nor did I care to express to others that they were unkind in their demeanor. I’d find ways to excuse the other person for what they said and/or made me feel by justifying their actions. Something that was said in humor but carried a sense of malice was dismissed as ‘humor’. People who ‘seemed’ sweet were accepted as such, even though later on they showed themselves to be anything but kind. The issue with standing up to such cruelty is

1. Such behavior was treated as normal or ‘in good fun’, by everyone including me and
2. You either become the company you hang out with or it has a way of sinking in till you break down.

I had abandoned myself by allowing others to treat me in a way that hurt me and yet acted as if though they were my friends. Then, there were those who didn’t necessarily treat each other or me with malice but their priorities were different. Either way, I did feel lonely. It was strange to have all these friends and yet to feel lonely. What was even weirder was to know there are so many people out there who feel the same way.

It’s Easy To Blame Others

But that doesn’t mean we should do it.

Everyone just is the way that they are and no one can change that about them unless they choose to acknowledge that fact. Some people enjoy being a part of the void and impose their misery on to others, in subtle, insidious ways. These are the people who contribute to the void of misery. These people tend to be larger in number because they find ways to distract themselves from the pain they carry within and flock together.

Then, there are those who enjoy their own company and surround themselves with fewer people. They tend to know themselves better and make choices while being aware of what they like and dislike, without giving weight to anyone else’s opinion. The advantage of knowing yourself is that you learn to make choices that impact you in ways that you are aware of.

What I learned was this: no matter how many friends I had, or what walks of life they came from, the only difference between how I felt, the only person who could handle and know how I felt was me.

Everyone has a different story but we become lonely in our own, when we allow ourselves to lose who we are to their plots.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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I Wore Turquoise for A Month &Here’s How It Affected Me

I am a big believer of energies, vibes and the way people, circumstances, objects and places make me feel.

Feelings, in general, were something that I kept to myself and/or ignored because I believed it was better to be nice and polite and to try to find the positive in everything and everyone.

There’s one major problem with being nice all the time: you become a doormat, even to yourself, and the scary part is you don’t even realize how much you contribute to your own misery.

The Inner Voice of Wisdom

The unfortunate part about denying what I truly felt was that I was living a life that I enjoyed at the surface level. I was spectating my own life. I’d try to stifle that voice that told me the truth: I wasn’t sad but that didn’t mean I was happy.

You know the voice I’m talking about? EVERYONE has heard it. The one that pops up over and over again, when we have to make a decision? The voice that is gentle and truthful, which makes it easy to ignore and deny? The one that enables you to see past the facade that people create (and yet you might have ignored it)? THAT voice.

Ignoring this voice makes life difficult and challenging but we don’t realize nor see that, until the universe brings us to a point, where we are no longer capable of concealing the fact that we are not happy with the lives that we have constructed for ourselves. Admittance of misery is the first step. The second step is upheaval. Upheaval is permanent change. It changes us within, viscerally, and prompts us to acknowledge just how much our lives are out of sorts with who we truly are as individuals.

It isn’t just mental nor physical but psychological and emotional, too. You start to see things that you didn’t before; realize facts that you didn’t before and feel things in a way that you never did nor could before.

Sticks & Stones Don’t Always Break Bones, Some of Them Can Tame You

Logic is the mind’s means to survival. However, there’s one problem with the mind: it is limited by itself. We tend to think first and reject how we actually feel about a certain decision. Everything might seem great at surface level but it’s not until what we feel actually comes true that we realize we should have listened to our hearts all along.

Going through an upheaval, recently, made me anxious because it enabled me to see just how much I had contributed to a life that didn’t actually make me happy. It was a life that made me numb, drained and exhausted and no one but I was to blame for a life that I had created on shaky grounds. The universe had now brought me to a point where I needed to acknowledge the truth: I wasn’t happy because I had created a life that wasn’t even in line with who I actually am, as an individual.

Essentially, it wasn’t my life at all. It was a life I’d created in response to the need for approval and validation that I’d felt for a long while, prior to my 27th birthday. The upheaval I’m experiencing now was bound to happen at some point or the other but an upheaval doesn’t just cause you to uproot your life- it makes you re-evaluate everything and everyone, including yourself.

Experiencing an upheaval after 28 years of my life wasn’t easy. I was questioning EVERY aspect of my life and that made me anxious. It was around this time period that I was advised to wear turquoise to tame my anxiety.

By this time I had tried everything from reading and distracting myself to eating, journaling and posting on my blog to just asking God and the universe for help and a sign. Those things DID help me to an extent but it’s easy to ignore the impact, when the mind is blaring criticism.

So, I wore a light-blue turquoise pendant for a month. The lower part of the stone, I was instructed, must touch the skin, to have an impact. One can wear it in the form of a pendant, ring or bracelet.

How The Stone Helped Me

The thing about anxiety is that it doesn’t go away. It becomes manageable but it doesn’t ‘get cured’, completely. I’d been to therapy for a year and a half and it has impacted me positively and to a great extent.

The anxiety is a whole lot better and more manageable, even during the emotional upheaval, but anxiety-triggering emotions had become frequent. I could manage them much better than I did pre-therapy but it wasn’t easy to stop the thoughts completely.

However, turquoise changed things for the better because:

It has a calming impact on the mind.

I don’t get overwhelmed anxiety-triggering thoughts the way I did before. It’s easier for me to put myself at ease, by observing my thoughts, rather than letting them get the best of me. They no longer affect me emotionally nor mentally.

It’s easier to pay attention to my feelings now than it was ever before.

I’m open to change but the kind of transition I went through was sudden, major and had a big impact on the way I thought and saw things. It is tempting to give in to thoughts of anxiety, anger and resistance than it is to let things flow. I’m a big believer in letting life and energy flow.

Anxiety made the transition confusing, frustrating and I found myself resisting change. How I felt was often confused with what my mind wanted me to believe and that just made the process that much tougher.

I could feel an emotional buildup and that inner voice bubbling up to guide me but it was stifled in the noise that the anxiety enabled my mind to harbor. Now, I am able to hear the inner voice and make better, healthier, decisions that are good for me in the long run, too.

It has a centering affect.

External circumstances have a way of unnerving a person who has to deal with anxiety. What I went through distracted me from what was important, to me, and had a way of affecting me to the extent that I felt imprisoned in my thoughts.

The thought-triggered anxiety, anxiety-triggered thoughts and various experiences that I went through de-centered me. I was no longer paying attention to what was important to me and tried to control what was going on around me. Again, I was resisting change. 

The stone, I felt, centered me and made it easier to focus on myself. I felt it was easier to go through the jargon of anxiety and to find my center. This strengthened my decision-making skills, too.

It filters out thoughts that have no purpose and makes it easier to focus on the things and people that actually do matter.

The stone helped move past the thoughts that didn’t really matter nor had any impact on me, and to focus on people, objects and circumstances that made me FEEL good, instead.

The mental gibberish that contributed to my anxiety subsided and no longer haunted me to the same extent that it did before.

I wasn’t too sure of the impact the stone would have on me but I thought to give it a shot for a month. It certainly has had a positive impact on the way I feel and think and has made it easier for me to pay attention to what I actually know I want over what I THINK I need.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog post. 🙂

Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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A Writer’s Block Taught Me Something About Hell

Everyone experiences some sort of block at some stage in their lives but the frustration we experience is rarely ever about the block…..it’s more about the emotional baggage we carry with us.

I stumbled on a ‘writer’s block’ and couldn’t come up with more ideas on what to write about nor how to just let the words flow. It felt like every sentence I wrote required EFFORT.

Something inside me was resisting the urge to write. There’s nothing wrong with taking a break from something you enjoy, every now and then, but when it feels forced, taking a break does, usually, help break that blockage. That’s probably why we’re taught to answer all the questions we know, in a test or exam, and then, come back to the ones we find difficult or challenging.

I started pondering over the other blocks that I’ve faced in life. A block, I’ve learned, is any moment, person, event, occasion or inner resistance that prevents us from reaching a destination that we KNOW we can get to.

Blocks are frustrating but the only person who can break a block is the person experiencing it, no matter what aspect of life it has come to exist in.

Have You Ever Thought About Hell?

I mean REALLY thought about it.

Everyone is familiar with the whole afterlife concept of Hell but there’s an important factor about it that most people don’t really take into account: it’s a torturous place where the same things keep happening over and over and over and over and over again, for ETERNITY.

In essence, it’s a place where every individual will be subjected to some method of pain and torture, on a loop. Punishment will be on auto-pilot while pain will be a never-ending experience. There’s no escaping from it.

You want to know something dark?

Most people are already stuck in their own version of Hell.

What makes it worse is the fact that they don’t realize it. They don’t want to accept nor acknowledge just how much they torment themselves on a daily basis, by holding on to the same principles, beliefs and ego-driven approaches over a period of time that normalizes the pain.

Every morning they wake up and see how their lives aren’t what nor where they want it to be. Every night they sleep and hope ‘tomorrow will be a new day’ and sometimes it is but sometimes it isn’t.

Think about it: a smoker says he wants to quit smoking tomorrow but each tomorrow is met with a justification for the habit- “I’m stressed”, “I just got divorced”, “Life didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to”, “I’m figuring myself out”, “I hate my family”, “I hate my job”, “I work in a very stressful field”.

Someone who isn’t happy with their physical appearance, wants to lose or gain weight, promises she will start from tomorrow but then, that goal is met with excuses such as “I’m stressed”, “My husband is a horrible human being and doesn’t support me”, “The kids drive me INSANE”, “My life is a mess”, “My parents annoy me”, “I’ll start from next week because this week there are SO many weddings”.

An unhappy employee complains about his/her job and promises to leave it tomorrow but then, that tomorrow is met with “My boss just promised me a bonus”, “My life is a mess and the only thing keeping me sane IS my work”, “I hate my boss because he/she calls me at 1 AM about those reports I had to send in”, “I don’t want to start ALL OVER AGAIN”.

It’s not that they enjoy it on a conscious level but that they have normalized the pain for themselves to the extent that they can’t seem to escape it.

Life Doesn’t Stop For You No Matter Who You Are

One can explain their causes and justify themselves to the whole world but the fact remains: they aren’t happy with where they are in their lives and don’t do anything about it.

They find reasons that make sense to assuage themselves of the guilt they feel over not recognizing and accepting responsibility of their own lives and actions.

The solution, generally, tends to be extremely simple: deal with the problem (whatever it may be) or walk away from it. Time doesn’t know how to stop. Life doesn’t know how to halt. The people we include or exclude from our lives don’t know how to be anyone but who or what they are (until they make a conscious decision to change).

The person facing a block has two options: to walk away from those circumstances or to deal with them head-on.

Most people don’t like to accept that because taking responsibility means spending a good amount of time on looking at themselves in the mirror, to recognize how they have created and are living in their own version of Hell.

What does one do?

Surrender By Living In The Moment

If you’ve read through previous blog posts, you’ll know that I’m going through a life transition myself. The ONE thing I’ve learned, in this transition, is to stop resisting the change and to accept and allow it.

I learned and implemented it in certain aspects of my life but what I didn’t realize was that I needed to surrender a version of myself, that reacted to the change, and to allow myself to live in and through the transition that I’m experiencing.

A reaction is still a form of resistance and the more I reacted to something or someone, the more, I realized that that person or circumstance still had a degree of control over me.

At the end of the day, I had a choice to make in every and any aspect of my life: to accept everything for what it is/was and to change things around or to react to the transition and go back to the way my life was earlier.

The problem with option 2 was that the transition had already started. It wasn’t as if I didn’t contemplate over returning to my pre-transition lifestyle. Now, I felt differently about the same experiences that I would enjoy back then. For a moment, I did make an attempt to go back but things just weren’t working out the way I thought they would.

So, I made a conscious decision to do something I’d never done before- I surrendered. The word ‘surrender’ is often considered to be something that a ‘loser’ would do. It actually means to just give in to whatever you’re going through, taking a seat back and accepting the fact that your life is how and where it is, now, because of the decisions YOU have made over the years. It helps thaw the blocks we experience in our lives.

I simply took a breather, after a long and anxiety-triggering moment, and looked at how I’d contributed to MY personal Hell. I stopped thinking about how my life and the people in it ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t be’ a certain way and accepted everything as is.

The ‘shoulds’ and ‘coulds’ of life made me feel like I was hitting my head against a wall that JUST wouldn’t budge. Without these expectations and standards it became that much easier to just let things flow.

Eckhart Tolle, in The Power of Now writes, “(But) as long as negativity is there, use it. Use it as a kind of signal that reminds you to be more present”.

Being present, despite what most people believe, doesn’t mean to sit in a dark room and meditate. It simply means to accept what IS rather than allowing what HAS or COULD HAPPEN to affect where you are, in this very moment in your life.

Problems occur where there’s resistance and resistance is experienced when you believe that life should or needs to be any other way than it is HERE AND NOW.

Everything exists as is and the only way to change ANYTHING is to accept that and internalize this fact and then, take steps that resonate with the person that you truly are, to make the kind of life that you want. In other words, doing the things we don’t really want to do creates resistance. Resistance can be experienced as financial loss, emotional pain, fights, loss of material wealth, poor health, unhealthy relationships and the like. This occurs when you don’t have a good relationship with YOURSELF.

How did a writing block teach me this? Because up until now, I really wanted to write on SOMETHING that resonated with me and I couldn’t figure out what to write. Once I sat back and simply surrendered to the moment, this article and everything I’ve written in it, came to me without any effort or resistance!

At the end of the day, resistance is created because we’re going AGAINST life and who we are as individuals. It is for us to decide whether to continue working against life or to accept everything as it comes and to let things flow.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂

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Happiness Is Like A Beach Body

The problem with getting a beach body is this: everyone knows what it looks like; everyone seeks guidance on how to get it; everyone wants it and even if they have ALL the information in the world, THEY JUST DO NOT CARE TO WORK TOWARDS IT.

One can either adopt the approach of a Doberman or that of a German Shepherd.

What The “Woof” Do Doberman and German Shepherds Have To Do With Anything?

A few weeks ago I happened to meet a dog trainer who explained every dog’s intelligence is measured against the intelligence of German Shepherds.

Evidently, German Shepherds are THE MOST intelligent dogs in dog world. They are given 100 points on whatever test helps determine a dog’s IQ level. They will do as they are told and can be trained with ease.

Doberman, on the other hand, are allocated 60 points.

They know EVERYTHING that they are taught and trained to do but they will actually DO nothing with that knowledge. You could tell them to do something but, if they feel lazy, they will do NOTHING with all the information their owner’s bestowed upon them.

This is a common approach that everyone towards something or the other in their lives. They KNOW what to do about a situation but avoid doing it either because of fear and anxiety or because there’s so much white noise (made up on what OTHERS say, think and believe on a topic) that their internal compass’ wisdom is distorted in the process. Or, of course, they’re just plain lazy and enjoy basking in their laziness but won’t admit it.

In other words, they can be German Shepherds, but since we live in an era of such convenience and luxury, they don’t feel the need to put effort into ANYTHING- be it their work, career, relationships or THEMSELVES- and have become doberman.

This is why technology has become sleeker while human beings have gained weight over the years. This is why it’s easier to get gadgets and gizmos than it is to spend a fraction of what they know, on working towards beach bods.

Happiness Is An Illusion If You Believe That….

It can be obtained and is determined by external circumstances. We’ve all heard how and why relying on wealth and external factors can be toxic and even harmful, where happiness is concerned.

Here’s the thing though: everyone knows the truth and yet, most people revolve their lives around the same factors because that’s all we were taught to look at, learn and acknowledge.

Deep down inside, EVERYONE KNOWS that brand new cars, houses, relationships, money, friends and city or country won’t make them happy and yet they seek to acquire this mirage that they will NEVER be able to hold nor know.

Why?

Because…doberman logic: it’s easier to be lazy, give in and to blame others than it is to accept responsibility, take a stand for ourselves and to change our circumstances, using the knowledge that we’ve acquired over the years.

Happiness has BECOME an illusion because people base what we feel on what OTHER’S know about a topic, subject or person and social media and technology fuels that fire.

How?

We are exposed to movies, songs and shows that create this world of illusions and is so easy to fall prey to…and most people choose to believe it. They converse with individuals who seem to possess the success, traits and are happy with themselves…and instead of learning from them, dismiss their wisdom and knowledge by saying “he/she is an exception but that doesn’t apply to everyone”. They dismiss what they know to be truth about themselves, their relationships, the work they do, the career they develop and their relationships with themselves….because, again, Doberman logic.

They do the same things over and over again, expecting different results, not realizing that they are falling into a trap of insanity and emptiness.

I Used To Be A Doberman

I had a very troubled past- something that I’ve spoken about here, on my blog- that lead me to feel and believe that life just was tough and difficult.

There came a time in my life- I believe it was from 2011-2013- where I believed that happiness was unattainable, unachievable and a myth. I’m all about positivity, joy and being true to yourself but for those 2 years I was the COMPLETE opposite of who I used to be before 2011 and who I became after 2013.

It was in this particular period that I blamed EVERYONE for my misery. I held onto the notion that happiness doesn’t actually exist and that life just is this mundane path of misery. I was numb, dumb and young. The most difficult and dangerous part of youth is this: we’re living in a world where the ‘should be’s’, ‘would be’s’, ‘have to be’s’ are given more importance than the need to be yourself. Some people grow up conforming to this system; others rebel against it or learn from it but when you’re young, it’s easy to forsake the world, assume that you have no power and that life will NEVER improve.

Furthermore, if you’re not given the tools to fight against this notion, it can be even more tempting to numb yourself and give in to your misery. Oscar Wilde wasn’t entirely inaccurate when he said “Youth is wasted on the young”.

I allowed people into my life who I was neither amused by nor happy surrounding myself with because I thought that being nice and kind was important……but I was wasting MY time on people who just didn’t resonate with me. I followed workout plans and diet plans that I KNEW were affecting my body adversely…..but I was wasting MY health on diets and workout plans that weren’t right for me. I was friends with people who had priorities that were very different to my own….when I COULD have spent time on pursuing MY dreams and priorities. In other words, I wasn’t happy. I knew what I had to do to ‘fix’ my life but I was a Doberman.

In my defense, we aren’t taught to stand up for ourselves nor are we taught to rely on what we know to be the truth, for ourselves, today. Everyone is aware of the importance of kindness but not many people are aware of the fact that sometime’s it’s just plain silly to be generous towards people who will take advantage of them. Everyone knows what they are good at and yet they are taught to work jobs for money, until they realize that money isn’t everything.

Everyone is taught to be what everyone else wants everyone to be but no one is taught to be HIMSELF or HERSELF, today.

This was something I learned later on in life, through therapy. It was only when I went to a therapist that I decided I wanted to be a German Shepherd. I learned what I was doing and how I was contributing to the lifestyle I’d made for myself, all these years. I was provided with valuable insight into how and why I was the person that I used to be. I saw how I was contributing to the relationships that I had formed with people but the most important lesson I learned was about how my relationship with myself led to a life that I wasn’t entirely happy with.

Fight Like A German Shepherd Or Live The Life Of A Doberman

Everyone knows what being happy means to them, just as everyone knows the basics to getting a beach body. No one is BORN happy or sad. Most people are born crying.

German Shepherds are fiercely loyal to their owners and will not hesitate to remove any obstacle that comes their way. It’s no wonder they’re known to be the most employable dogs either. These dogs are HAPPY to do so, too.

It’s easy to be a Doberman but it’s healthier to be a German Shepherd. They know what they want, acquire knowledge through training and will do everything that they can to achieve whatever goal they are commanded to follow.

What does this have to do with happiness?

EVERYTHING.

Happiness is a journey but one that makes you feel like the ride and bumps, that you encountered, was worth it. You can be happy doing nothing while being numb and empty, when you’re doing everything. At the end of the day, what you get is dependent upon one question: how much are you willing to put into a venture, relationship, business or career?

In a world filled with white noise, luxuries and conveniences it is easy to displace anger and responsibility on to other people and circumstances….when deep down inside we KNOW we are responsible for ourselves.

It’s better to learn from experiences, other people’s successes and failures and from our own mistakes than it is to learn from technology, worshippers of social constructs and preachers who rarely ever follow what they teach.

With all of these tools available to us, it is incredibly easy to gain the knowledge we seek and yet, most people utilize them to to distract themselves and that, too, from one BASIC fact which is- they are not happy with the lives that they have built for themselves.

Most people know what they want, how to get it and what it would take to get there. It’s as simple as those inspirational quotes we see on Instagram and Facebook. If there’s a misunderstanding, clear the air by taking the first step. If you want to go after your dream, do so with commitment. If you want to get a dream, consider your passion.

Life is much simpler to live and understand than we make it out to be. Unfortunately, we spend so much time and energy finding ways to complicate it, to justify our unhappiness, that we forget just how much control we have over the ones that we live.

That is why it’s healthier to be a German Shepherd and to just follow what we know and understand about ourselves and our lives than it is to be a lazy, complacent and nonchalant Doberman.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂 Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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What If You’re Not Stuck, In Life?

Every since I made the decision to give fitness the boot, as a career, I wondered WHY I was stuck, in life. You know those “Why me?” moments that one faces, when going through a major transition in life? Those are the ones I’m talking about.

I enjoyed training people and working with the clients and colleagues (most of whom I’m friends with now) that I came into contact with but I wasn’t enjoying fitness itself. It became a mode of control for me which is NEVER good for one’s well-being.

You can read all about it here: Why I Left Fitness As A Career (& Why I Got Into It)

In short, I enjoyed interacting with people and I love to train myself but I didn’t enjoy fitness as career. It just didn’t give that inner peace that one experiences when they are truly happy and content with the work they are involved in.

Fitness started to feel like a struggle and every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who didn’t feel like he was in his element. I had the support, knowledge, exposure and the outlook for a person wanting to be a fitness trainer/coach but it just didn’t FEEL right. This was why I left fitness in 2018.

I knew I was going to write and wanted to spend more time working on my blog and yet, I felt stuck. I figured I was going through a transition that I would get out of quickly but after 2 months went by, I started to become impatient

I tried everything to get an answer to the question “WHY AM I SO STUCK IN LIFE? WHATS IS GOING ON WITH ME?”- from tarot cards and astrologers to reading articles, written by people going through transitions similar to my own- and then, 5 months later, a question dawned on me: what if you’re not stuck in life and are just getting to know yourself better?

What Does It Mean To Be Stuck?

The word ‘stuck’ means to feel entrapped in a situation and to an extent, I did feel like I was confined in life. To what?

I didn’t know but I just believed that I was ‘stuck’. It wasn’t as if though I regretted my decision but life just wasn’t progressing the way I thought it would.

I never stopped to think “Do I want to jump into fitness?” and instead devoted my time to a career that was enjoyable but not “the one” for me. I don’t like making diet plans and workout plans for people nor do I enjoy talking about it with anyone except for people who actually are involved in fitness as experts or coaches. I DO enjoy writing, in any and every form.

A realization, then, dawned upon me: it wasn’t that I was stuck….I was just so used to leading a life that others saw me capable of leading that I never thought to stop, take a break and wonder whether I actually wanted to do what I was doing. “Stuck”, then, is/was not a state of mind nor a reality but a belief that belonged to a past that I no longer live in nor lead.

Stuck Is A State Of Mind But Transition Is A Reality

The mind is a tricky thing: it wants us to stick to patterns, habits, thought processes and beliefs that seem comfortable and safe. Does that mean the lives we lead are actually beneficial to/for us?

Not really but we spend so much time on creating a facade that complies with the belief that we HAVE to do what is acceptable that we forego options, opportunities, talents and careers that might prove to be far more suited to our nature.

It is so easy to give in to what others believe to be true to us that we forget we’re devoting less time to ourselves and more time to what others believe ought to be true for us. What seems to be good on paper is given preference over what’s good for US.

It is when you REALIZE and embrace this truth that you’re willing to transition from a life that is a product of social construct to a life that is YOURS to live.

Is making the transition easy? Not really.

Is it necessary? Yes.

Transition allows you to shed the skin of society and grow a thicker one that is relevant to your truth and to who you are as a human being.

You learn from the transition and reject old beliefs that no longer serve you- because they were never true nor applicable to you to begin with. You see what you want from what you thought you want- because you start to know peace. You recognize what is GOOD for you from what you THINK is good for you- because you’re able to recognize how much of a hold material wealth and public opinion has on you.

In other words, you transition from who you think people want you to be, to the person and human you REALLY ARE in your entire.

What If You’re Just Getting To Know Yourself Better?

Everyone goes through change. Life can change because of marriage or divorce, employment or unemployment, life or death, age or health and numerous other factors that affect us mentally and emotionally. You’re the same person you were yesterday but some aspect of life might have enabled you to consider a different approach to the way you look at things on a daily basis.

A transition occurs when you go through an upheaval. You no longer see the world and, most importantly, YOURSELF the way you did before. The fallacies on which relationships were built are brought into light. The notion that money should matter more than health is reconsidered or maybe a job that you believed was perfect for you, no longer makes you happy.

A transition is long-lasting. One phase of your life ends and you go through a period where you might experience a series of epiphanies and moments of uncertainty until you learn that it’s not just that life is changing around you but that YOU are no longer the same person you used to be, either.

A transition is, essentially, a total and complete divorce from the person you WERE to the person you CAN BE. It is spiritual, mental, emotional, psychological, physical and it affects every aspect of your being. You align your life to that inner knowing that there is more to life than who others want or have thought you to be your who life. You stop living a life based on what you’ve always THOUGHT you wanted and lead the life you know you want and deserve.

In other words, you come into your own and the transitional period enables you to recognize who you really are as a person.

Once you internalize this fact, it becomes easier to give in to the flow of life and to stop resisting the process. As the saying goes: life doesn’t happen TO you. It happens FOR you.

All anyone, going through a transition, needs to do is to let it.

How To Allow Yourself To Make It Through The Transition

There really only is ONE way, person and methods to allow yourself to make it through a transition: do the things that you are comfortable and happy with. Do whatever it is that brings you joy.

External factors such as money, the job you have, the friends you once associated with or the house you bought no longer matter. Maybe these were/are the things you lost in the transition.

We like to blame life for taking everything away from us but life is just towing us on to a path that shows us who we really are. This true, real and authentic version of who you are is who you are meant to be WITHOUT the facade. The person you were pre-transition was a reflection of who you thought others wanted you to be. Or maybe that was a version of yourself that enabled you to survive a circumstance or a life that you didn’t realize wasn’t for you. If you’re going through a transition, life’s just telling you that there’s something better out there that will transform you into the person you really are and want to be.

To embrace the transition do whatever it is that you enjoy in life. Go where your curiosity takes you. I used to love reading, writing, journaling and spending time on self-reflection or with people whom I knew were reliable, honest and truly love me for who I am. I took up opportunities I didn’t have to the time to even consider, when I was leading a life that exhausted me.

After all, these were/are factors that made me feel happy, content and did arouse my curiosity. As I partook in such activities and company, I felt less stuck and more in touch with who I always knew I was meant to be.

I got to know who I really am.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog. 🙂 Feel free to comment, share, subscribe and/or you can follow me on the following social media platforms, too:

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3 Life Lessons My Paternal Grandmother Taught Me

The one thing that inspired me, most, about my grandmothers (I’m referring to the both of them, here) was their ability to unapologetically be themselves, in a time and era where people around them often sought to impress one another.

They didn’t TRY to be anything other than who they were. The only thing that they knew to be was THEMSELVES and fiercely so. These ladies inspired others, not by speech nor punishment but by example.

Both grandmothers were formidable and strong women in their own ways.

My paternal grandmother (who I’d refer to as Dadi) taught me SO much over the years but the 3 most important life lessons I learned from her were:

Stand Your Ground

Dadi always believed in herself and did EXACTLY what she wanted to. If she felt people were trying to push her around, she wouldn’t shy away from confronting them. It just wasn’t her style to shy away from speaking up and speaking out, if her boundaries were crossed.

Age, social status, power, rank, wealth and social connections didn’t matter, if she felt wronged, in any way. She made it a point to stand her ground and to make her opinion known in an extremely blunt manner, both, to people she loved and to those she didn’t.

It came as no surprise, that she was asked to join a political party but declined to do so, because she didn’t believe in their agenda!

Always Trust Yourself

Most people are fascinated by an individual’s education, knowledge or the way they carry themselves. Dadi saw past the facade, clothes, affiliations and the superficial traits and trusted her feelings and gut instincts.

I would assume she was being judgmental or that she needed to get to know a person, before dismissing or accepting them. Turns out, she wasn’t being judgmental nor dismissive- she just KNEW what was in a person’s heart!

She was ALWAYS on-point about every, single, person I knew and met. Everything was either black or white for her. If she suspected she was being lied to or deceived, she would say it in the bluntest way possible, and you’d actually wonder how she came to know of your true intentions.

She treated each individual the way they deserved to be treated, without exception. No one was spared!

Get With The Times Or You’ll Be Left Behind

Every new generation comes up with ways to deal with problems that, generally and thematically, are similar to those of previous generations. Older generations tend to stick to their ways and are excused for their desire to stick to and by their approach and ways. You wouldn’t expect an elderly person to reject the ways of the upcoming generation.

Dadi was unexpectedly modern in many ways and didn’t dismiss younger generations for their input nor their observations. She enjoyed and partook in conversations about a range of topics from politics and religion to movies and television shows. Though she might not have agreed with one’s take on certain matters, she did want to understand where the other person was coming from. Age didn’t stop her from learning about new things and she kept an open mind throughout her life.

She would often say “it is important to go with the times”. She was young at heart and learned to download movies and television shows on her own. What I found really cool was she played Candy Crush till the day she passed!

Thank you, for taking the time to read my blog post. Do share, subscribe, comment and feel free to let me know what YOUR grandmother taught you in the comments section below 🙂

What I Learned By Gaining Weight (Intentionally)

As a chubby teenager and then, an adolescent skinny-fat person (until the age of 27), the thought of gaining weight, as fat or muscle, was one that I did not entertain. The words “gain” and “weight” together, in one sentence were unfathomable to me. I had spent a large part of my life being bullied for my weight- either for being too thin or too chubby/fat.

As would be the case with any person, bullied for their weight, I tried a number of approaches to lose the fat (healthy AND unhealthy). I felt wonderful when I lost weight. After months of being lean, I wanted to gain muscle, while being fully aware of the fact that fat gain, in the process, was inevitable.

Unlike before, I was going to gain weight intentionally, while swimming and lifting weights and tracking my macros.

Here are a few things I learned from gaining weight:

Body Positivity Matters

I was scared of gaining weight, in the form of fat, but I’m well-aware of methods, approaches and diets that help lose fat in an effective manner. So, my fear of weight gain was compensated by my knowledge and prior experience in weight loss.

However, this doesn’t change the fact that I was gaining weight as fat AND muscle. Knowing I was doing it with an end goal and by choice helped me see my body in a new light. I felt more positively about/towards it.

My body needed the caloric surplus after 1.5 years of JUST CUTTING (albeit at a gradual pace) and my mind needed a little re-wiring to deal with the fear of putting on weight. I like to deal with my fears head-on.

I was re-establishing my relationship with my body and essentially, myself. Getting to know my body again and gaining weight, voluntarily- a goal it wasn’t familiar with- actually had a positive impact on my body, mind AND soul. It changed the way I viewed weight, weight gain and my body, for the better.

P.S: I WILL, however, admit, I wasn’t too pleased with the weight I’d gained in my face.

Forgiving Myself Made The Process Easier

I’m a Sagittarius/Scorpio cusp which means not only do I overthink but also, I can’t let go with ease. I just CANNOT. My mind can put me in a real funk: upon accomplishing what I’d envisioned for myself, it would encourage me to reminisce and remember how I USED to look and to question whether gaining weight was the right thing to do.

Occasionally, I’d wonder whether I was making a mistake. However, this thought was quickly replaced by how amazing I FELT. I’m a big believer of the notion that feelings matter more than thoughts (which are limited by their own knowledge).

Choosing to gain weight was a decision that came with a sense of freedom and liberation. I’d stopped thinking about what USED to be and started thinking about how gaining weight made me feel, at the time. Deliberately gaining weight enabled me to forgive myself for my past, re-do my present and work towards eliminating the fear of gaining weight.

My mind learned to stop fearing food and weight gain while my metabolism increased (a process that will happen as you gain muscle weight) and the fat I gained was accompanied by muscle. Additionally, I felt a deep sense of contentment and satisfaction because I knew this process was going to benefit me in the long run (which it has/did)!

How You Feel About Your Body Really Is All About YOUR Perspective

In a way, gaining weight intentionally, was a way for me to regain the control I never knew I had over my body and mind, as a kid. Back then, I wasn’t in control of what I ate.

I was merely responding to my circumstances and to the company I surrounded myself with. If I was made to feel badly about my weight, in an effort to gain approval, I would respond to it by overeating or not eating at all. Other people’s opinions mattered to me. How people saw me mattered.

This time none of that mattered because I was going to gain weight on my terms. I had gained more than I’d ever carried (voluntarily or involuntarily) in my life before. I didn’t feel badly about my body at all but there did come a point when I felt the need to lose the weight I’d gained, for myself.

Some clothes that I LOVED didn’t fit me anymore and I’ve gained muscle on my legs, which means I can’t fit into my favorite (and only) pair of ripped jeans (even though I’ve lost most of the fat I had put on). That, in itself, was a big deal to me BUT I saw this as an achievement instead of worrying about the weight I’d gained.

January 2019 (I’d gained more weight over the next 3 months)

Fun fact: how you feel about your body also affects the way it loses and/or gains weight. Our bodies actually respond to the way we feel by producing hormones that can affect weight gain and loss. When I was skinny-fat, other people’s opinions mattered. No matter how little I ate, I was still flabby because I was miserable and so, my body produced cortisol, which affected me adversely.

Today, I eat way more than I did back then, and gaining or losing weight has been a fun experience and not only do I lose/gain weight the way I want to but I feel better about myself, too!

At the end of the day, if your journey is about gaining approval, your body WILL respond to how you feel towards it because that just is how it works.

Thank you, for taking the time to read my post and feel free to comment, subscribe and share this post.

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Kindness Is Not Always A Virtue, Honesty Is

There’s kind and then, there’s stupid. My grandmother used to say “Don’t be so arrogant that people run away from you but don’t be so kind that you make it easy for people to spit all over you (or was it ‘walk all over you’?)”.

I never really understood the statement. I was young and I had seen all these movies and cartoons that propagated the myth that kindness is a virtue. I was told by most people “kindness is a virtue” and therefore, being kind is extremely important- ironically, the advise only applied to the advisee, not to the advisor (who could and often was the worst person in the world).

If you know me, personally, I’m a BIG fan of kindness and positivity. However, Saturn’s in transit (which basically means the planet has orbited back to where it was at the time of my birth and intends on staying there for a bit) since the past year and a half and age (and therapy- a common theme in my blogs) has taught me kindness doesn’t ALWAYS pay.

You know what does? Honesty.

I’d frequently tell white lies, not out of malice, but because I didn’t want to break the other person’s heart. I’d say I was happy, when I obviously was not, again, to avoid confrontation and breaking a person’s heart. I’d go out of my way to help people feel better about themselves- even though I didn’t need to! As the saying goes, you can’t make everyone like you- you’re not pizza.

The truth is, I thought being that way would HELP the other person. I didn’t mind when people were honest to/with me. In fact, I’d always appreciated when they were. Honesty can be heartbreaking but it can also be freeing. I didn’t really mind the heartbreak, at all, and I found myself respecting honest people.

Somehow, subconsciously, I just responded to them because I realized that if they were being honest to me they were being honest to themselves.

Sometimes, you need to be a low-fat brownie. Sure, not everyone’s going to like you nor will they want you but you’re healthier than pizza.

Oftentimes, life doesn’t suck- our approach to life does. What’s even weirder is the people who often say “life sucks” are usually the kind ones!

Why? Because kindness, without honesty, comes with expectations and usually leads to heartbreak. Honesty, on the other hand, is far more helpful and helps lay boundaries, manage our expectations and relationships and our lives in a manner that is beneficial to our mental and physical health.

Sometimes you NEED to tell a person they’ve gained weight, if they ask you, because you could help them in the long run. Sometimes you need to tell people light brown belts don’t go with black shoes because it could help them AND you (from a world of headache pills). Sometimes you need to tell people where and if they are wrong- especially if you care for them- because that might help break a pattern. AND honesty helps establish much needed boundaries, too.

Final Good-Bye To Fitness

I am often asked to give tips, just as anyone else who is in the industry, regarding weight loss, weight gain, fat loss, fat gain, skinny-fat and other topics that fit under the umbrella of fitness. I felt the need to make this final post, on the matter, before I’ve completely moved on from talking about fitness.

It’s not that I don’t love fitness. I do but only for myself. It’s just that I am ‘uncoupling’ from it as a career and some of you were introduced to me through and because of fitness.

So, this is my final post and therefore ‘good bye’ (or think of it as a eulogy) to fitness in that way. 

General Workout Tips

Every trainer will give you different tips on the kind of workout you SHOULD be focusing on or on the workout format you SHOULD follow. Use their tips to get to know your body but please know this: training will NEVER help you get ANYWHERE until and unless you follow a diet. If working out did suffice, everyone could just run or lift weights and get the physique they want but our bodies don’t function that way.

Tip 1: Focus on compound exercises in the gym because these utilize a higher amount of muscle fibers and help gain muscle (https://www.livestrong.com/article/477024-list-of-compound-exercises/).

Tip 2: Weight lifting is amazing in the long run while HIIT is great in the short run.

Tip 3: Check your ego at the door, regardless of what workout you do. Heavy weights won’t help you gain muscle if you’re not executing an exercise properly and no, “bro” lifting 100 kgs with improper form won’t get you those pecs you’re dying for. They WILL, however, injure you.

Tip 4: Change your workout and/or diet. If you’re not losing weight or gaining muscle, it’s because your body is either malnourished, overtrained or because it needs a challenge.

Tip 5: You can do all the crunches in the world and those 6/8 packs that you want won’t come out until and unless you’re in a caloric deficit and that takes time. 

Tip 6: Be patient with your body, trainer, workout and diet plan.

General Nutrition Tips

Step 1- Calculate your BMR here:
http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/#result

Step 2- Be truthful about your activity level to figure out how many calories you burn on a daily basis (by multiplying your BMR with values given as per activity levels) here:

http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/harris-benedict-equation/

This will tell you how many calories you burn on a daily basis. It is suggested that you eat 250-500 calories less if you want to lose fat and 250-500 calories more if you want to gain muscle. However, do note if you eat more calories, you will gain fat.

Lean bulking is better for muscle gain because you gain muscle and minimize fat gain. You can check out this website, or discuss it with a trainer, to figure out how to create your lean bulk diet: https://www.maxinutrition.com/sports/bodybuilding/10-Hacks-for-a-Lean-Bulk-Transformation/.

Once you have figured out your calories, get your macros in order. I eat a higher amount of carbs on days I lift heavy and a lower amount of carbs on days that I don’t.

Protein should be 1gs/body weight in pounds. So, if you weight 75 kgs, multiply this by 2.2 and you get 165 lbs. That’s how much protein you should have, ideally, on any given day. Go lower than this and you risk muscle loss (which means you will become flabby). Fats are towards the lower side of the spectrum.

This is the approach that I use. These values vary from one person to the other and from one diet to the other.

People who advocate keto are likely to eat a higher amount of fat and lower amount of carbs. People who are in favor of high protein diets will suggest a higher amount of protein while keeping carbs and fats towards the lower end of the spectrum, for example.

The purpose of this post is not to educate you on a particular diet or workout but to familiarize you with basic, general, tips that all trainers give you on a daily basis (and yet somehow, no one seems to remember them!).

Final Word Of Advice To Anyone Wanting To Get Fit Or Into Fitness

Over the years, I’ve dealt with a variety of clients, from different backgrounds and the one reason that they all wanted to change their body was this: they wanted to matter. (This is a topic I will address in another blog post without incorporating the fitness angle).

I wanted to get fit because I mattered to myself. I realized no one, no matter how much or how little they loved me, was coming to ‘save’ me from myself. Why? Because they can’t. You can have the BEST trainer in the world but if you don’t have a healthy relationship with YOURSELF, you won’t get where you want.

Getting ‘fit’ isn’t about the weights you hit nor the diet you eat. It really IS a lifestyle. The guys and girls with abs out there aren’t just there because of ‘genetics’ or because they want to look good but it’s because they do recognize that fitness is a lifestyle and that it is one that you DO need to commit to.

Secondly, you don’t need abs to be fit. Your body fat percentage can be towards the higher side, if you prefer, or you could be extremely skinny. I am ALL FOR body positivity. It’s something I’ve posted about, with pictures, on my Instagram BUT if you don’t feel good with where you are and if there are health concerns, you probably do need to change things around. Not everyone with abs is healthy or happy.

I was just as happy, when I gained weight, as I was without it but if I need the drive and push to lose weight, I know that I can push myself to get there because I’m comfortable enough with my body, NOW, to be able to meet my goal/s. I know and admire people who are VERY happy and secure with their weight, regardless of how much they weigh, and they LOOK AMAZING.

Third, get into fitness for yourself. A lot of people want to lose weight for someone else. If the start of your journey to fitness isn’t your own, the ending won’t be either. Putting the hard work, determination, effort and desire to change your body- whatever sort of change you might be looking for (gain or loss)- is a choice you make for yourself. Allowing anyone to dictate that change won’t yield results or if they do, those results won’t last long.

Finally, if you’re willing to take the steps required to change your body, listen to your body. This is important because the way you look at and feel about your body DOES (no matter what anyone says) affect the way you view the world. How you view the world does impact you as a person.

Thank you for reading taking the time to read my final post on fitness. 🙂 I hope you benefit from it and if you’re interested in following me on any social media platform, here are my handles:

Instagram: HumzahRaja
Snapchat: Hmraja89

Why I Left Fitness As A Career (& Why I Got Into It)

Growing up I was a kid who had (more than) his fair share of troubles at an age when puberty and school need to be the only concerns. Fitness, I found at the time, was my escape. I’d get these Men’s Health magazines and books on the “South Beach Diet” and “The Abs Diet” and read them for hours.

I am (and was) a voracious reader AND I wanted to transform myself emotionally, mentally and physically. Plus I’m a cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius- two of the most passion-driven signs in astrology, in my opinion. So, the need to transform and the drive to change things around took me over. It wasn’t an easy journey for me.

Fitness As An Anchor

Everyone has an anchor that they rely on or turn to. This can be a friend, parent, family member, group of friends, work, studies, art or sports. Fitness was my anchor.

I wasn’t a very expressive child and I kept a lot of my emotions bottled up. When I was bullied, hurt or anxious, I felt the need to get to the gym, lift weights, read books on weight (back then, fat and weight loss was considered to be the same thing) to focus on something other than the emotions and hopelessness that affected me within. When I was happy and joyful, I felt the need to do the same but I was experiencing a lot of trauma and pain, on a subconscious level, and fitness enabled me to use that pain to change myself.

Sure, the results weren’t always evident nor did I get the results that I do now but what I knew and felt back then, was enough for me. Also, it made more sense for me to listen to the sounds of weights and to witness physical changes than it was to know just how deeply affected I was by life.

Fitness had become my anchor. A LOT was going wrong around me, in every way, but knowing I had access to a gym, weights and books on fitness was enough for me. It was all I needed.

The external circumstances DID affect me but knowing that I had this aspect to life that was JUST MINE to experience, made me feel somewhat stable, anchored and the noise and calamity of the background, that was my life at the time, didn’t bother me, on a conscious level, as much as it did initially.

I was externalizing the pain I felt within AND experienced change internally and externally, too. I might not have looked the way I knew I could, yet, but holding an image of how I would look was motivation enough for me. It was cathartic. 

Fitness As A Career

The thought of fitness as a career was one that I’d never thought of nor entertained. It was an avenue that, I thought, could only be explored and ventured, by bodybuilders and fitness coaches. I was dedicated to getting into the shape I wanted to but the fact that fitness could ever be a career choice for me was not one that I had the chance to entertain until 2015.

I did get into great shape because I was surrounded by people who gave me honest feedback and guidance. However, this was guidance I took into account because it mattered to me. These were men and women who had the kind of body that I wanted and learned A LOT from but the information they gave me resonated with me and I was willing to follow their suggestions. It wasn’t the superficial aspect that drove me at all but the fact that I could actually use the information that people, who were recently in the same boat as myself, to get where I wanted that gave me that extra push.

Plus, I had social media, YouTube and all sorts of material that I could play with and rely on. Fitness was, continued to be and will be my anchor because that’s just who I am.

What I didn’t realize was that there’s a line between enjoying an aspect of your life and making that aspect a career. I enjoy talking but that doesn’t mean I enjoy being on a talk show. Likewise, I enjoy social media but that didn’t mean I enjoyed being a social media marketer (something I dabbled with for a bit). I didn’t understand this at the time.

I DID enjoy talking to and hanging out with clients who I am now friends with. I DID enjoy meeting colleagues through fitness who taught me SO MUCH (and continue to do so) about life and its everything it has to offer.

What I DID NOT see was that I had stopped enjoying fitness itself. I was becoming averse to fitness. I stopped reading fitness-related material. I stopped looking at YouTube videos that had anything to do with fitness and everything that I did, outside of work, was a distraction from fitness itself. I’m a huge fan of fitness on a personal level but, for a while, everything that I did outside of work became a way of distracting myself from fitness.

I figure, as I write this, I had unrealistic expectations of the people I trained. When those expectations weren’t met, I would carry the anxiety of the lack of results for days. There’s a big difference between setting and meeting expectations for yourself and imposing your expectations on others.

You KNOW you will meet and reach your goals but it would be unfair to expect others to set and meet the same goals for themselves. It’s unfair to expect the same things that you do, of yourself, from others. When you set expectations for yourself, there’s a driving force within that enables you to get what you want. Imposing the same expectations on others is cruel because everyone IS different.

Everyone has a different anchor and their drive varies but to impose expectations on one another isn’t right. It’s cruel. I saw this as something I wanted to do to ‘help’ people. However, it stopped becoming a means of ‘helping’ people and started becoming a way of controlling them. I dislike being controlled and I dislike controlling people even more.

What I had started as a healing process for myself became detrimental for me and it no longer appealed to me. I felt drained and angry and I no longer had the same level of dedication to the career as I did before.

Fitness was still my anchor but it was also something that I’d stopped enjoying as a career. I just held on to fitness as a career because it was the only thing I knew.

Now, I don’t talk about nor document my fitness routines, workouts, results and diet as much because, the truth is, it matters to me on a personal level but that’s about it. I blog about it infrequently (because I love to write) but it is no longer a career that I wish to take on.

I’m not unhappy about having been a trainer. I was fortunate enough to have met SO MANY people who were driven, passionate and funny. Fitness, as a (former) trainer, will always mean so much to me but the people I met and the lessons I learned will always mean a whole lot more.

At the end of the day, the truth is, I was good at fitness but fitness, as a career, stopped being good to me. This had nothing to do with people or organizations but more to do with fitness (training, more specifically), itself, as a career.

Thank you, so much, for taking the time to read my blog. Please, subscribe, comment and share and if there’s any topic you’d like me to address, do let me know 🙂

4 Life Lessons I’ve Learned From Think & Grow Rich By Napolean Hill

Think & Grow Rich was written by Napolean Hill in 1937, during the Great Depression. This particular book resonated with me for two reasons:

A) It addresses the notion that health and wealth has more to do with the way we are and perceive the world and less to do with how much money we have in our bank accounts and

B) The book’s whole premise is based on THE MOST important factor: belief and how what we believe affects our subconscious mind and, in turn, our world.

What You Are Conscious Of Is Conscious Of You

There are 2 types of people out there: those who are “failure conscious” and those who are “success conscious”.

Failure conscious people tend to depend on immediate outcomes and so, will quit when life doesn’t go the way they want it to. They depend on external factors (people, money, fame and success) to validate them and their efforts. This group has a ‘low’ vibration and they harbor thoughts that make them so. They have no internal anchor and live to impress others and so, they are more likely, than not, to fail in their endeavors.

This is because the journey they embark on won’t help them grow. It never was meant to. Their ship will sink because other people’s opinions act as their compass and when they don’t get validation and approval, they lose their spirit and sense of purpose.

While validation, praise, approval and partaking never hurts, living for it will result in failure.

Success conscious people, on the other hand, are willing to go the extra mile to get what they want. External factors are secondary to them. Their primary goal is to help mankind and everything else (that failure conscious people depend on) is a by-product.

They enjoy validation, approval and praise but only because it lights them up. They seek to encourage, not appease, people. They are true to themselves and so, are honest in their speech, motivations, endeavors and what they do actually matters to them.

If you want to know which of the two categories you fall in, see the impact you have on others and on yourself. If you still FEEL GOOD about it and if you envision yourself doing what you do now, in the long run, even when the odds are against you, you are success conscious.

There are 2 types of people out there: those who are “failure conscious” and those who are “success conscious”.

Failure conscious people tend to depend on immediate outcomes and so, will quit when life doesn’t go the way they want it to. They depend on external factors (people, money, fame and success) to validate them and their efforts. This group has a ‘low’ vibration and they harbor thoughts that make them so. They have no internal anchor and live to impress others and so, they are more likely, than not, to fail in their endeavors.

This is because the journey they embark on won’t help them grow. It never was meant to. Their ship will sink because other people’s opinions act as their compass and when they don’t get validation and approval, they lose their spirit and sense of purpose.

While validation, praise, approval and partaking never hurts, living for it will result in failure.

Success conscious people, on the other hand, are willing to go the extra mile to get what they want. External factors are secondary to them. Their primary goal is to help mankind and everything else (that failure conscious people depend on) is a by-product.

They enjoy validation, approval and praise but only because it lights them up. They seek to encourage, not appease, people. They are true to themselves and so, are honest in their speech, motivations, endeavors and what they do actually matters to them.

If you want to know which of the two categories you fall in, see the impact you have on others and on yourself. If you still FEEL GOOD about it and if you envision yourself doing what you do now, in the long run, even when the odds are against you, you are success conscious. W

What You DESIRE Will Come To You

There’s a difference between wishing for and desiring something or someone. Everyone ‘wishes’ for something to happen but a wish is passive. You don’t necessarily need to put any effort into actualizing whatever it is that you wish for. If you get whatever it is that you wish for, the sense of happiness and joy experienced is temporary because little to no amount of effort was put into the wish.

When in a state of DESIRE, you are willing to put the work, effort, investment and make choices that will get you whatever it is that you desire. You have honest-to-God, truthful, no nuisance, conversations with yourself about how to get to your end goal.

You imagine whatever it is that you want and your mind and heart provide you with all the answers and solutions you need to get there because that is TRULY what you want and desire. Every emotion you have; every opportunity that comes your way; everything that you feel and think navigates you towards the object (or person) that you desire.

No obstacle, setback or limitation will defeat you and quitting is not an option. Limitations are seen as temporary issues that can be dealt with and quitting is not an issue.

Whatever you truly desire WILL come to you. That just is how the universe works. It will bring whatever you can conceive and imagine into reality.

If you aren’t getting what you want, it’s because you’re not taking the right steps to attract it or because you don’t really want it. And if you want to know what your heart truly desires, all you’ve got to do is to shut off your brain and listen to your body. The option that makes you feel calm (even though the odds might seem to be against you) is the one that you should go for.

There’s a difference between wishing for and desiring something or someone. Everyone ‘wishes’ for something to happen but a wish is passive. You don’t necessarily need to put any effort into actualizing whatever it is that you wish for. If you get whatever it is that you wish for, the sense of happiness and joy experienced is temporary because little to no amount of effort was put into the wish.

When in a state of DESIRE, you are willing to put the work, effort, investment and make choices that will get you whatever it is that you desire. You have honest-to-God, truthful, no nuisance, conversations with yourself about how to get to your end goal.

You imagine whatever it is that you want and your mind and heart provide you with all the answers and solutions you need to get there because that is TRULY what you want and desire. Every emotion you have; every opportunity that comes your way; everything that you feel and think navigates you towards the object (or person) that you desire.

No obstacle, setback or limitation will defeat you and quitting is not an option. Limitations are seen as temporary issues that can be dealt with and quitting is not an issue.

Whatever you truly desire WILL come to you. That just is how the universe works. It will bring whatever you can conceive and imagine into reality.

If you aren’t getting what you want, it’s because you’re not taking the right steps to attract it or because you don’t really want it. And if you want to know what your heart truly desires, all you’ve got to do is to shut off your brain and listen to your body. The option that makes you feel calm (even though the odds might seem to be against you) is the one that you should go for.

Self-Belief Is An Unstoppable Force

Everyone wants to do something with their lives but there’s a difference between wanting to do something and believing you have the skills, talents and the abilities that require you to get to your end goal. When you believe in your skills, soul and drive you’ve accepted the tools that your journey has provided you with and that really is all you need- self-belief.

The skill and trait you enjoy and possess is an extension of who you are. These form part of you that is so true to you that no one can take it away from you. It helps you rise from the ashes, every time an obstacle comes your way. The same skill or trait acts is one that you rely on, when it comes to humankind. It is your essence.

For example, if you’re an artist, it is natural for you to express yourself through your art. It always has been part of who you are. This mode of expression might evolve but it will always be part of who you are because it is something that your soul craves. You can try to deny it but a part of you will ALWAYS want to pick up a paint brush or sit on your computer to produce something that enables you to express yourself.

It is something that you genuinely enjoy and is natural to your being. It enables you to bridge what you feel, deep inside, with what the world needs. No matter what others say or do, you just know it to be part of you and it helps you change your life’s circumstances and reality.

The skill that you have must be:

1. Enjoyable to you so you can
2. Provide it as a product or service to others
3. Something that comes naturally to you and is part of your being, even when others don’t believe it to be so.

Everyone is skilled in some way or the other but there is always the ONE skill, talent or trait that stands out, in every individual. It is a skill that has enabled you to withstand hardship, pain and the lows of life.

It’s something that is etched in you and is a part of who you are to the extent that it gives you the drive to live the illusion that we all know as ‘life’. It is an inner force that takes you over when everyone and everything outside does not or cannot provide you the strength you need. Nothing in the world can take the patience, strength and resilience that the skill or trait provides you with.

Honoring this aspect of your being by turning it into a service or product adds value to it. It becomes a part of other people’s lives either financially, emotionally, psychologically or spiritually. You might be good at writing and communicating with people in which case your skill could prove to be beneficial to people at an emotional level.

You could be an artist who paints, draws, sketches or makes 3D images, songs and cartoons that RESONATE with people. You could be a doctor who is good at identifying what a patient suffers from or because of. You could be a software engineer who makes stimulating games for people suffering due to Alzheimer’s. You could be a comedian who makes people laugh, when they need it most. You could be an actor/actress who’s success stories and characters resonates with other people. You could be a model who encourages people to develop self-confidence, to prioritize self-care and to work on self-belief to get what and where they want to in life. You could be a businesswoman who motivates other women to take the reigns of their lives and to redefine themselves or their lives.

These are just a few examples of skills that one might possess and helps add value to other people’s lives.

If you don’t enjoy a skill or trait, you are disengaging from an aspect of yourself that you don’t need, believe in or one that no longer serves you. It is not a skill/trait that is true to you nor to your being. As a result, you will lack persistence, self-belief and you would be doing a disservice to others AND to yourself.

Why? Because you will see brick walls where people who truly enjoy having that skill, trait or knowledge see open doors.

Your motivation won’t come from WITHIN which means, no matter how good you might be at doing something, you won’t be in a position to provide a service or product to others.

Surround Yourself With People Who Help You

The kind of people you surround yourself with will either help you or they won’t. Ensure you’re surrounding yourself with the former and NOT the latter.

Most people surround themselves with individuals with temporary, short-lived entertainment value. The problem with empty partnerships is that they lack soul and depth.

You won’t LEARN anything from them because they are on a different journey- one that has nothing to do with yours. These friendships and bonds are perishable. They seem great in the short run but in the long run they become toxic, rotten and they drain you.

The right friendships and relationships TEACH you something about yourself, about life, people and growth. Both, you and the person you form a relationship with (be it romantic, professional or otherwise) one another that each individual contributes to, constructively.

Surround yourself with people that have the same passion, vigor and drive that you do, no matter what field you choose to get into. Napoleon Hill refers to these relationships as “The Master Mind” and explains them as “Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people for the attainment of a definite purpose”. This, in my opinion, applies to any and every relationship.

Without clarity, respect, a vision and a ‘burning desire’ to achieve a goal (whatever it may be) the bond is empty, destructive and futile.

Thank you, for taking the time to read. I will be writing more on books I’ve read and found helpful. Do subscribe, share and let me know what you think in the comments section below.

3 Rules All Gym-Goers Need To Follow

You know the one place that really needs to have a guide or rulebook but doesn’t?

Gyms!

I’ve been to all sorts of gyms and the one thing I’ve learned, from experience, is that not everyone seems to follow gym etiquette rules that are pretty basic, straightforward and something that one would think to be common sense!

Let’s dive right into them:

Rule #1: Thou Must Weareth Deodorant.

I know, this one’s something you’d expect everyone to follow, regardless of where they are, right?

Turns out that’s not the case!

Look at it this way: a gym is place where you’ll come across all sorts of unassuming people who are, for the most part, looking to lose, gain or maintain weight. We want nothing more than to workout, pump some iron, listen to some music and then, leave in time for an errand, hangout or protein shake.

When you don’t make the conscious effort to take 2 seconds out of your life to spray or roll on some deo, every time you raise your arms, you are exposing someone to a life-threatening, traumatizing experience that they will never, ever, ever, forget.

Every time you extend your hand to meet someone, you’re meeting a casualty. You are a walking, talking, moving, stretching invitation to a lifetime of bad memories that no one should be subjected to.

Do you REALLY want to be the reason that shoulder presses are banned from the world?

Think about that the next time you avoid deodorant.

Rule #2: Thou Must Maintain Fresh Breath.

Breathing is every individual’s birthright. It is a necessity. How will you live, if you stop breathing, right?

You know what they call people who don’t breathe? Corpses or dead. You are actually REGISTERED as dead, for all purposes, when you stop breathing.

Some gym-goers abuse their right to live and privilege to breathe by ignoring oral hygiene. You know the kind I’m talking about? Every time you say “Hi” to them you’re fearful you might be saying “Bye” to life.

With each breath they take you see the before and after of a Colgate ad. With each sentence they speak, the environment weeps. They commemorate the dead by smelling like them before they actually die. They make zombies seem more civil and clean.

If breathing is a necessity, then, chewing gym is an invention. Breathing is the mother of chewing gum. In a place, such as the gym, where activity levels are high, please, don’t separate the two from one another.

Rule #3: Thou Must Remember Not To Treat The Gym As If Though Thou Brethren Hath Made It.

Weights to a rules-abiding gym-goer are the same as candy to a baby. We want them available to us so we can do whatever exercise we have on our workout plans that day. Some problems can be avoided by simply sharing the weights because sharing really is caring when it comes to weights, supplements and information that we actually ask for.

You know what CAN’T be avoided?

Seeing someone standing in front of the weight racks or squat tracks, laughing and hogging the equipment, while talking about something as irrelevant as their lives! Make an appointment with a therapist or get a coffee or talk to your spouses, mistresses/misters, boyfriends or girlfriends about unimportant topics.

With each breathe you waste talking about your life, you’re taking up a second of a gym-goer’s time who could actually be spending time developing their quads or glutes (or any other muscle, depending on what day it is for them). You know who would ACTUALLY benefit from such interactions at a gym?

NO ONE!

Thank you, for taking the time to read these rules. You are more than welcome to print these out for circulation.

What are some of your gym-related pet peeves?

What To Do When You Feel Like Giving Up

The toughest conversations we have are the ones we have with ourselves. No one knows about them. No one can feel the pain behind the words that we use to give shape to our feelings.

No one can understand them and not everyone is willing to hear why anyone would want to give up, when they seem like they have everything.

Not everyone understands that sometimes a smile is just a coverup for the heartbreak that we don’t talk about.

It is in these dark, lonely, moments that we feel like giving up on our goals, ourselves and, in some cases, on life itself.

What’s even more challenging is the ‘Why?’ that comes with those conversations. Most people do not understand that it’s not about the reasoning but the feelings that cause one to venture down the path of numbness and despair.

The problems we all face are similar, if not the same, but the feelings that they evoke are different for every person.

Why We Feel Like Giving Up

Hopelessness is the reason we feel like giving up on anything and/or anyone.

Most people struggle to ‘understand’ hopelessness and the idea that anyone’s mindset could invite such a guest seems surprising or shocking.

No one wants to be hopeless but hopelessness is not a thought nor a thought process. It is the single, most paralyzing, emotional whirlpool that takes over mind and body to the extent that one is unable to see, feel or muster up the courage to walk towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

Giving up feels like the ONLY solution in the face of hopelessness.

Dealing With Hopelessness

It is heartbreaking to see and know the thoughts and feelings that one is capable of experiencing in a state of hopelessness. No amount of support- be it financial, emotional, psychological, mental, physical- is enough to pull one out of the pit of despair.

Hopelessness comes with a burden that is far too overwhelming to deal with which is why some give in to it while others take self-destructive measures so that they can stop feeling and enter a state of oblivion.

Not everyone has a therapist to go to nor does everyone have a friend that they feel they can speak to. That is what makes hopelessness a lonely and painful road.

Here are a few approaches that, I hope, might work for those of you that do feel hopeless (no matter what the cause):

Revisit Your “Why”

All of us have a “why” that enables us to muster the courage to wake up, get out of bed and get ready for the day.

Your “why” is the foundation on which you build your life. Your why is the basis of your vision for your life. It is the anchor around which you develop your life.

My “why” for getting into fitness was recognizing the strength I had to change my life around, for the kind of future that I knew I developed and could achieve.

No matter what field of work I get into, the essence of my “why” stays the same.

My “why” helps me decide what kind of relationships I want to form; what kind of environment I’d like to be in; what kind of people I want to surround myself with and how to deal with people and circumstances that are not in line with my “why”.

What is YOUR “Why” and is your life in line with it? 

Take The Day Off To Feel Hopeless

Sometimes we ignore the anxiety and negative emotions either because we’re too busy to check into ourselves or because we don’t want to deal with them at all.

Emotions need to be channelized and they need outlets but when we keep them bottled up, they become unmanageable and haunt is in the form of hopelessness.

Take the day off from everything and everyone to fully feel your emotions; to re-evaluate yourself and to find out why you feel hopeless. Sometimes, a broken heart needs to feel broken before it can mend.

Turn Back to The Hard Times That You Experienced In The Past

The toughest moments in our lives have a way of sticking to us. We tend to identify with them and make them part of our narrative or we seek ways to escape the impact that they had on us. Either way, fear, rather than acceptance, is the driving force here.

Every difficult experience that we face comes with:

1. A sense of hopelessness and/or misery
2. A lesson
3. Rebirth

Recall how you felt and ask yourself how you transformed, in response to the difficult moment. This specific approach has a way of showing us how capable we are of dealing with our issues and of turning down the volume of the voice of hopelessness.

The cure to hopelessness comes from the very circumstances that made us feel that way in the first place.

Sometimes, we need to accept the venom of our past experiences to heal ourselves for a better future.

Thank you, for taking the time to read. Do like and share this post. Every day we come across people that we assume to be happy with their lives, when they might be masking the worst form of pain and struggle that they’ve known. I hope that this post helps those that you care and love, deal with the pain of hopelessness.

Why Loss Is The Best Teacher We Will Ever Meet

Have you ever stopped to think about the difficult experiences you might have suffered?

Have you ever thought about the one heartbreak that accompanies everything from success and relationships to finances, career and life itself?

It’s a simple word that we all use but don’t really put much thought into. It’s a word that we all fear but can never fully embrace. It’s a word that we are taught not to think of nor embrace but one that we must work to save ourselves from.

It’s a word that everyone knows to be a reality but no one talks about. It is a word that is a reality that most people avoid speaking of.

The word is LOSS.

Why We Fear Loss

Every single day we fear loss.

We think about the love that we’re scared of losing- be it because of fights, disagreements or death- when, in fact, it might have been love we never had in the first place.

We fear the loss of power that gives us a social standing, when, in fact, these factors prevent us from being true to ourselves.

We fear the loss of our cars and clothes and everything that we have become familiar with because we identify with them, when, in fact, none of those associations or affiliations truly made us happy.

We fear loss because we fear the change that we need to embrace for a brighter and better future that resonates with our soul.

LOSS = Listening To One’s Soul Self

The pain of losing tangible objects and people is too much for most of us to bear. A lot of us do everything we can to hold on to the objects we have invested so much time, money and energy in.

We change ourselves to be accepted by people we believe love us, when deep down, we know that real acceptance and love comes from a place of effortless change and not from a place of fear, anger or resentment.

Loss is not the ‘deprivation’ of something or someone from our lives but a circumstance that enables us to re-assess everything and everyone who truly makes us happy and resonates with who we truly are. It shows us what and who really matters and filters out the people and things that don’t.

Loss shows us the importance of letting go of everything and everyone so that we can embrace who we REALLY are without labels, strings and relationships that no longer serve us.

It is the only way we recognize how the lifestyle that we thought resonated with us, didn’t. It is the only way we recognize what truly makes us feel calm and at ease on a level that is so deep that it resonates with our souls.

Sometimes we have to lose everything and everyone we identified with or else we might lose our souls to them.

Misconceptions About Fitness Addicts

When I was younger, I believed, pretty much the same things that any bystander, with little to no experience in fitness, would believe about a person whose life revolves around the fitness.

Thoughts oscillated between “He/She can eat ANYTHING they want to from halwa and chapattis to barbecue and salad and still look great!” and “The minute I inhale the aroma of food inside a store, I tend to put on weight faster than Usain Bolt crossing the finish line”.

Life was then, kind of enough to introduce me to the world of fitness and to get into shape that I’m pretty proud of, if I say so for myself. However, one thing I DID learn was a lot of what I’d believed as a young kid was based on misconceptions.

Misconception #1: Fitness addicts eat whatever they want.

Thought I’d dive right in and address this myth. As a fitness addict I can tell you we eat the same foods that everyone else does. We’re blessed with the same anatomical gifts as anyone and everyone else out there, who accuses fitness addicts of basically being voluntary dustbins who can eat anything they want.

I might eat more than I did, say, 5 years ago but that’s because I have to in order to maintain the body I like. This is true for any and every fitness trainer/addict/enthusiast out there.

Oftentimes I’m looking down at my phone and dialing my macros into MyFitnessPal and smiling only because I see I can still eat my favorite brownies (within limits) or oatmeal with peanut butter because my caloric intake allows me to do so. And then, I’ll thank God and myself for having the willpower to not eat everything in sight and denying “Just a small bite of the daal”. You’re thinking ‘small bite’ because you haven’t yet been introduced to MyFitnessPal while I’m thinking “50 calories/9gs fat/5gs carbs/2 gs protein is just not worth the taste”.

Misconception #2: Fitness addicts can wear whatever they want….or not.

Okay, I agree with the latter but one thing I CAN vouch for is the fact that I’ve never been able to wear whatever I want. I buy what I want after research (and by research I mean trying on 2 sizes of the same pants in changing rooms) because the standard size won’t fit me. My legs tend to grow faster than the rest of my body and they ARE bigger than my upper body. I see that as a blessing but then, when I have to buy clothes for myself, I’m reminded of how certain clothes can’t or won’t fit me.

I’ll have to get pants that are 1-2 inches bigger than mine so my thighs can fit in them….only to feel like I’m wearing Aladdin’s street rat clothes (which, by the way, is an actual term). And so, the next option is to go for stretchy jeans, sportswear, shorts, tanktops and vests- not that I’m complaining. I fully embrace and love my body no matter how much weight I lose or gain.

Misconception #3: Fitness addicts train so they can eat.

I’m often told (not asked) “So, like, you can eat whatever you want. The main thing is to train. Train and you can eat whatever you want”. Such people are the face-palm of the fitness world. There are so many thing wrong with that sentence.

Fitness addicts EAT to TRAIN. Shocking, I know, but the fact of the matter is the body needs fuel and we eat so we can lift.

Misconception #4: Lifting heavy is always good because no pain, no gain (cuz, you miring, ‘bro’?.)

This particular misconception makes me cringe because it justifies any version of pain a novice might experience. The only time ‘lifting heavy’ is good is when the words are used in reference to a container of protein shakes. Using the word for any other reason or purpose is just wrong.

Fitness addicts don’t lift heavy from the get-go. We take our time to build up to that point and learn about our bodies over the years. We don’t go bench pressing from 10 kgs to 200 kgs overnight. None of us is a green creature that abolishes everything out of anger. This isn’t Marvel or DC. This is real life.

The minute you experience pain, you need to set your weights down rather than screaming like you’re about to give birth in the middle of the gym. Again, shocking, I know BUT TRUE :D.

The One Question That Helps Make Decisions

We’re living in an era where decisions are treated like commodities and opinions hold the same power as money. Decision-making skills- right or wrong- are affected the ‘norm’.

Essentially, everything from the person one chooses to date to the pictures that one chooses to upload, on his or her social media platforms, is affected by multitudes of opinions.

We feel the need to type, retype, edit, think, revise and revisit everything from captions and comments to ensure our content does not offend ‘followers’ and ‘friends’ (lists that are comprised of family members, acquaintances, friends and people who don’t know and will probably never meet but are united in their causes, interests and beliefs).

Every decision made is assisted by a degree of anxiety, panic and self-doubt. This constant fear of how we might hurt or affect others takes over our mental faculties to the extent that we feel paralyzed by our own thoughts.

I came to realize my decisions, too, were affected by what others thought of me. This is not to say that I was a coward or had no mindset of my own. However, the mere fact that I’d hesitate and had to think twice, before making a decision, made me see how tainted and canopied my personal decision-making skills were.

The decisions I made were for myself had less to do with me and more to do with what I thought others would think of me. It was weird to notice how I was a spectator in my own head and decisions. I subtracted myself from the equation!

This applies to a large number of people, irrespective of age and gender, today. What’s even worse is how ‘normal’ self-doubt and fear of opinions has become. It’s considered ‘normal’ to think from the mind instead of the heart. It is considered ‘normal’ to apply rules and logic and terms and conditions to every decision we take and every step we take. It is considered ‘normal’ for people to dismiss their feelings for the opinions and logic of the masses, when the answer to most questions lie in how an individual feels towards the subject.

The One Question I Ask Myself Now

Over the past two years I’ve learned to rely on my own feelings and decision-making skills. The one question that helps me make this decision is:

“If you knew you’d be dead, 24 hours from now, what would you choose to do?”

How Embracing The Possibility of Death Helps Make Decisions

We are constantly fed information that distract or numb us to the imminence of death. No matter how much research goes into studying diseases and circumstances that ’cause’ death or how much we hope to delay it, death IS inevitable. Embracing the possibility of death is liberating and accepting the finality of death comes with a sense of calm and clarity.

You Stop Thinking About Other People

Knowing you can and will die, at any point, removes all the noise in your head that is comprised of what others might think of you, how they might treat you or look at your decisions.

Other people’s opinions stop mattering and you honor your choices, feelings and your nature thus making it easier to make decisions that are in line with your beliefs and value system.

The Permanence of Death Diminishes The Importance We Place On Factors That Don’t Really Matter

We’re all aware of the fact that we come to exist, we live and then, we die. However, somehow this truth lingers but is not accepted. We still take our relationships for granted, spend time and energy on things and people that we know aren’t good for our longevity and health and, worst of all, betray ourselves by not honoring what we feel about decisions that affect our lives. We make decisions that aren’t ours, allow people into our lives that we don’t really want, spend time and energy on people we don’t care for, cheat and lie to convince ourselves that we’re leading independent lives, all the while knowing we’re leading lives that were never ours to begin with.

Recognizing the permanence of death comes with the realization that no matter what we do, who we surround ourselves with, how much wealth we might possess or where we come from, what faith we subscribe to, all that really matters in the end is the life we lived and whether it mattered. The hold of material, relationships built on shaky and fake foundations and opinions of those around us stop mattering.

Everything else seems secondary, small and unnecessary because we start to embrace the fact that all that really matters is what we have done with our lives.

Acceptance Of Circumstances & People Becomes Easier

Accepting people and circumstances can be difficult. Most of us want something MORE for ourselves and we try to change people rather than accept them for who they are. Conversations lose their place as meaningful discussions, from which we can learn, and become heated arguments where two (or more) people are trying to influence one another’s decisions.

Life loses it’s place as a meaningful albeit temporary reality and becomes a series of events that we want to control and allow others to control, too.

Knowing just how real death is makes it easier for one to accept people for who they are; life for the circumstances it introduces us to and ourselves for what and who we are.

You Embrace Yourself For Who And How You Truly Are

We spend our whole lives giving weight to what OTHERS think of us. Validation of and approval by friends, peers, colleagues and family member with is given importance while we dismiss ourselves. What others might think of us and our ‘reputations’ matter more than being truthful to ourselves.

All of that loses it’s grip, when you embrace the inevitability of death. We embrace ourselves fully for who we are and the need to comply with others and to seek their validation loses it’s hold on us. In accepting the reality of death, we free ourselves of the prison that is made of other people’s opinions and cemented by the need for their approval.

The unnatural and inhuman, desire to impress others is replaced by self-respect, love, acceptance, honesty and the desire to live a life where we can fully and truly express ourselves and our truth as a human being.

How Journaling Changed My Life

You know how you talk to friends, family members in hopes of finding a solution to a problem in YOUR life? While that’s helpful, I’ve always believed in the mantra “live and let live” which, in this specific post, translates to letting others share their opinions, even if you don’t agree with it. I WOULD discuss my issues with people, in the past, hoping that they could find a solution to a problem of my making.

What I learned was there are three (or at least one of the 3) issues with entrusting your own problems and issues to another:

1. Everyone projects themselves on to one another and
2. Most people believe themselves to be in the right and so, expect the advise-seeker to follow what they say and lastly,
3. We ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) have the solution to our problems but by passing the buck, we fail to acknowledge just how much control we have over our lives (which is A LOT).

It wasn’t until I started going to therapy (from the 27th of November in 2016) that I recognized just how much control I actually DO/DID have over myself, my life and over my relationships. I was advised to keep a journal and I’m glad that I followed the advice because it changed my life in profound ways.

1. I Was Able To Organize My Thoughts

Writing in a journal enabled me to pour out my heart, mind and soul and then, to organize these in a way that would benefit me rather than to lose my mind over issues I did have a great degree of control over all along.

What I did and said was no longer a reaction to my surroundings, triggered by anxiety, because I recognized I had a choice- to react in a constructive/destructive manner or to calm myself, ponder over my thought pattern and deal with the problem later.

Thoughts became less overwhelming and intimidating and more manageable. I could separate the negative, harmful, useless thoughts that were influenced by external sources from thoughts that were beneficial to me. Similarly, I could separate helpful voices from ‘white noise’ and projections from thoughts and guidance that actually came from a place of love and compassion.

Most importantly, I could listen to MY inner guidance, feelings and thought process and learn how to use them to my advantage.

2. I Became More Aware of The Quality of My Relationships

Earlier on, I sought the best qualities in others but dismissed more difficult traits because I wouldn’t see people for who THEY TRULY WERE. I’d refuse to acknowledge what people made me feel- good or bad- as a coping mechanism.

Deep down, I knew what they made me feel but I would justify their derogatory behaviors and actions to myself because I was afraid of hurting them.

I didn’t recognize this until I started journaling. Writing about my relationships helped me recognize various patterns and to see I could change the way I looked at people, myself and the way I connected to them.

I was able to develop and maintain boundaries that were healthy within the relationships I’d formed. Likewise, I recognized and respected the boundaries others created, too. Relationships became more harmonious and less imbalanced.

Also, I was able to identify ambivalent relationships. These relationships lack substance and are neither toxic nor healthy. However, they are actually WORSE than toxic relationships because they require one to put in a lot more energy than they should.

I had to SPEND a lot more energy than I would with toxic people. It was easy to identify toxic and I KNEW where I stood with them. I could define boundaries to restrict the relationship (or to sever ties altogether). However, I never knew where I stood in ambivalent relationships.

Why?

Because ambivalent people aren’t clear on their own boundaries and mostly just drained me because I allowed them to. These are the people who will be passive-aggressive one minute and perfectly fine the next. They will only talk to you when it benefits them but won’t stick around when you need moral support. They will sugarcoat the truth because they don’t want to drive you away but then, will also gossip about you to others because they don’t really care for you. In other words, these are empty, hollow, relationships that are formed on weak and pretentious boundaries. These relationships are insidious and draining because you will never know where you stand with an ambivalent person.

While I was in these relationships I would focus on the positive aspects because, as previously mentioned, I only sought the best in people. I felt sleepy, drained, tired, confused and extremely anxious around these people. I never knew where I stood with them and I always felt myself doubting the nature of our bond and connection. I’d always question whether these people actually were my friends and if I should open up to them.

Severing ties with them, consciously, actually made me feel better and I could spend energy and time on forming and maintaining healthy relationships with people who respected and loved me the same way I did them.

I felt like I had a lot more energy to spare, when I cut them out.

3. I Became Self-Aware

Penning down my thoughts, emotions, triggers, feelings and life events enabled me to take ownership of myself. I could accept and acknowledge my strengths AND my weaknesses. I could see and accept the positive AND negative sides to my personality. I recognized how certain events and relationships affected my mood and energy level on a daily (almost) basis.

I was no longer in denial of who I was as a person and could now fully and completely accept myself for who I was. Anything that I didn’t like could be accepted and changed.

Qualities and traits that I was comfortable with empowered me because I, now, knew how to deal with people, myself and with various circumstances that life introduced me to.

I stopped making excuses for myself, was brutally honest to myself (and others) and understood who I was as a person- and why, too. Suddenly, I noticed how my energy levels, moods, feelings, physical and emotional health was affected by various factors and people.

Instead of being ashamed of certain characteristics or hiding behind coping mechanisms, I started to see how I was affecting others, myself and how my general outlook affected my life, in general, too.

Hey readers! Thank you, so much, for taking out the time to read my blog post. Do comment, share on your social media platforms, subscribe and tell me how journaling has benefited you, on your journey. Also, follow me on Instagram on @humzahmraja or/and Snapchat on Hmraja89 and let me know if you’d like to cover a specific topic on my blog. Hope you have an amazing day! 🙂

The Ugly Voice In Our Heads

Everyone has that ugly voice, in their heads, which discourages them from reaching their true potential. It’s that voice that makes us overthink, doubt ourselves and seduces us into believing that it’s alright to be mediocre. It’s that voice that enables us to delude ourselves rather than facing the fact that we actually have much more power over our lives than we know, provided we’re willing to face ourselves rather than blaming other people for hindering us.

It’s that voice that tells us certain goals and tasks are easier to talk about than to do something about them- when the truth is we just aren’t facing the fact that we aren’t willing to take responsibility of our lives. It’s that voice that tells us our parents and friends are to blame for certain outcomes or lack thereof- when the fact is we can deal with those people, accept the issue and responsibility and change things around for ourselves.

It’s that voice that convinces us to listen to other people rather than telling them when and where we feel they might be wrong- because it’s easier to blame someone else than to blame ourselves.

All in all, it’s that ugly, negative, nagging voice in our heads that makes it easier for people to brush their issues under the carpet and then, blame others for stepping on them, intentionally or unintentionally.

My encounter with the Ugly Voice

I encountered the ugly voice, when I was 14 or 15 years old.  Before I hit that age, I was comfortable in my skin. I knew who I was. I knew what life had put me through and how to deal with my issues. I knew how to face those issues head on and how to deal with people I liked and people I didn’t like. I knew how to confront people and I was proud of who I was.

Somehow I became someone who listened to the ‘should bes’ and ‘could bes’ that people- whom I believed loved and cared for me- shoved down my throat. It wasn’t just friends or relatives but it was EVERYONE around me. EVERYONE.

I just didn’t know how to deal with these voices that never followed their own advice (and in fact, did the complete opposite, all the time) but what I did know was that I wanted to be liked. A LOT. What people thought of me, of how I dressed, of how I walked and talked and moved and who I hung out with mattered SO MUCH to me that I would change certain behaviors and mannerisms that came naturally to me.

It’s important to note that people who knew me, for who and how I was, loved and accepted me and I them. I’ve always been a big supporter of the “be true to yourself, no matter what” mantra, before it actually became a mantra.

I was doing everything the ugly voice wanted me to and, to top it off, I started believing that this person- who felt stressed, anxious, worried and broke down, twice- was happy with who he was…..until I went to therapy and realized this wasn’t the case.

The truth was that I was anything but happy and comfortable in my own skin and the ugly voice- which I let take me over- was really just my inability to accept (a) who I was and am and (b) responsibility of myself and my life.

I was making excuses for myself and I blamed other people for my shortcomings and laziness. I pretended to be someone I was not because the voice made me believe it was wrong to be myself and who I really am.

I believed it was important to be liked and therefore, to get permission for doing things that I wanted to do, when I didn’t need it all along.  I laughed at jokes that I didn’t find funny (like, no, ‘are you a liar or lawyer?’ is not funny in the slightest way nor is the show How I Met Your Mother).

I hung out with people I didn’t feel comfortable around- AT ALL. I thought others wanted the best for me- when they didn’t. All in all, I was someone who had what it took to be where I wanted to be but I preferred being comfortable, well-liked, impressionable and to not look at what I was doing to myself and my life.

I was open to the idea because I think that it’s important to look into your darkness but I didn’t do it because I didn’t realize how broken this ugly voice made me feel.

No one was to blame for my shortcomings, fear, lack of willingness to go forth with my decisions and to be true to myself- but ME.

Understand The Ugly Voice

The only way to deal with the ugly voice is to know and accept that NO ONE in the world can help you but yourself. Why? Because no one in the world knows who you are like you do. Everyone has their own struggle and everyone (from your parents and friends to your acquaintances and haters) has their own opinion- whether you like it or not- and if you’re putting YOUR fate in THEIR hands, that’s on you and not them.

The ugly voice’s methods aren’t always helpful nor uplifting but it certainly challenges you. It is ugly because this voice triggers the part of us that knows we can do better and/or deserve more out of life and ourselves. This is where you have a choice: you either accept the challenge and fix things for yourself or you let the ugly voice take control by turning you into someone that you’re not.

I ‘tamed’ the ugly voice by accepting the challenge it put forth to me. I would try to get to the bottom of the circumstances or person that triggered the voice in me by asking myself these questions (in this sequence):

What has triggered the ugly voice?

What thoughts am I thinking because of it?

What do I feel because of the ugly voice?

What evidence do I have to refute it’s case?

What can I DO to refute it’s case?

Pondering over these questions helped but what helped even more was to jot these answers down in a journal. What I love about journaling is that it’s a useful outlet that enables me to self-reflect and, oftentimes, come up with answers that I would never have known or had, if I had merely thought over these questions. Journaling gave me a sense of control over myself and over my thoughts.

Look At Your Life Through The Eyes of Your Inner Child

There’s a reason gurus, successful entrepreneurs, actors, businessmen, artists, etc. talk about how they felt about life when they were children. There’s a reason why therapists ask questions about who or how we were as kids: who you were as a kid, how you were treated back then and everything you’re going through right now, in your life, is a response to who you were as a kid. No matter your age, gender, creed, religion color, nationality, sexuality or job title, you will always carry your childhood with you.

Look at your life through the eyes of your inner child. Children do not judge. They do not try to ‘make sense’ of their emotions and curiosities nor do they place terms and conditions on people around them.

They just know what it is to feel good, bad, happy, upset, scared, comfortable, etc. and kids tend to be highly intuitive, imaginative and they will explore things just because they want to, without any logic or reason. The world is FULL of possibilities for them and if you try to reason with a child, he or she won’t buy what you’re saying because NOTHING is impossible to them.

When I was a child I loved playing outside, talking to people, coloring books, physical activity and I was extremely imaginative and read and wrote, A LOT. The world was (and still is) full of possibilities and every time the ugly voice awakens inside of me, I go back to the questions in the previous section and then, turn up the volume of my inner child by responding to my feelings.

I’ll either play my favorite music or write in my journal and enlist all the things that I THOUGHT were impossible and yet accomplished because I believed in myself. And you know what? I’ve accomplished more by listening to my inner child than I have by listening to the ugly voice.

The ugly voice, I’ve learned, is constituted of thoughts. The problem with thinking is that thoughts are limited. You can only think so far on a problem but how you feel is far more important and has a greater impact than thinking does.

If one were to follow logic, flying in the air and reaching your intended destination in a few days should have been impossible. Traveling ON SEA should have been impossible. Going from one city to another would have taken weeks,  at least, if not months. It was the people who felt, in their hearts, and followed the fascination of their inner children who made the impossible possible.

Exhaust The Ugly Voice With Facts

The ugly voice focuses on failures, ‘could bes’, ‘should bes’ and on all factors and aspects of your life that could make you feel horribly low about yourself. This can be anything from your relationships and life choices to your past and future to the person you are today.  In other words, it can make you feel horribly about anything you haven’t dealt with or have not accepted as YOUR responsibility.

Separate yourself from the ugly voice by imagining it to be another individual- a highly negative, unimpressed, unhappy individual whose presence makes no sense. No one WANTS to feel miserable about themselves but the ugly voice is insidious and will berate you.

Exhaust it with facts. The ugly voice was very loud and made me think I could NEVER learn to swim. I was so fearful of water, no matter the depth or how many people I had around me, that the mere task of setting foot in water seemed like a HUGE accomplishment to me.

Before I made a conscious decision to get into the pool and learn to swim, the ugly voice made itself known to me and made me think I was going to hit a roadblock. It brought forth to me all the times I could have learned to swim but didn’t- because I LET it defeat me.

This time I refuted it by enlisting all of my past achievements against it- including the mere fact that I had accepted and defeated my fear of just setting foot in water. Now, I swim on daily basis and am aware of various methods and techniques of swimming!

Challenge The Ugly Voice By Accepting Responsibility

Most people try to avoid themselves and their fears by indulging in activities that numb their pain. They will intoxicate themselves with food, drugs, television, shopping, alcohol or hangout with toxic people- anything and anyone that will take them away from their pain. Avoidance empowers the ugly voice and merely contributes to its presence and power.

The ugly voice only becomes louder, more prominent and powerful when you fight or avoid it’s presence. Accept the voice for what it is- ugly- and then, focus on disarming it by asserting yourself. Then, take steps to challenge it. The ugly voice will target every area of your existence and life that has not yet been accepted and dealt with- from the smallest possible task to the larger ones that seem ‘impossible’.

Take small steps of acceptance to challenge it and change things for yourself. Accepting the ugly voice’s challenge means accepting the fact that YOU have the power required to change things for yourself. Once you recognize this fact, you can do practically anything and everything in the world-including defeating the ugly voice.

Thank you, for taking out the time to check out my blog. Hit subscribe, feel free to comment, and do share and “like” or/and “tweet” about it, too. Also, if there’s anything you’d like for me to cover, feel free to comment in the comments section. 

2020 Was The Year of Reality

Many people associate the phrase ‘best friend’ with a yes-man who’s there to console and agree with them, in times of need. While having an empathetic or sympathetic shoulder to cry on or vent to is helpful, it’s pointless if it enables your patterns. Patterns that we’re used to but aren’t fulfilled by aren’t patterns- they’re problems. That’s a pattern gone bad. That’s a rotten pattern and the stank off of that comes out in the form of toxicity- toxic people, toxic associations, toxic associations with things and objects and a toxic relationship with yourself. 

I didn’t recognize that fact until I had to. 

2020 was the best friend that I needed to be able to hear my own voice because it was the year of truth, in more than one way. When your freedom and/or options are limited, through no fault of your own, you start to weigh the reality of your situation against the reality of reality of itself.I wasn’t going out or going around meeting people much but a question came to me, from within: how much of what I thought I had in life was really a part of my life and how much of it was just a concoction of set patterns?

How many relationships and problems existed because of a commitment to a life with problems (if even unintentionally)? How likely was it that they would go away, if I accepted them for what they were and moved on? How many problems were problems and how many were challenges that were blessings in disguise? How much was I in control of my life? And how much did I allow others control over my life (if even unintentionally)? 

Those are hard questions that we’re not taught to think over until and unless there’s a conflict with the enablers of that system. That’s when one reacts to a set of circumstances and that’s never a good place to start. 2020 wasn’t the best year, externally. However, up until 2020 things that temporarily mattered or gave me (and many others, from what I know) temporary comfort ceased to exist. That’s why they’re temporary- they exist under conditions.

So long as those conditions are met, they exist and when those conditions cease to exist (especially in a time of slow or lack of movement), they cease to affect you in the same way that they once did. Those conditional products of my existence faded away. I guess, in a way, they never really did exist but the illusion of their existence ignited the hope that those things would exist unconditionally in my life. I’m talking relationships, career options, thought processes and my approach to life.

Then, there are those factors and aspects of life that exist unconditionally and that aren’t reliant on conditions. Their unconditionality became obvious, in 2020. You know the proverbial ‘gun to your head’ circumstances that we refer to? Well, 2020 was just that. I found myself playing “would you rather?” with myself: 

Would you rather meet a group of socially distanced people that you aren’t familiar with OR go to the gym where every surface and equipment is cleaned (by yourself or by a sanitization team) after you’ve set down your dumb-bells? The dumbbells won. 

Would you rather think about money and jump onto the next job opportunity you got OR read self-help books that help you clear your head because they were written by people facing the same problems you did? The self-help books won. 

Would you rather watch 6 white, privileged F.R.I.E.N.D.S. talking about whether they broke up or were on a break OR would you prefer to watch Eva Green being threatened by witches in Penny Dreadful? Eva Green won. 

The most important question that 2020 had for me was this: “would you rather be yourself or be someone that others think you ought to be?”. It’s not as if I was struggling with the idea of #YouDoYouBoo but there’s a difference between coming into your own WITH the mental luxury of weighing your options AND coming into your own because your circumstances DEMAND that you do so. In the former instance, you can go at your own pace but in the latter, you’re up against the wall because of an unseen but very real threat. 

The fact that the threat couldn’t be seen made 2020 that much more real. When it comes to the friend who’s real with you, you know them for who they are. They’re transparent and make you look at things in a way (and from an angle) that requires you to look at yourself in an objective manner. 

2020, as a year, was just that- there was a REALITY to 2020 that exposed very REAL truths in an undeniably REAL way and the only way to cope with that was to either live in denial or to be real with yourself about the extent to which you’re willing to align your life to your truth. 

When You Don’t Know What To Do, Lean Into The Moment

“I don’t KNOW what to do!” is a statement I’d known for a long while but there’s something I didn’t notice, all the while I repeated it to myself- everything did work out the way I want it to. Even WHILE I stayed committed to the statement. 

Language and feelings are funny- one is used to define the other and the other cannot be defined because it can only be explained, while it’s experienced. Language and thoughts- now, that’s a tough and insidious combination. The former is used to give shape to whatever’s going on in the mind and the latter finds a way to catch up to the shape that it is familiar with. That’s just how the mind works: better the devil you know than the devil/reality/truth you don’t want to know. 

It’s messed up but it’s true. The mind IS a survival mechanism of it’s own- it doesn’t just HAVE a survival mechanism…it IS one. It has it’s own patterns and finds anything and everyone to justify it’s ways and means of ‘protecting’ you. You know what I mean? 

If you’ve had an unstable childhood or were subjected to bullying or any form of treachery and discomfort, you will find yourself reliving the experience unintentionally. Maybe you get into a relationship that you thought looked great on paper because everything about him/her checked out…only to find out something about them that you never wanted to admit to yourself. Maybe you trusted someone you grew up with….only to find out he or she wasn’t who you thought them to be. Maybe you picked a profession that made sense because your parents pushed you towards… only to find yourself feeling miserable and trapped about the choice you made. Maybe I’m writing this post because I don’t know what else to write…only to find it’s something I’ve needed to let out and express 😀 

The mind/brain is a challenging organ: it is malleable in the way it functions but the execution of it’s language- thoughts, pictures, familiar circumstances and everything material, habits, beliefs, values- creates the illusion that things HAVE to be a certain way. 

My mind’s language caused me to adhere to certain beliefs about my life that weren’t true. It wasn’t until COVID-19 that things that I already knew in my bones manifested themselves, proving my brain/mind wrong. However, all the while, a part of me always knew that things would turn out the way that they did. A part of me always knew things would turn out the way they did. A part of me already knew of the fact that things would fall apart. I was at peace with all that went on because nothing that was/has been happening was unknown to me. It was just a matter of time. Even time is just a construct, though.

Suspend your beliefs for a split second. Now, read this: an individual that cringes at a joke at another’s expense will never be comfortable with the idea of making a living through, say, the kind of comedy that requires one to target personalities. An individual that enjoys using his/her body to keep active will never be comfortable with the idea of being idle, physically. An individual that makes you uncomfortable will never make you feel comfortable because, no matter what they do, a part of you will ALWAYS know there’s something off about them. A cruel person, who’s source of entertainment is to belittle others for the same things they do, will never be the kind of person you could find yourself confiding in, no matter how trusting they might seem. A rumor might not make sense because, something about it makes you feel that there’s an insidiousness to the rumor that has less to do with the truth and more to do with a desire to

manipulate the truth for personal gain by a person, group or organization. The Little Mermaid was unfair to Ursula because Ariel DID sign a contract by her own volition. Elsa will always make sense because she was all about inner strength and evolution….plus her clothes were always on point with her story. 

None of this has to make sense but there’s something fundamental about the examples given above- it’s all about how you feel. What you feel cannot be explained nor can it materialize, right away, but it IS something that you just know and find difficult to shake off. You know what I mean? You can’t shake off your feelings. They just are. They just exist within you, no matter how much you choose to ignore them.You don’t have to be educated or know a language to feel a certain way about things. You just need to be a human and alive. 

The mind cannot deal with immaterial knowledge because it has to make sense of everything that flows through it. It cannot comprehend the language of feelings. It can only deal with things that make sense to it and so, it is blinded and limited by itself. It creates it’s own house on the foundations that it’s familiar with but when that house comes crumbling down, it doesn’t know what to do. That’s when you just don’t know what to do. 

2020 was all about things that didn’t make sense and as everything started to descend into a state of not-knowing-what-to-do, I found peace within. Because it was as if Life was taking over and making itself known. I’ve found that to be the case for a lot of people that I know personally or follow on social media. Everything that once made sense just didn’t anymore…on a global/universal level.

Laws, people, rules, work, etc. just stopped to make sense. All material aspects of life that humankind once found security in, stopped making sense. All the noise stopped and everything that made sense at one point in time- time itself- stopped making sense. 

That’s just it, though. Nothing really does make sense but we would like for it to, which is why and when we adhere to the limits of the mind. The mind itself is a limit and it is limited. Nothing truly makes sense. Why do we want the things we want? Why do we think the thoughts that we think? What is the malleable, material, real, proof that backs our thoughts? It doesn’t exist and everything that does exist is subject to change. That’s just it: NOTHING makes sense. Even the things that you think you know don’t make sense but what you do know is how you feel in a particular moment. 

Maybe that’s the point: when you don’t know what to do, it’s because the things that your mind wanted you to believe in cease to exist. Either way, in reality, you don’t know what to do but you just do what you know to do because it makes sense….until there comes a point where even things that make sense cease to make sense. That’s when you see, everything just IS a certain way and it’s not in your control nor can it be comprehended by the mind/brain but there IS one thing you can do: cease to confine yourself within the limits of the mind and lean into the moment, for what it is. 

Ask yourself the question, “what do I want to do?” and do whatever it is that you wish to do- be it to have a cup of coffee with music playing in the background or watch a show or write a blog post that helps you get out of your mind. 

Leaning into the moment is to let go of who you think you were yesterday and to let go of who you think you want to be but to be exactly as you are, right here, right now. It is to let go of all the content of your life and to lean into and be who you are. You might know what to do but there is one thing you do know: what you feel and how you would like to feel.

That’s why it’s important to lean into the moment.