Ramblings of a Madman @distilled-wisdom - Tumblr Blog

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I do not connect with life, and death appears as a mirage until it comes to pass. This emptiness, this vast open space beside me, creates a solitude that is neither lonely nor fulfilling. It's simply a space that reminds me that I have always been incomplete in a desolate landscape filled with the wonderment of my naivety.

somewordsarebiggerthanothers

distilled-wisdom

The irony of a universal familiarity.

Responding in kind to the trials of life only gives those trials more power.

Instead, be the eternal romantic.

Look for the starry sky in the darkness, or the glow of the sunshine behind those grey clouds.

Romance is not about sharing a moment with another.

Romance is about embracing a moment for yourself despite the ugly around you.

Be romantic without waiting for permission.

Let your response to life be the poetry that uplifts the world.

There are enough prose writers out there.

We need more poetry...

More beauty...

More sincerity...

More authenticity...

Prose is our need to be heard, to be validated, and to be seen.

Poetry is our gift of everything that is beautiful and gratifying about life.

If you have the ability to create goodness and peace, that is your ability to write poetry on the timeline of your life.

Be poetic. Be romantic. Be you.

Own Your Life.

#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism #purpose #personalpower #poetry #romance

We most often only realise that we're ungrateful for a blessing that we have when it's too late.

That's when regret sets in and either spurs us on to improve our awareness of what we should be grateful for, or it makes us bitter for the loss that we experienced.

Gratitude is something that no one can instil in us.

Others may be able to give us something to be grateful for, but they can't insert that gratitude into our hearts.

Gratitude is therefore something that we must connect with through our own way of valuing what we have.

But, valuing what and who we have in our lives becomes difficult, if not impossible, if we believe that we're entitled to what they offer.

If we reduce the contribution of others to simply bring their duty, or the expectations of the role that they fulfil, we'll inadvertently diminish our own value to simply being one of duty and responsibility as well.

We see ourselves through the same lenses that we use to judge the contribution of others in our lives.

When we regret the loss of something or someone because we took it for granted, we need to pause and reflect how much of who we are do we take for granted.

What do we recognise as cherishable traits or attributes about ourselves that we must nurture and protect from contamination?

Or do we take who we are for granted because we've grown so accustomed to trading and transacting with those around us?

This happens when we believe that what we do for others deserves reciprocation because we need something from them.

That's how we lose sight of who we are, and the value that we are capable of creating in the lives of those around us because we want them to experience that value, and not because we need something from them in return.

You can't give what you don't have. That's why ingratitude towards others begins with ingratitude towards yourself.

It always starts with you.

Before you get upset with someone for not treating you the way that you want them to treat you, consider that what you need may not come naturally to them.

Without meaning to, we oppress others when we assume that just because we're capable of something, they should be too.

This is especially true when it comes to emotional expression.

How emotionally expressive we are is directly related to how emotionally accessible our parents were to us during our childhood.

And no, not all siblings in the same household have the same experience, because not all parents treat their children equally.

So when we look at the behaviour of our adult partners and we compare them either to ourselves or to their siblings or other family members, we're dismissing their specific life experience, while insisting that they be like everyone else around them.

Emotions cannot be sincerely and authentically expressed if it was never received in that way.

How it's received - again - is relative to how emotionally grounded our past experiences may have been.

When you're not getting the kind of emotional availability that you need from your partner, consider that it's something that they may just not be connecting with because they've never experienced it in a safe and fulfilling way themselves.

And just because you're expressing it to them now doesn't mean that it suddenly changes it. It doesn't, because your expectation of them to reciprocate makes that setting an emotionally vulnerable space for them.

Create an emotionally safe space for your partner before you judge them for being insensitive or cold, or else you may destroy their love for you just because they couldn't express it the way that you wanted them to.

#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism #purpose #companionship #compassion #relationshipgoals

I see so many who claim to have forgiven, but are still weighed down by what was done to them.

There's an important difference between forgiving as a means to forego punishing someone or demanding retribution, versus forgiving because you truly understand why someone behaved badly.

When that understanding is lacking, it makes it impossible to accept what they did, because we'll never be able to reconcile why they did it.

Without understanding why, acceptance becomes superficial, and forgiveness becomes a token gesture.

Forgive and forget is a great notion of noble intent that often lacks any true resolution or peace.

If you want that forgiveness to carry with it the promise of peace beyond that experience, you must seek to understand, without judgement, why someone treated you badly, or committed a dastardly deed.

It's through that understanding that we'll discover that their actions were more about their demons, than it was about how they felt about us.

If our sense of significance or self-worth was defined by their validation of who we are, even understanding won't give us that peace.

But, that's on us. Not on them. We're responsible for how we feel about ourselves. And no amount of forgiveness will change that.

It always starts with you.

Sunday morning feels... Time is elusive, especially when you think you're owning it. Don't only contemplate life. Live it. #life #authorsofinstagram #writing #spilledwords #spilledink #introspection #inspiration #death (at The Egosystem) https://www.instagram.com/p/CV93kCxKdD6/?utm_medium=tumblr

#life #authorsofinstagram #writing #spilledwords #spilledink #introspection #inspiration #death

It's human to feel fatigued or despondent.

But, it's not human to give up.

We're wired to persevere. To overcome. To prevail. To improve what we have around us.

When we feel oppressed in our efforts to achieve these ends, we either grow despondent, or we grow aggressive.

Both those reactions are an indication that we've lost sight of the gift of who we are.

When we feel burdened, we're focused on whether our efforts will be appreciated, accepted, respected, or rejected, etc.

That means that we're more focused on being significant in that moment, or in that relationship, rather than connecting with the value of what brings us joy that we want others to experience with us.

But, just like a gift, if we buy something for someone because we like it, without any concern about what they think of it, then we're not really buying that gift for them, are we?

Similarly, when we find joy in living life a certain way, or connecting with an experience in a certain way, and we want to share that with others, our focus must be on how do we connect them to that experience. Not on whether they appreciate our efforts or trust our opinion about why that experience is important.

In other words, if your gift to someone is sincere, you don't force them to like it. You put in the time and effort to understand what and how they would experience something they love, and try to gift it to them in that way. After all, it's for them.

We find joy in connecting with others in that way.

The same must be true about offering the best of who you are to those around you.

Of course, you need to first appreciate who you are before you'll be able to connect others to that joy within you that you want them to experience with you.

So, as always, the question is simple. Do you know yourself well enough to appreciate the gift that you hold within?

It always starts with you.

I think it was Dr Wayne Dyer who said that if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

This is true both positively and negatively.

Do you know someone who has a problem for every solution? Who sees doom and gloom at the happiest of moments? Who is preempting a negative outcome despite things going in their favour?

Do you think they have a mental illness, or have they just been hurt so many times before, that they are afraid to hope for a positive outcome? Are they simply protecting themselves from being let down again?

This is how we experience life when we finally give up hope about the future, or we give up hope about being appreciated.

That absence of hope is what causes us to feel depressed. Depression is a legitimate experience of human emotions after we've taken one too many hard knocks from life about something important to us.

The same is true for every other emotional experience.

Emotions are not deficiencies. They're the essence of what makes us human.

If we ever hope to win this battle against a consistently declining quality of life, we need to stop referring to emotions as mental health, and we need to stop defining the duress that we experience in life as a mental illness.

We need to reconnect with the human behind the pain, instead of dehumanising them by denying the legitimacy of their emotional experience.

Break the stigma. Stop the labelling. Embrace the humanness.

Ever notice how often people are revered when they've passed on, but the same people were neglected, ignored, or even treated badly while they were alive?

Sometimes the reverse is also true. The one who passed on may have left a path of destruction in the lives of those around them, but because of their social standing or their role in their family, they're revered to the point of exaggerating their good while dismissing the impact that they had on those who were victim to their ways.

Some would have us believe that it's because we must not disparage the dead. Which is true. We shouldn't.

But does that also mean that we must exaggerate their good to the point of diminishing the damage or harm that they caused?

The reason we do this is not out of respect for the dead, but more likely because it draws attention to our virtue.

It's easier to demonstrate such kindness towards the dead, because they have no expectation from us to follow through with sincerity or commitment towards how important we say they are in our lives.

If we were truly committed to establishing good, we would place as much emphasis on remedying the harm that they caused, while remembering the good that they did.

If we don't, we end up revering the dead to the detriment of the living, thereby reinforcing the harm that the deceased caused, and further oppressing those who are already struggling with the impact of the harm done to them by the deceased.

That's how we enable generational trauma.

That's how we create more harm for the victims of those oppressors who have passed on.

That's how we become part of that cycle of harm.

#hope #expectation #sincerity #selfworth #selfawareness #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #ownyourlife #lifecoaching #zaidismail #grieving #death #fatherhood #raisinggirls #parenting

At the end of every road, a decision awaits.

Do we stop and remain focused on the road we just travelled, or do we choose a path beyond that road so that our journey continues?

If the road travelled was a difficult one, most focus on the difficulty and choose to protect themselves from such difficulty in future.

They're the ones who grow weary about life, and place their happiness in the hands of others.

Life becomes a burden, and death a morbidly romantic destination.

But those who look back on that difficult journey and recognise how they managed to create something of beauty, experienced something amazing, or developed a sense of gratitude for the accomplishments that would otherwise not have been possible are the ones who look ahead with excitement and optimism.

They connect with their ability to live, despite the trials of life.

They connect with their ability to create happiness for others, rather than waiting for others to create it for them.

They realise that just as their journey was difficult up to that point, so too are the journeys that others travel equally difficult, if not more than the one that they're on.

They connect with gratitude, and create space for joy because they know that what has passed only prepared them to create even greater things in the future.

Which of the two do you choose to be?

Fixate on the injustice or unfairness of the past, or appreciate your ability to prevail with joy into the future?

The choice is yours.

Just a suggestion, if you format your posts more you might get more engagement. Mostly just having paragraphs instead of a chunk of text would be easier to read. Perhaps some text in italics or bold, that kind of thing.

I agree. And thanks for the feedback. I was lazy, so the posts were auto shared from my Instagram account... 🙄 🤦🏼‍♂️

I stopped doing that today and posted directly to Tumblr so that the format wouldn't be lost. :)

I hope that helps.

Sometimes, when we're faced with disappointment about how we're appreciated by those dear to us, it's easy to find reason to give up on what we wish to leave as a legacy for them in life.

So, we withhold our contribution, or pull back on our participation in their lives, assuming that we don't matter.

Whether that turns out to be true or not doesn't mean that we didn't leave our mark. It just means that the mark we left was not truly a reflection of who we are.

Giving up on what's important to you just because it wasn't as important to someone else means that it wasn't truly important to you to begin with.

What was more important to you was the anticipated appreciation or celebration of your contribution, and not the value that you wanted to create for them.

When we lose sight of this, we also lose ourselves.

Hope and dreams are most often abandoned because we waited for others to validate what we believed to be valuable in life.

Regardless of how it plays out, your legacy will either be one of a passionate pursuit of achieving what you believed in, or an abandonment of hope because you were not accepted the way that you wanted to be.

Either way, you leave a legacy. And if you lose sight of this, you'll end up blaming the world for what you withheld in your contribution towards it.

That's how you feed the very cycles of life that broke your will to pursue your dreams.

It always starts with you.

Connect, with conviction, to what you want to add as value to the lives of others, and you'll find fulfilment in that even if they don't immediately connect with that value.

That's how we have less death bed regrets, and we leave a legacy worth celebrating.

While there may be truth in the saying that money doesn't buy happiness but at least you can choose your misery, we need to consider if we really want to be choosing our misery or experiencing happiness? It all starts out with good intent. Earn some money to improve your quality of life, or create a home environment that is welcoming and comfortable for those you love, and hopefully in the process, feel appreciated for your efforts. But what happens when that appreciation is not as forthcoming as you need it to be? Sometimes, we look for that appreciation in a specific shape and form, and if it doesn't appear in exactly that way, we assume that we're not appreciated. That's when our relationships become transactional as we start comparing who does how much to maintain the standard of living that we've grown accustomed to, while dismissing the efforts and intentions of the one doing all that. Valuing yourself comes before any expectation or need to be valued by others. If you don't value yourself, you'll look for that validation or appreciation to be served up in a specific way by others, thereby holding them accountable for how you feel about yourself. That's how you end up having a life full of things, but a heart that lacks contentment. It always starts with you. You teach others what is important to you by how you treat them. And when you value yourself, you'll realise that when others don't value you, it's because they're struggling with their own self-worth and not because they don't appreciate you or your efforts in their life. Own your life, and your emotional wellbeing will take care of itself. #selfworth #selfawareness #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #lifecoaching #zaidismail (at The Egosystem) https://www.instagram.com/p/CU9N5LzqUKJ/?utm_medium=tumblr

#selfworth #selfawareness #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #lifecoaching #zaidismail

Arrogance is the belief that we're better...humility visits us when we realise that we're not. The root of arrogance is insecurity, but that's a discussion for another day. If we're sincere about wanting to benefit others or wanting to create good for those around us, when we get it wrong and we're corrected, we'll appreciate it. In such cases, we'll eat gratitude pie, not humble pie, right? So, when it feels like we've been made to eat humble pie, we need to consider what our intention was behind what we did before we got things wrong. On the surface, our intentions always appear noble. But it's that appearance of nobility that distracts is from sincerity. When connecting with or checking your intention, be sure to dig deeper than what you experienced in that moment. It's only when we connect with our intention, our true intention, that we'll be able to recognise how others are not deliberately malicious or selfish in their actions. Instead, it will allow us to connect with empathy to the emotional needs that they have. That's how we break cycles of unhealthy behaviours. Perhaps if we eat more humble pie we'll discover gratitude? 🤔 #selfworth #selfawareness #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism (at The Egosystem) https://www.instagram.com/p/CU6lJgEKWNP/?utm_medium=tumblr

#selfworth #selfawareness #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism

Sometimes, we're so focused on reacting to the disrespect that we receive from others that we don't realise how we give up our self-respect in the process. If we continue in reaction mode for long enough, we'll find ourselves not only returning the favour by treating them the way that they treat us, but we'll also find ourselves blaming them for our response. That's when we go beyond losing our self-respect and we begin losing ourselves completely. Strangely though, we're unlikely to do this with everyone. We'll often encounter total strangers or mere acquaintances who will treat us badly, but we'll ignore them and continue focusing on what is important to us. Therefore, the answer lies in how much significance we place in those relationships to which we lose ourselves. The more significant that we want to be in their lives, the more we'll convince ourselves about their significance in ours. That's how we become emotionally invested in being treated with respect by them. The less respect we receive, the more intense our emotional experience, resulting in us fighting fire with fire. In other words, giving them a taste of their own medicine. That's when respect becomes optional. When we convince ourselves that treating others the way that they treat us is in fact justice, when the truth is that it is returning their bitterness with our bitterness towards them. That's how we give up the good of who we are. The greatest tragedy in all of this is that when we lose ourselves, we also lose sight of the struggles, or the low self-esteem that they're experiencing which causes them to treat us badly. Instead of breaking that cycle, we feed it, and in the process, harm ourselves as much as we believed they were harming us. When respect becomes optional based on how we're treated by others, we give them the power to define how we feel about ourselves. To whom are you giving your power today? #selfworth #selfawareness #ownyourlife #selfmastery #mindfulness #personalpower #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthrecovery #theegosystem #lifecoaching #zaidismail #loveyourself #lifegoals #motivation #optimism (at The Egosystem) https://www.instagram.com/p/CU4HS3jKi4z/?utm_medium=tumblr

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