hey there

21

[lousydrawingsforgoodpeople]

[safe-haven-safe-place]

[etherealmeditation]

“All problems are illusions of the mind.”

— Eckhart Tolle

[corredordelaberintos]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[taking-care-of-you]

(Credit: unknown)

[ovid]

but are YOU a reliable narrator?

[artsyolivia]

[healingcaffee]

things that should be completly normal:

not going to uni

taking as much time as needed before going to uni

changing your majors many times before finding what you like

changing your career path

not knowing what you want

attending a community college 

valuing your health over your grades

[lesbianshepard]

on the first day of classes professors will usually ask us to fill out a little notecard with our name, pronouns, major, and email. one dude in one of my history classes was very clearly one of those Anti-SJW Bullshit People and went “Uhhh pronouns? Ha, what’s that supposed to mean? I’m clearly a dude I don’t understand what you’re asking” and the professor just looked him in the eye and went “If you don’t know what a pronoun is then maybe a college level course isn’t for you” and i think about her every single day of my life

[whitepeopletwitter]

[afeelgoodblog]

I needed to see this :) time to spread it to others who may need it too!

[theunitofcaring]

A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.

What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it's awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.

It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.

Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.

[japanese-studies]

[lifesagiftsoliveit]

[needtobeehealthy]

[ao3commentoftheday]

you don’t get good at doing something by not doing it

you get good at doing something by doing it badly and learning how to do it better