Tag: empathy

Decisions That Make Us Proud

Photo by Miguel Bruna

We all know the self-defensive attitude of protecting what we perceive as ours. This attitude teaches us unconsciously to repress empathy and see the other person as a threat. Whether we’re talking cake, time off or doing tiny unethical mistakes, we often get to keep what we fought for at the cost of our self-esteem.

Each decision that doesn’t reflect the best choice we are capable of doing takes away from the quality of our being and shapes our character into something that we don’t feel proud about. Think of all the anger and the negative emotions you surf on, assuming that that’s life. That isn’t life. Is a personal choice of underperforming in life. Make the right choice at any cost and you’ll at least be able to keep your chin up.

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Seeing Good in People

Photo by Daria Tumanova

Our mindset dictates the perspective of our reality. Being brought up with a distrusting attitude towards people hinges our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Part of the relationship with the self is seeing our reflection in other people’s eyes. Distrust attracts distrust and people cannot connect at a higher level without putting themselves at risk emotionally. Being socially isolated leaves us with the idea of self that our mind makes believe. If our perception of the self cannot be informed by kindness, love and caring from others we become shadows of who we could potentially be.

Seeing good in people allows us to see good in ourselves and for that building trust is a necessary condition. Rather than teaching our younger members of the community about distrust, we can teach them coping strategies when misplacing trust. We can also teach them empathy and forgiveness that liberate our spirit from emotions that are making us guarded and are holding us back. We can teach ourselves to feel big and trust plenty and to experience ourselves and others in as many shades as we possibly can.

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Identity #1

There is great value in differentiating between who we are and what we do. ‘Sure, that’s obvious’ you might think.

First example that pops into my mind is:

‘I failed, therefor I’m a failure.’

Is that identity likely to come in handy at anytime in life? Is there a time when the world might run a Mx Failure Universe competition where we can attempt to drag ourselves out there, or even better, not show up at all and win?

And yet, we run this competition everyday. We hear one negative point about any aspect in life and we come up with two or three examples of the time when a car splashed us right before an important event. We add the empathetic ‘I know’ or ‘I understand’ or ‘This happens to me all the time’. Except that it doesn’t. For it to happen all the time we should have the ability not only to dry our clothes in less than a second, but to undo the initial experience so we can relive it. Otherwise it cannot happen more than once.

‘I failed, therefor I need to try harder. I’m an achiever’ – sets the trajectory straight.

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