 Artist: Banksy Acknowledging the fact that mortality isn't an illusion, how fair is it to form/continue a companionship in which you recognise you are unable to fill the necessary requirements? Especially, considering that the nature of your relationship/presence in their life will contribute significantly to the individual's quality of life. Why are you there?
For example, you cannot claim to have a close bond with someone and proceed to:
By displaying these confounding characters, you are evidently taking the individual's soul, existence/presence for granted - where you are meant to be doing the total opposite. Consequently, you are not fulfilling the companionship they deserve in this lifetime. Yes, it is important not to be dependent on anyone for love, happiness, or to 'trust no one' and to seek these firstly from within ourselves (yea, yea, yea, we know). But why have a close bond where there is no trust, love, happiness?...etc. Why are you there? Therefore, it is important to realise that if the nature of your relationship is clearly meant to result in these aspects and you recognise that you are incapable of meeting the requirements, then it is only fair that you find the best methods to either work on it or severance the bond. We cannot continue to normalise this idea that the closest people to us could be our worst enemies; because it seems to promote the notion that we cannot be fair to one another - which makes it easy to be a 'pretender'. It also creates an instant barrier in our companionship preventing us from being vulnerable and stealing away the power we have to genuinely love another. Whereas, we really should be taking each of our fragile existences seriously by showing genuine love, protecting/supporting each other mentally/physically - all to contribute to a life of fulfilment while on earth. Read similar post: mere-mortals.html
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 Photographed by me In an attempt to live an honest life you may need to internally pause everything and take the time out to listen to yourself. Not the self that everyone else wants or thinks you to/should be, but simply, as cliché as it may sound, the real you.
Who truly are you? This question is not one that should be attempted with an emotional mindset because you will most likely give yourself the wrong answers. It is also fairly easy to give yourself the wrong answers because others may have influenced the way you identify with yourself. For example: being constantly called rude, when you are actually honest (vice versa). You will only be able to recognise a true reflection of yourself if you are aware of who you actually are. The statement ‘be yourself’ sweetly rolls out of our tongues, but how can you truly ‘be yourself’ if you haven’t taken the time out to get to know ‘you’? It is unrealistic to be someone you are not aware of. Instead, you are only the words/phrases others have associated you with; because if something is said to/about you over and over, it is not so difficult for your mind to trick you into believing these things. And the inaccuracy could be heavy and confusing- which is why it is imperative to pause and reflect on the facts for yourself on yourself without being emotional about it. If need be, write the facts down but these cannot be biased. It is both as important that you do not tell lies on yourself, and that you do not lie to yourself. This is your attempt to live a genuine life not a delusional one. Therefore, it is ineffective to sugar coat/disregard and heighten the facts. In acknowledging the facts, you must equally ensure that you separate who you are from what life has thrown at you, and the box others have placed you in. When you have established these, it is only to your benefit that you adapt a positive mindset in dealing with them.
It is a choice some decide to make.  Shot by my friend Abdi and edited by me. We need to start taking the mental health of our children seriously. The popular belief is that having a child is a blessing and a beautiful gift from God. But it is interesting to find that some neglect these beautiful gifts, by not taking the time out during their adult life to become aware of themselves. Consequently, they are incapable of exuding something that they are not aware they haven’t received. Which is love - out of maybe many other things. As the popular saying goes - ‘you cannot give what you do not have’.
(By 'adults' I am referring to those who have the accessibility, and a close form of relationship to a child/teenager) However what I do believe is that if we take the time to understand ourselves, then we can at least begin a learning process where we have the correct information to take the necessary steps in preventing these faults from reoccurring. However, it is not easy. It takes hard work and the willingness to accept the uncomfortable truth. But the awareness and the willingness to change, is what is important as we all have flaws; nobody is to judge. Linking this back to the mental health of children. The point is, we need to create a stable environment for these precious ones, so that they will be able to also have a steady mind to fully actualise into their potential. And to create this environment, we also need to do the work to ensure our mental health is in check, by tackling our own battles, so that it is not a reflection on our future. I suggest we learn to be more understanding with our gifts, patient, willing to explain, listen, to be kind but firm when necessary, and in general a positive influence. Hence why there is a clear distinction between the responsibilities of a child and an adult (which is why wisdom is mostly related to older age); because we have been here longer. Thus, we should ideally have a sense of self awareness, as these young ones are only just developing into their own selves; but we need to realise the impact we have on their journey. So as adults, we have the higher responsibility to ideally ‘know better and do better’ and then, pass this on to the younger ones.  Shot by moi in Paris. Relationships fail for many various reasons and I’ll be touching on one aspect which is mutual respect. When I mention ‘relationships’ I’m referring to mainly your family, friends, and partners.
In these relationships you are supposed to feel the most secure and safe because these are the people we couldn't choose and those we did choose to be surrounded by. So I don’t think you should be even thinking of having your guard up. But you should, and if you already do, then its probably due to a lack of respect out of maybe other aspects. The thing is that, you may have missed the signs of the disrespect for a while just because you simply didn’t expect it so you would keep assuming it’s nothing. Which is where we go wrong because we are not in the position to be ‘assumers’ and we should really start addressing these things in a timely manner in our relationships. I’m not completely for the ‘scissors - I’ll cut you off in a heartbeat gang’. Definitely value your relationships unless it is clear that it’ll only diminish you; if not, then yess - have difficult conversations and move on. But, this combo will be sustained by mutual respect amongst other things because we cannot continue to disrespect people/receive disrespect. It's unhealthy.  Photographer: Rohan (SLR Memories) The truth is that they won’t know these things about you, and even if they do know, it doesn’t really equate to a consideration on their part. On your part, you really need to start recognising your truth, and opening your eyes to the behaviour in your environment.
We all know that there are external factors which may influence our behaviours/actions, so how come we don’t seem to have compassion when someone else acts negatively? We automatically start judging, and labelling their personality/character but we ourselves would always request for second chances etc... So why don’t we give others that same respect with their character? Now I’m not insinuating that we should not take responsibility for our actions; we should definitely consistently reflect on our ways, and how to improve. Which means we don’t have to surround ourselves with behaviours/actions we’re not happy with and nothing is wrong with loving another from afar. Suggestions:
 Shot by myself People pleasing is a personality trait that we all have a hint of in ourselves and sometimes it’s not always a bad thing. The root of this trait may be derived from having: low self-esteem, issues of maltreatment, fear of rejection, fear of failure etc. As a defense mechanism, you carry yourself in a manner to ensure others will like and accept you. Generally this trait is natural as most of us want to please our parents, teachers, friends, professional characters etc. However it becomes a problem when you’ve cultivated the habit to constantly choose to please people even when:
This habit is an unhealthy one to hold. You may think you are doing good by being 'too nice' to others but actually you're causing yourself mental strain. This mental strain will become more prominent when you realise that others will not treat you with the same respect or sacrificial behavior you have exhibited, and unfortunately most times you’ll even be neglected by others. This is because you’ve created the notion that it is okay for things not to be about you but solely about those around you so they will accept it; because that is what you have depicted and allowed. In affect, you will open an avenue for people to use you and not feel a thing about it (they should, but most people will not stop or tell you that you're being too nice to them. Instead they'll just accept it). And what you'll find is that people will want to assume you’re happy to do the things you will not say ‘no’ to, and the cycle of self neglect accompanied with resentment to others will continue and deepen. If you recognise yourself as someone who cultivates this habit, I suggest you:
For more tips see: https://psychcentral.com/lib/21-tips-to-stop-being-a-people-pleaser/2/  picture taken by myself This time of the year can affect people in different types of ways. Some may find this time daunting and others very exciting.
Daunting because maybe you haven’t achieved majority or none of your goals, picked up on some good/bad habits (mostly focusing on the bad) and in all feeling like time is running out as the year is now coming to an end. Exciting because it’s about to be a new beginning with the new year around the corner, you have achieved majority or even none of your goals, picked up on some good/bad habits (mostly focusing on how to improve on the good and stop the bad) and importantly, have made plans ahead which you are excited to see come to fruition. The clear differences here are what you choose to focus on and the importance of putting a plan into place. Thus, to those who may be finding this season daunting, I would suggest you choose to:
 Artist: Unknown (please let me know if you know who this is by!) In my previous post I expressed how I was in a reflective state of mind, and honestly, this has opened my mind to a few things and one which has become clearer is that: what you think about yourself determines the standards and goals you set, and the approach you choose to take in achieving/exceeding them. For example, if you believe you are an ‘underachiever’, you will always act like one, you will never push yourself and you may never reach half of your potential as you have devalued your abilities. Now, don’t get me wrong. Just because you believe you are an ‘overachiever’ does not necessarily mean you will always overachieve and that's just the truth. But still, why would you choose to set low standards for yourself? The fear of: 1. Failure One thing I realised about this, is that it begins with adapting a negative mindset which will shut down your ideas before you even begin to formulate them. Also, maybe you might have failed once previously or have had continuous episodes of experiencing failure and you cannot seem to shake this idea away from your mind. I would suggest you try to:
2. Opinions of others Have you ever diminished your abilities so that others don’t think you think you are ‘all that’? If the answer is yes, then please stop doing this. I do agree that you do not need to prove your abilities to everyone, however when necessary, ‘say it with your chest!' People will always have an idea of you in their mind so there isn’t a point trying to control the perception others may have of you. Most times people will treat you according to the standard you have set. This is not to suggest that you overestimate your abilities or put yourself on a pedestal but that you have a sense of self-value and realise that sometimes we set more barriers than goals because of the perception we have on ourselves. Suggestions:
 picture taken by myself Lately I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection and from that, a few positive and negative things were revealed about myself. Guys self reflection is a must, believe me. And it’s important to know how to heal from the truth we are about to tell ourselves because it really will hurt. But first lets begin with the positive revelations. With these, I was like yes! Go me. So, I started to ponder on ways to improve and actively work on those skills. Yes, obviously as humans we can get lazy and the spirit of procrastination can creep up at us, but most importantly don’t forget/sleep on your dreams and the positive things about yourself. Now, with the negatives, I’ll tell you the truth. I went through a phase of self hate, it was horrible and it took me a while to get over it but I'm healing. In the process a thought came through my mind: how can I actively improve/remove these negative things. Basically let’s turn this into something positive. The message is to be honest with yourself but don’t let the honesty reflect badly on you. The beauty of it is you fall down but you have to get back up. I would suggest you:
 Picture of myself taken by my friend Charles As humans we are bound to go through life facing multiple types of emotions and sometimes it is out of our control to choose how we want to feel. This is because amid so much negativity we may not be strong enough to redirect our energy to positivity. Obviously, we cannot forget the lovely moments but for some, according to the events of their life, the bad outweighs the good. So, they find they are tired and just want it all to STOP. A lot of the times no one wants to talk about this because for some reason life is meant to be full of joy, and even if you’re going through pain, then do it in silence. You hear things like - ah you’re so pessimistic etc… But can we be real for one second and really talk? Now I’ve had this feeling many times, and if you know me personally, you know that I’m literally an African hippie. All I want in this life is to be happy and to spread happiness but let me tell you, most of the events of my life have been contrary to all of that. And I find that the most voiced words to me by my loved ones are - “you’re so strong”. However, It got to a point where I had to let them know - “bro I’m weak let me rest!” But I must admit, the biggest lesson I have derived from life is that everything is for a season. The hurt you feel, the money you have lost, the rejection you have gotten etc… these very real examples are temporary feelings. The feeling of wanting everything to STOP is also a temporary feeling. Why am I telling you this? We are humans and we are subject to change each day. We cannot continue to allow our feelings to dictate what we do, how we think, and what we say. Easier said than done, yes, I know but I believe we can train our minds. The same way we need to be aware of how our body works, we also need acknowledge how our mind works. Don’t just leave it. Feed it, take care of it, love it. Just because no one can see your mind, don’t think you can just let it go and wander. I’ve heard about people who really did let everything ‘just STOP’ and while I can empathise with why they have done the deed, I can only wish they knew how fleeting our emotions are. Reality is that you could feel so strongly about one thing one week and literally be in a completely different state of mind the next. We cannot do it alone, and it seems many find their own various methods to cope. But to those who don’t have ways to cope, or those whose coping mechanisms are failing; I would say look beyond the realms of this world. For some this is God and others I cannot speak on. But in all, let’s all make each other’s lives easier because for some it is already way too hard. |
