Content

Be content with who you are today and be content with what you have today. Often times people brag about what they have or flaunt materialistic things to depict that they’re more “successful” in some type of way, when the majority of the time they don’t really have it like that they say they do. Don’t fall in this pattern because fake success gets you no where fast and further from real success. In today’s society it’s normal for us to go on social media and see what someone else has and think to ourselves like damn I wish a had just a piece of that or if that was me I’d do this or I’d do that, but we have to learn to stop thinking like that because each time we do that we put ourselves in a box. You shouldn’t want the same thing that some else has, because if it was supposed to be yours you’d have it, but you don’t. Comparison is the thief of joy, you cannot compare someone else’s success to your own, your success will look completely different than others, but if you continue to compare yours to someone else’s you’ll never know your own success because you’re too busy measuring up what someone else has instead of focusing on your own possessions. Theres no way you’ll be blessed with more than what you have now if you’re not content with who you are and what you have at the moment. If you want success for yourself you’ll have to realize that success comes from goals that YOU set for yourself and each goal that you meet will be an accomplishment. Set more goals for yourself so that you can focus on your own success and reaching YOUR full potential not someone else’s. 

People Pleaser

The more and more you evaluate yourself you’ll begin to pick up on the little things you do unknowingly. I’ve noticed that “people pleasing” is an automatic thing we do these days. People pleasing is when someone has an emotional need to please others often at the EXPENSE of their own needs and desires. People pleasing does not get you any where for a long term, whether that be at work, socially, with family or someone you’re interested in, you’ll eventually show your true colors no matter what. It’s easy to confuse people pleasing with caring for someone or loving someone and I totally understand that, but when you are putting aside your needs and desires you’re losing yourself for the benefit of someone else, no job nor any relationship/friendship is worth that. I understand that there will be times where you’ll have to put your pride aside and make a compromise but that’s two totally different things. The point that I’m making is, each time you put yourself and your needs aside you’re slowly losing bits and pieces of yourself along the way, therefore when you get to where you wanted to be through “people pleasing” you’re not even yourself at the end of it all. Not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to love you, nor will everyone understand you, but that’s for you to do for yourself. Like yourself, love yourself, and understand yourself so much that your values, your needs and desires come first and in any situation where they are challenged, you’d think twice before putting them aside to please someone else. 

Balance

There aren’t many things we have the ability to control in this world, but one thing that we can control is our minds. We can control the way we think, how long we think about certain things, and the things we choose to see. The thoughts that run through your mind don’t come out of no where, they are your emotions running wild, your imagination taking over, while your reality is fixed to what you choose to see. Once you realize that everything that runs through your mind can be controlled by you, your thoughts and your life would be put at ease. This is what I call a healthy balance, balancing your thoughts and what we choose to see is important for those who want to control their minds. Your mind is a sacred place and many of us corrupt our minds with ill thoughts of ourselves, instead of feeding our minds with healthy thoughts. The saying “you are your worst enemy” is so true, if you tell yourself you aren’t good enough enough times your mind will start to believe it and that will translate to how you carry yourself in the long run. Your mind will have adapted to the fact that you will never be good enough and act as such. I’m not saying that every thought that runs through your mind should be a happy thought or a positive thought, I’m saying that there should be a healthy balance and the only way to control that is through you. Pay attention to what you think about, pay attention to how long you think about certain things, and most importantly pay attention to what you see. Most of our thoughts of “reality” come from the things we look at the most, sometimes we just simply have to change our realities. 

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of the hardest things to master, from both sides, whether someone did you wrong or you did someone else wrong, it’s a challenge to forgive either way. With both ways I’ve learned that analyzing your behavior and forgiving yourself is always the first step. When we do others wrong we have to take the time to figure out what allowed us to do someone else wrong in the first place before we can apologize for behavior that we don’t even understand ourselves. If you apologize without understanding what you’ve done wrong you can sever relationships with people in the long run due to a small misunderstanding. When someone does us wrong we have to look at ourselves as well and take the time to understand why we felt disrespected or why we allowed someone’s actions to move us. Forgiving yourself for others actions towards you is important, if you don’t evaluate and forgive yourself it leads to grudges, insecurities, and feelings of unworthiness. We can’t allow the actions of others to become us, nor can we allow our past actions to haunt us in our present lives. There is definitely more to forgiveness but I feel as though evaluating yourself and your actions should ALWAYS come first and any decisions you make after should be based off of your evaluations. Forgiveness is not easy but it is one of the most important things to learn in life, forgiveness teaches us so much about ourselves and the type of people we want around us if done right. 

Character

Practice what you preach and be who you “say” you are. This is the number one flaw with many people today, everyone has an opinion about someone else’s lives and what they’re doing wrong with their lives and not enough input on their own and that’s where character comes into play. Your character is how people will perceive you no matter what you’re saying out of your mouth, no matter if you’re preaching the good gospel or giving life advice, no one will hear you if you don’t practice what you preach. Often times the people that are speaking know what they are talking about through experiences but have not CHANGED from their experiences which makes it hard for people to grasp the concept when they see no valid outcome. This is why I say it’s important to speak not preach about life experiences with people because we can learn and grow from each other which is the point of relationships. What we fail to do is speak life into these situations, instead we scare people off by making it seem like there’s only one outcome for mistakes, which is completely wrong. The point that I’m making is in order for people to grow we must speak life into situations, we can’t expect everyone to understand where we are coming from if we haven’t even got to where we are going because we are all still learning. The learning doesn’t stop each day there’s a new lesson to be learned but speak amongst one another, don’t preach take the time to understand one another so the message is throughly RECEIVED. If you were once in someone’s position think about how you would have wanted the advice given to you? 

Love (continued)

Love is about appreciation, not possession. Again, love is the act of appreciating not possessing. To appreciate means to be grateful of and to recognize full worth of something without changing anything and I think that’s exactly what love is supposed to be about, no matter what kind of love it is; self love, love for a significant other, friendly love, and/or family love. No matter how you look at it, you should be appreciating the people you say you “love” and if it’s anything other than appreciation then it’s not real love. Love and lust are two different things that can be mixed up very easily, I look at lust in the same way, I believe lust is the act of appreciation and possession of ones body and mind. See with lust you can actually possess ones mind and have some type of control over them, often times we look past the possession part because lust does our body good and it feels good to know someone wants to own you or you own someone else, but lust doesn’t do any good to our souls, our true selves, it suppresses the true version of yourself and allows a different person to unfold. Therefore, if you have a choice, which you do, choose love every time, specifically self love. Self love is like a gateway, it will lead you to where you are destined to be. 

Confidence

You must have confidence in your present, confidence in your future, and most importantly confidence in your past. Many of us walk around regretting some of the choices we made when we were younger, when we were less wiser, but the choices that you made are what brought you where you are today, and if you’re not confident in who you are it’s because you’re still dwelling in the past. In order for us to truly change and become the people we are destined to be we have to let go of the past. You cannot go back and change anything you have done, we all know that, the only thing you can make changes to is your present and your future but if you’re dwelling in the past then you’re missing out on both. Lessons are to be learned, be confident that every choice that you made was to improve you, though it may not have been right at that moment you needed whatever that was for the benefit of your future, learn from it, move on from it and let it go. Be confident in every choice that you make going forward and be confident in your own abilities and qualities. There is only one you, this is all you get, be present.