Have you ever looked at a 10-year olds room? Do you remember yours at that age?
It’s messy. It’s sloppy. It’s disorganized. It can be disgusting.
Because they are 10. They have bigger priorities than keeping their room tidy.
As we age, we can become very buttoned up. We make sure we are clean and orderly. We want to look the part to the world. Heck, some of us even clean their house prior to a cleaning company coming in to do it.
To the outside world, we have it all together.
But, inside we can be messy, sloppy, and disorganized. We can be dealing with a lot of things that we are afraid to share with the world. We can be making decisions that are leading us down the wrong path.
We have to pause and reflect.
Why are we neglecting ourselves in order to be perceived a certain way?
Why are we unwilling to realize we have some shit going on that we have to deal with?
When are we going to realize we have to clean up our room?
We may have taken it for granted in the past but now it must become our #1 priority.
Some days I look at the blogs I’ve written and I say, “I wrote that!”
Other days I say, “I wrote that?”
We can be our biggest cheerleaders or our worst critic.
We take judgment and comments from outsiders all the time but when do we actually reflect on how we talk to ourselves?
Why do we treat ourselves like this?
It’s okay to question ourselves from time to time in order to make sure we are heading in the right direction but let’s not forget that we choose the attitude we take into each moment.
Are we exercising gratitude, humility, and optimism or are we letting a large shadow of negativity come over us?
It’s our choice how we choose to talk to ourselves.
It might serve us well to be kinder.
Don’t underestimate the power of reflection. The 2015 version of you probably went through some shit to help make you the person you are today.
Embrace that, don’t suppress it.
Be okay with asking “Why?” and sitting with that answer for a bit.
Why was I upset?
Why did that bother me?
Why did I get angry?
Why was I short-sighted?
Why didn’t I listen?
Why did I take the shortcut?
Whatever the question is we have to be okay with challenging ourselves to have an honest and thoughtful answer.
We have to be okay with getting uncomfortable as we reflect back on a bad time or experience. As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.”
It may be better to be uncomfortable now, by ourselves, as we learn and grow versus repeating a similar pattern in real-time.
We have to know it will only help us going forward.
I used to never want to celebrate my birthday. I was shy and didn’t like the attention. Part of it was growing up a middle child and never feeling like I fit in. Part of it was that I felt awkward and uncomfortable in the limelight.
But there was a part of me that wanted the attention, that craved it because I never felt I had any. It’s a weird paradox.
I was introverted and scared to have attention called upon me in almost any situation but yet I yearned to be heard and for my voice to matter.
But what I didn’t realize back all those years ago (and even until just recently) is that I didn’t need to be heard by others to make me happy. What I actually discovered is that I needed to listen to myself. My innermost thoughts were the voice that was being suppressed all along.
I wasn’t looking for approval from the outside. That’s where I was mistaken. I needed approval internally. Approval that the decisions I was making, the things I wanted to do, and the people I wanted to be around were all my decisions if I just listened to myself.
What I have come to realize and respect is that the only way to discover happiness is we must first discover ourselves. We must be willing to gain acceptance from within before ever looking for outside validation.
We know what we want. We do. We’ve just let “society” do the play calling for us instead of being in the center of the huddle and scripting our own plays.
That’s where the game can change. We are in control of our happiness if we want to be. What we spend time doing, who we spend time with, how our attitude is every day, where we put our energy, and what we know is our “why”.
It’s in our control if we take the time to block out the noise around us and listen inward.
We don’t have to fear the limelight as long as we show up as our true authentic selves and put into the world what is deep inside us and makes us energized and driven toward a life full of happiness.
What we should all fear is suppressing that voice and following the direction of what others think we should do. What others care about. What others are doing.
Because their decisions don’t affect us.
The people who we want to be around the most and who love, support, and respect us are never making it about them. They are only asking us one question, “What do you want?”
Are we prepared to trust our inner voice and answer?
A hard truth in life is that we can’t be the one to someone else until we can be the one to ourselves.
Most relationships don’t end later on down the line like it appears they do. Generally, when a relationship ends it was going sideways for a long time before.
Really, they end well before they even start.
It will inevitably happen if we don’t learn to practice “self-love” and seek to understand our own inner workings on how to best communicate, trust, support and respect the other person we are with.
It can be easy to blame a significant other when things start to go bad but the hardest part, the most needed part, is figuring out what we are doing wrong and how we could fix it. The finger should only be pointing in one direction until we can figure ourselves out.
If we show up for ourselves first then we’ll be able to show up for anyone else later.
Our world wants big and bold and lavish lifestyles. We see it all over mainstream media. The “keeping up with the Joneses” ideals seem real. That’s at least the stories we were told growing up.
Get a job and work your way up so you can buy things and be happy and then when you retire you can ride off into the sunset. We were told to idolize the Hollywood celebrities and those that were “successful” which really meant those that were “rich”.
We were told a lie.
The loudest person in the room doesn’t necessarily win.
Just because we might happen to hear them doesn’t mean we have to listen to them. It doesn’t mean we have to join in.
We have the choice.
Sometimes silence and separating from the digital world becomes the true gift. Not “fitting in” can actually be a blessing because we don’t have to feel like we are comparing ourselves to anyone else. As we all know, “Comparison is the thief of joy”.
So when the world is shouting “Go left” it’s not a bad idea to sneak down the alleyway and go right. It’s not a bad idea to make decisions that make us happier versus making decisions that make us “appear” happier.
The people that live the most extraordinary lives are often the ones doing it in the shadows, out of the limelight, and away from the noise of the glittering lights.
