I recently came to realize that life is actually very simple but we complicate things for ourselves by the little things we practice. In Mental house cleaning I talked about cleansing your mind of negative thoughts that disrupt your growth and in this blogpost, I will guide you through a few principles that have made my life so much easier and enabled me to understand myself and practice healthier methods of dealing with things.
Me and my friend Maxine recently decided to embark on a journey of self development and preservation and through conversations with her, I have managed to unlock so many principles and understand myself better. Note, I’m still a work in progress but I’m here to share some of those things with you and hope they help.
The significance of advice
It’s important to realize that although every once in a while you might need advice from friends and loves ones, you are not obliged to do what they say. So many times you already know what it is you want and after seeking advice from someone you start to feel like you are SUPPOSED to do exactly what they said. Take advice as more of a different perspective, you are allowed to act differently out of your own volition and after considering all your options. It’s your life after all.
Also, when you give people advice, understand that you are simply giving them your opinion. They are not governed by it. They can choose to use your advice as a way of understanding their situation further but you don’t get to be mad if they don’t do what you say.
Understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion
One of the greatest problems we have is thinking everyone should either agree with you or go to hell. It’s perfectly okay for people to have different opinions to yours and that doesn’t mean you are wrong. Avoid placing a toxic attachment to your opinions as it births bigotry. If by any means, someone’s opinions are morally unacceptable on your part, you are allowed to cut them off. Practice conveying your disagreements with respect.
Stop taking things so personal
For your own peace, it’s important to understand that people may hurt you but it’s never about who you are as a person. How people treat you has nothing to do with who you are and everything to do with who they are. Detach yourself from personifying people’s decisions.
People do and say things all the time based on how they feel & the stuff they go through within. We are on different levels of growth and just because someone’s decisions hurt you doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Pick yourself up without self blame.
Understand Yourself
One of the greatest problems I’ve always faced was ignoring myself. I tend to get extremely emotional then act over impulse and realize the next day that I’ve forgotten what it was I was even emotional about. This is quite toxic because I never really got to deal with the emotion, instead I let it pile up leading to unexplained emotional outbursts.
Each time you feel a certain way, be it angry, sad or whatever, try to ask yourself WHY you feel that way. It’s a simple question. “Why am I mad? Because that boy didn’t like my picture.” That’s all. That’s the first step, just why am I feeling like this. Asking yourself why opens you up to exploring the root of where your emotions stem from. Each time I recognize a certain emotion and ask myself why I feel it, it’s also followed by examining the root and how that reflects to me as a person. Long story short, have conversations with yourself and understand yourself more.
Learn to unlearn
The most important thing is to unlearn things. Unlearn your toxic coping mechanisms. Unlearn your bigotry. Unlearn all the things that blur your clarity and make room for new healthy thoughts and practices. Like I said, don’t grow too attached to your views, allow yourself to change your mind and unlearn the things you have to.
I once read something that said “you are allowed to change your mind if new information is presented to you” and honestly that sums it up.
As I go on with my journey of self development, I will continue to share my experiences and revelations on the new section of my blog, self help & preservation. Feel free to check out other posts like The prerequisites of self improvement so as to keep up to date and stay tuned for more. Thank you for reading 💕
CONTEMPORARY FEMME FATALE 