Depth & Insight

Life is a paradox. It is too long for us to notice how short it is. People are stuck in bad relationships or situations, waiting for the right moment to move on until they realize 5 or 10 or 20 years has flown away, or maybe their whole life is spent. Just look around yourself and tell me how many people you know live the life that makes them feel happy and free? How many gets up with a smile on a Monday morning, eagerly waiting for the day to start because they love what they are doing or enjoy their jobs so much? How many undertakes the struggle to reach all the dreams they have? Can you name one person who is like that? And what about yourself? Do you live the life that deep inside you wish to have?

Most people want something different from what they have whether it is a workplace, a relationship or a life situation that makes them miserable, and yet, they do not try to change. They mention where they want to be jokingly, never stirring a bit to start in that direction. Why? And why do they hate and envy those who do?

The explanation is simple. We are inclined to sacrifice our long-term happiness in order to keep ourselves comfortable in the present. You might be asking how one can be comfortable while suffering from whatever is painful and frustrating. Easily. Staying within your comfort zone provides a false sense of security, certainty, stability. Our present situation is what we know and what we are used to. Whatever change we are contemplating is uncertain and fearful. What if I change my situation and everything gets worse? You are afraid to do something because you stick to the illusion of security. However, the truth is it can be worse even if you change nothing.

Never having learnt to fight for whatever your goal is and ignore whoever keeps you back, your life is just drifting with no self-development. This is what severely affects your happiness, your relationships and everything you do on this earth while you have time to spend. Your reluctance to take responsibility for your actions leads to drifting away from everything you want. This is like burying yourself alive.

Another thing that keeps you back from changing your life is fear of making a decision. Many people worry that their decision might prove to be the wrong thing making them sink even lower. This is the reason so many people tends to procrastinate. However, thinking it through you must realize that most decisions are not irreversible. We are usually afraid that we can't undo our actions, but most actions, if you come to think of it, can be corrected later. If you were wrong to marry this person, for example, you can easily get a divorce. What this basically means is that the responsibility we fear when making a decision is a myth.

Speaking of decisions, you should not think that the big ones are those that affect your life considerably. Getting married, for instance, is an important event, but it is not the only decision that influences your relationship. You make decisions every day that take you in a certain direction. In fact, everyday decisions are the most important ones because they become habits after a while. They become automatic. And the change that seemed frightening at first becomes easy later. In the end you get used to it and it just feels natural, normal and okay.

Don't be afraid of making the wrong decision because 'bad' and 'good' do not exist when it comes to change your life. These phrases contain a good deal of relativity. Something that is good for you can be bad for someone else. Something that is good for you today can be bad for you tomorrow. Just know that by not making any decision you make a decision. You decide not to change your situation. Is maintaining your present state good for you? If not, you should make a new decision.

After a while we get tired. With so many thinking and contemplating done our mental energy and capacity of making decision finally get exhausted. If you carry a burden like a bad relationship or a bad life situation with you it's no use procrastinating, because you render yourself incapable of any important decision. Thus you rob yourself of the chance of happiness by hiding from the world that you deem dangerous.

Everybody can recognize that their situation is bad soon enough because of the suffering it inflicts on them. However, keep in mind that people who complain, but make no change, have not been suffering enough yet. We humans are such perverse creatures. If you think something is important you take action, don't you? If you take no action, your own happiness might not be important enough for you.

Taking action, however, does not necessary involve one big change in your life that cuts all your ties at once. It is wiser to take small steps every day, creating new habits, leaving your comfort zone as much as possible. Making small progress won't generate any feeling of change at first, but it is certainly taking you toward the life you want. Very few people choose this solution, though. Most of them choose the drastic way after they encounter a tragedy for instance. Stroke, cancer, heart problems can be the cause of change when we have become too rigid resisting change too much. Life then brings forth hard lessons to teach us. If small signs are ignored a tragedy happens that either breaks us for good or forces us to rebuild our life after all is said and done.

People who are not afraid to look in the mirror and face themselves in order to take control of their lives are respectable. So much courage is needed to sweep out all the trash from our minds. Mistaken beliefs, wounds caused by other people, deeply rooted fears are hard to remove, but this removal is the most important task we have in life. Unfortunately many people refuse to do it. They rather go though life suffering and sink into their graves with bitterness because of the lost chance to become who they want to be. You should not make that choice. It is never too late to start a change. Feel your heart with your hand — is it beating? Then you are alive. It is not late. You only have to start changing your life now.

Just think of the persons you love and ask yourself if you are one of them. Seriously. Are you important for yourself? Do you devote enough time to yourself? Do you respect yourself? Can you accept your decisions, your past and present, your whole self altogether? Are you aware of your good points as well as your faults? If you are like most people, probably not. It is rather likely that you punish yourself for being who you are, looking the way you do, living the life you have. You are fighting a desperate battle within yourself, although you know that this inner conflict does you no good. Probably you are struggling hard to reach your goals, taking your life seriously, punishing yourself for your mistakes and failures, treating yourself with such severity you treat no other human being. You do not realize that you can say 'no' sometimes. You can say no to goals that are not very important for you. You can say no to people who do not treat you like you are important to them. You can say no to fears that keep you back. And you can say no to the hardness with which you push yourself.

Sometimes these inner conflicts find their way to the surface. You cannot hide them forever, because they will not stay in you, they need to find their way out, the only question is the when and how. That's how unexpected illnesses happen. You are cruel to yourself in vain. You punish yourself for no good reason. You let situations and people that hurt you stay in your life. You do not notice what is good. You are waiting for something, knowing not what, and later regret that you were just waiting, waiting.... Perhaps you believe that you love yourself, but look at how you treat yourself.

The truth is that most people only wish that they could love themselves. They say that they do, they try hard to make others as well as themselves believe that they do. But inside there is a sense of guilt, disappointment, resentment along with self accusations. You try to bury those parts of your past that still hurt you. You are constantly fleeing from your own head, your own thoughts.

There are not many people who can accept the bad experiences they suffered in the past, the doings of others who hurt them and their own imperfections that cause a proneness to self-hate and self-reproach. Most of us seem to blame ourselves, thinking that we are despicable little wretches. And why? Only because something did not turned out the way we hoped.

Perhaps you never learned to accept your body and personality the way they are. You always want to be like someone else. Then it is important for you to realize that self-acceptance and self-improvement are not in conflict with each other, they strengthen each other. We live in a culture where people lost the connection with themselves. We live in a culture where everyone knows what his job is, what should he be like (according to others), who is good and who is bad, what is to be liked and what is to be hated, what is okay to do and what is not. We live in a culture where most people fly from the home of their own souls. For your soul is crying to you, asking questions like 'Who am I? Why can't I enjoy my life? Why do I feel guilty when I find that I am different from others? Why is it not okay to be myself and go my own way with a smile on my face?' Most people don't want to answer these questions. They try to escape these questions by giving themselves up to work, addictions, aggression, illness or, sometimes, death. They seek instant solutions that do not work, lying to themselves, repeating to themselves that they are okay, okay. They go on hating themselves for their looks, abilities, actions, whatever. They never try to really accept and love themselves. They trap themselves by self-deceit. Why? Because it is too hard to keep your faith. Too hard not to hate yourself. Too hard to resume the trust in yourself, believing in your dreams, accepting that with all our imperfections we are, ultimately, perfect. They find it is too hard to change.

But the day must come when you discover that you don't have to suffer. You don't have to resign yourself to a life situation that you hate. You can look inside and decide that you will change. You have the power to accept yourself as you are. You can discover that self-improvement is possible for you if you don't like yourself the way you are. You can be the way you want, but you don't need to hate yourself until then. Who says that happiness is forbidden until you reach your goal? Why shouldn't you be happy while making your progress?

Just because something bad happened, you should not think that you lost everything you value. Sometimes changes bring you unexpected good, even if they don't look encouraging at the beginning. Of course you wanted things to go in a certain way and they didn't but that doesn't mean the result will be necessarily bad for you. What if the change that is happening now is the best that can happen to you? Perhaps you did not get something from life. Something you wish so much. But that doesn't mean you will never get it. It may be that the right time has not come yet. Things are well as they are and everything will come into you life when the time is right. Things are not always what they look like. If you accept this simple truth you will always feel that your fate, whatever it may bring, is the best fitting one that you can possibly have.

People don't like being told that they make mistakes, but whenever you feel unhappy, you'll probably discover your own responsibility. There is no other person but you who can do something about that situation, that relationship, that poison that consumes you. Others may want to help, but their help is not always what you need — sometimes however good the intention is, the result is bad. 

You are the person who can help you in the first place, whatever the problem is, and change your life so that your miserable feeling vanishes into the air. That magic won't come by itself, neither will be delivered by someone else, a good angel who decided to help. You are the person on whom everything depends in your life and that is what you must keep in mind when you look for the reasons of your unhappiness. 

Sometimes it seems like other people are to blame — because some of them criticizes you, judges you, frowns at you, bullies you. But it is you who allows them to do it. When you realize that it does not have to be like this, it's like an awakening.

Deep inside, however, you are afraid. You fear disapproval. You are afraid that someone might think you a bad person. So you rather stay silent, however loud you are shouting inside. You don't exert any power to defend yourself. You let them torture you by remarks or do you other harm just because you are afraid of their judgement. You shouldn't be. 

This is your life. No one can make you comfortable with it but yourself. Other people won't do it for you. Some of them will help. Others will try to stab you in the back. So it is your responsibility to be your own guard and protector. It is you who can make you happy in the first place. Having kind people around who love you is important, but they alone can't make you happy. Your life needs your attention and affectionate care, you know. The source of your happiness is within you, and you must find it inside before you can share it with those you love.  

There are a lot of movies that tell a story of self-improvement with a hero or heroine whose life is miserable until he or she takes the responsibility and starts changes that lead to a happy result. One of the most compelling pieces must be American Beauty. I think it is Kevin Spacey's best performance ever. He plays a man who has no joy in his life and feels completely dead inside for he has nothing to satisfy him: no respect from people, no achievement to be proud of. Then, he meets this girl who is his daughter's friend, and his increasing interest in her motivates him to change his life for good. This movie can be an incentive for you to start working on yourself. It is realistic, for such self-improvement can be achieved by anyone who really wants it. And, you know, what can be done must be done. It is never too late to start.