The Potential For Happiness

Enlightenment Is Lonely.

I just took a look at my last post. I wrote it at 1am or something like that, as I laid in bed reflecting on the day that passed. We watched TED talks on emotional health, in industry skills class, that day. I’m training to be a PT. I thought I could probably elaborate on that post. Considering it was only a sentence long.

It’s happened a few times in that class, where through the course of many of the personality type exercises we’d done, in the goal of achieving supreme customer service skills, I’d been the only one sitting there, failing to find something to work on… Or just completely defy the results.

That day, we talked about the language of love. I may have the name wrong but it’s the theory we all communicate affection, in an emotional relationship, primarily through one of 5 outlets:

Compliments, physical touch, gifts, time and gestures.

We went around the class and said which we naturally did more of in a relationship and I answered honestly. The teacher said, surely I favour one of them but in all honesty, I don’t. My girlfriend gets all of it and in quite a spread amount. Even the girl sitting next to me, who I’d only met 8 weeks ago, had to agree. I’d given her time, massages, compliments and a gesture here and there. (It’s not a monogamous relationship… mine isn’t, anyway >.>)

So we agreed, not for the first time in that class either, that I was the exception. An anomaly. You know why? I love myself. Genuinely. Deep down inside me, that self-esteem, it throbs for me like a phallus in one of those romantic novels, the lonesome middle-aged, read. When that happens, you tend to pamper yourself, in all ways… And what they say about treating others the way you want to be treated, is completely true.

Living Mirrors

You don’t like yourself. You don’t respect yourself. If you beat yourself up every time you do something that didn’t work out. Treat yourself like, say, your father may have treated you. Pointing out the flaws in everything you do… Instead of giving admiration to the positive in whatever it was you were creating, or striving for, then you’ll treat others the same.

Maybe not strangers. Maybe not class mates, not even a few of your friends but the closer those people get, the more you open up to them, the deeper they get to see, the more genuinely you you’ll be. You’ll catch yourself saying things to them, similar to what you say to yourself. Even if you put it down to “I was kidding, I didn’t actually mean that!”, you still said it. They may believe it, just a little. Like you did when you got drilled the “not good enough”, “try harder”, “you should of done it this way”, all that stuff, as a child. It’s no wonder the voice in your head sounds real similar! When the instigator, whoever it was, isn’t around, the words will still be resonating in your head.

How do I know this? I may be an anomaly now but like anyone else in this society, I started in the abyss of emotionally uneducated, overbearing and confused parents and grew up in the same society, filled with the manure to feed and grow the toxic seeds they planted...

They meant well. They always do. No one teaches you emotional intelligence. In a perfect world physical education would be right next to emotional education, on the school curriculum.

So, how did I break the cycle then?

A Perfect Split

I don’t think it was the split that was completely to thank for breaking the cycle but I did get a lot of contradictory messages from my parents, after they divorced. Mostly just blaming each other. When you’re 4 years old, it’s hard to choose sides. When you get to 7 or 8, it’s still kind of fuzzy but somewhere between then and puberty I stopped trying to choose and developed a very important life skill.

The Ability To Make Your Own Decisions.

I made up my own mind and I never looked back. It didn’t take long after that before I stopped caring at all about my fathers opinions of my life choices, either. I didn’t act out, there wasn’t spite, I just didn’t care. I realised his standards were unattainable, like I’m sure a lot of parents from that error (hah, poignant mistake, there. *era) were. I’m assuming his father would have been even harder on him, too! But when you stop trying to live by someone as influential as your own father, mother or whoever it was who was teaching you as a child’s standards, it’s hard to find judgement from many other characters in your life too hard to brush off.

I will admit, through high school and the rest of my teenage years, there was A LOT of calibration. The line between enlightenment and depression is extremely thin. I’ll try and keep this post to one subject, so I’ll just say this; not caring about what other people want you to do is generally pretty great but after you do, find a passion. In anything. It’s what will keep the apathy where it needs to be and you wanting to get up in the morning.

Breaking A Cycle

If, like most of the world, you’re stuck in this never ending cycle, there is hope. If the voice in your head tells you you aren’t good enough, just remember, it isn’t even your own opinion. It’s someone else’s opinion that put that voice in motion. Someone else trained you to think that way and it is just that. An OPINION. There’s no truth to it! Remember that. Tell it to yourself over and over, if you want, in whatever phrasing you like! Just don’t stop doing it, until you understand that someone else’s opinion has no bearing on your self worth.

That is the key. Understanding that fact. Because when you do, the things other people told you were important over the years will start to feel less important. You’ll start to realise what you truly value and who you truly are and prioritise those elements in kind.

The joy of achieving a goal that is purely your own is the emotional equivalent of giving yourself a blowjob.

Yes, let that sink in for a second…