#418 I don’t care what I write

You want to get the guitar piece exactly right but still trip up once in a while. How do you react?

You want to run a marathon but can’t even finish half a marathon yet. How do you react?

You want to explain how you feel but end up feeling misunderstood. How do you react?

Do you let frustration hold you back?

Or do you use the gap as leverage to change your actions and bridge the gap between your current and desired identity?

It’s hard not to trust someone who fully trusts themselves.

But it’s hard not to accept someone who fully accepts themselves.

It’s hard not to be at ease around someone fully at ease with themselves.

In other words: if you want others to trust, accept, and be at ease with you, first learn to trust, accept, and be at ease with yourself.

You don’t need anyone else for that – just some tiny daily actions that prove that trust, acceptance, and comfort to yourself.

Oh, and you could start with that today.

You don’t have to.

But you could. And if you could, why wouldn’t you?

A compelling vision of who I want to be doesn’t just guide my present actions and brings me toward a fulfilling future.

It also helps me deal with the suffering that’s part of living in a complex physical body with a complex mind in a complex society in a complex, uncontrollable world.

Because no matter how strong my vision or purpose is, and no matter what I do or say, inevitable hardship will happen anyway.

So if I know why I’m doing what I do, why I’m going where I go, and why I’m becoming who I want to be, then hopefully, when life gets rough, I’ll react in a better way.

I’ll trust myself to handle the unavoidable suffering.

I’ll trust myself to minimize how much I add to the suffering.

And that makes the future just a little bit brighter for me, everyone, and everything around me.