Tag: self help

you have to believe it all works out. then you have to make it work out.

The world has told you lies about how small you are. You will look back on this time and say, ‘I had it all, but I didn’t even know it. I was at the center, I could breathe in happiness, I could swim to the moon. I had everything I needed.’

Heather Havrilesky

I have a bone to pick with the idea of manifesting and letting go and saying if it’s meant to be it’ll be. If you go on TikTok, you can find thousands of videos of people explaining how to visualize what you want, and then just let it go and wait for it to happen, because the universe has got it. You are taken care of.

But the thing is, at the end of the day you are just left with you. There are people and there are obstacles and you have to navigate life but none of that really truly can affect you unless you let it. If you’re just daydreaming about great things happening to you, it’s all just going to stay in your head. The universe does not care that you want to move across the country and make six figures. The universe should probably care about bigger things than you. So who’s taking care of you?

I was so tired of waiting for good things that I became the good thing. I worked out when I didn’t want to work out. I studied for my classes, met with my groups, went to class, went to work, finished my work, finished my homework, wrote my papers, woke up at 5:30 a.m., saw my friends, did more of my hobbies, stopped being worried and just lived in the moment to see if I could make it feel good always, and finally I started seeing progress. I was not waiting for the universe any more, whatever that really even means. I was just being who I wanted to be, finally.

Did you know that at any time, you can just apply for a new job if you don’t like your current job? You can just start saving money and in six months you will have a savings. You can use that savings to move wherever you want and you can sell your car and never have to sit in an hour of traffic to get home ever again?

You can just do whatever you want to do because you are so small, the world does not care about you. But you are also the world. You will never ever know what someone else is truly thinking, but you will always know what you think. Why would you not listen to yourself? Why would you not get to know the wants, needs, hates, and ailments of yourself? You are everything you need to be wrapped up in a neat little person. You are the whole entire world and you are not.

Are you sad? What makes you not sad? Do you know? Figure it out. Figure out what makes you happy, angry, insecure, jealous, excited, scared, and everything else you could possibly feel, and learn how to counteract or live in it. Learn how to feel the bad less and feel the good more.

I was so worried all the time that I was just not ever going to be good enough, or smart enough, or strong enough to do the things that I wanted to do and it scared me to think I would get stuck wishing for more and missing out. I was worried because I didn’t have any real proof that I could do better – I’d never done it. I know how to mess up, I know how to ruin things, but I had very limited experience with exceeding expectations. I learned more about the things I wanted to achieve and I set goals so I would have the confidence to make it happen.

I wanted a great relationship where I wasn’t anxious and deferring to my partner and becoming my partner, and I wanted it to last a very long time. So I started falling in love with what I like again. I ripped my acrylic nails off and I started playing guitar again, read a new book from my favorite author, binge-watched the shows I like, listened to my favorite podcasts, cooked new recipes, made plans with my friends and reconnected with them, and at some point in there I stopped worrying. I saw my partner less but I had more to talk about with him, and I think he definitely appreciated that I just had more interests to bring to the table. I love you and I love all these things, and this is what makes me a complete person. I love you and I am me, and you love me for me, not because I am you, but we are also one. Like a Venn diagram with the middle part overlapping, that’s us. We’re two complete circles, but we choose to be together.

And once you believe you can just be different, you don’t really have a capacity to accept anything other than what you really want. I don’t want to feel bad, so I don’t let myself dwell on things that would make me feel bad. I give the benefit of the doubt to situations where I would normally get sensitive and feel prickly, and 99% of the time I forget about it in an hour. Will this really matter in 5 days? 5 weeks? 5 months? Where do I really want to spend my energy? Getting upset over something small, or just having a good time and continuing to feel good?

You have to believe it all works out. And then you have to make it work out. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it always feels better to feel better than to feel bad. Once you figure out what you want, and then how to align yourself with what you want (in the big ways and the small ways), you don’t have to wait for some Jesus Take the Wheel type of situation. You are your own Jesus and you take your own wheel. The universe does not make you a better person – you do. There are no miracles coming to save you except for the miracle of you finally snapping out of your own personal thought-prison and figuring your shit out.

the act of unraveling

So much of my time is spent photographing others, writing on behalf of others, and using a different voice to portray a certain message. I have found it hard to really know myself because I focus so much on everyone else.

It is easy for me to pick someone apart by listening carefully and paying attention to their responses and the things they say and do not say. I am an expert understander.

It is not easy for me to put into words how I feel about things, maybe because I am not often asked. I am the asker.

Lately I’ve been asking myself how I can open up more and trying to mirror the vulnerability of others. I write so much, and sometimes feel so in tune with myself, but I don’t know if I have ever truly shared that with someone else. I don’t think I’ve ever voiced my deepest darkest thoughts and hopes and dreams and fears, and I don’t remember ever wanting in such a precise way before.

I have kept me close to me, worn my emotions and complexities like a tight second skin. I wrap myself around myself around myself around myself like a snake coiling and ready to strike in case someone tries to get too close.

But what am I protecting myself from? Where did I learn this behavior?

How do I put the fangs away and unravel myself, now that I want to let someone really know me?

This is what I’ve been trying to do, I am currently in the pursuit of being known by someone that I want so badly to know me. To like me for me, and isn’t that all that anybody has ever asked for?

passionately, not reasonably

Do you really love me? Much?

Passionately, not reasonably?

Virginia Woolf, letter to Vita Sackville-West
December 29, 1928

I have been working so hard to better myself this year, in just about every way. I am working toward things I don’t want to jinx by writing out.

I’m trying to stay in the present as much as possible and not focus too much on outcomes. I want to enjoy the things that are good now, and not be impatient. I am happy, now.

I am not yet where I want to be, and I believe by the end of July I will be. I think in 6 weeks I will be much better than I am now. In 9 weeks I will be even better.

By the time I’m 24 I think my life will be a lot different, with more to balance. But more is good, it means my life is fuller.

I know it because I’m working so hard towards it all. It’s inevitable, unless something that I can’t plan against happens. If you put in the work you will get the reward, and I refuse to listen to people who say otherwise.

It is both passionate and reasonable to chase after everything I want and earn it all and love the moments in between the beginning and the goal.

the girl with one (1) cold shoulder

I am best friends with the block button and the read receipt. One of my shoulders is always cold.

I feel like it’s a self-preservation thing instead of a confidence thing, because when someone I don’t care about does something I don’t like I almost always immediately fling them to the depths of The Blocked. Ex: the first week I got a Twitter I blocked Chrissy Teigen. It felt good.

When someone I do care about does something (not small) that I don’t like I have to activate my logical checks and balances system and go down my Checklist To Keep People In My Life & Not Be Dramatic. Ex: I have been known to temporarily ground my best friends from my life. One of my friends kept repeatedly saying something I didn’t like and I asked him many times to stop and on the fourth time I didn’t talk to him or interact for four months. It felt fair to me. It was dramatic.

The checklist includes:

  • How do I feel? How should I feel?
  • What do I want to do? What should I do?
  • What can I do? What are my options?
  • What will I do?

Most of the time it’s always better to underreact. I can always ramp up the reaction later but honestly, it usually just makes me feel bad and I’m in the business of making myself feel great and not bad.

Count to ten, drink a glass of water, whatever it takes to not strike the match that ignites my fiery little heart.

warming my hands on bridges I’ve burnt, and why that’s okay according to Aristotle

I lost a couple friends this past year and I didn’t give a shit.

And I thought,
Am I sad enough about this?

I thought,
Did I really care about those friendships or did I waste my time on people who I shouldn’t have for too long?

I thought,
Am I being heartless?

I thought,
Will people think I’m a bad friend for being honest about not caring that much?

Then I remembered one of my favorite philosophy classes from college about relationships, and how different philosophers have defined them.

Aristotle said there are three types of friendships: one based on utility, one based on pleasure, and one on mutual appreciation of each other’s values.

A friendship based on utility is basically a relationship that lasts as long as you’re both getting something out of it. Like a transaction. Sort of like a coworker who you’re only work friends with for as long as you’re at that job. Once you leave, you don’t see them again and they don’t see you again but you mutually benefitted from being positive to each other while you were at work. Aristotle said this is popular with older people.

A friendship based on pleasure is more emotional and supposed to usually be the shortest relationship. You stay friends for as long as you both enjoy the same thing, and you break up as soon as one person doesn’t.

Aristotle said the pleasure friendship is more common between younger people because as we grow we tend to change our interests and values, so we grow out of pleasure friendships quicker than the other types.

The third type of friendship is based on virtues, and it has the strongest connections and lasts the longest. The best friendships should be based on appreciation of character — not on a transactional (utility or pleasure) value — and shape our lives for the better.

I think this really explains why I wasn’t sad about the friends that I lost this year.

One was a girl who I went out drinking with and talked about guys we were dating. We would meet up and both hop on dating apps and squeal about who we had matched with, who we’d met, and who we were dating for a while, but once I stopped caring about those things we ended up really not having anything else in common. We didn’t even like the same music or shows. Our friendship was a pleasure transaction, and as soon as I stopped using dating apps we stopped being friends.

I ended up not missing her at all as soon as we stopped being friends because she didn’t really add anything else to my life. Our values weren’t the same at all: we couldn’t relate about our jobs, our education level was different, and we had different political views. The death of our friendship was short-lived and unmourned. I actually felt better knowing I didn’t have to talk to her again, because I didn’t want to talk about the same things we used to.

Aristotle said that when you have a friendship based on appreciating each other’s values, the other two types of friendship naturally combine into it, too. Thing of your diehard BFFs that you’ll drive to the airport, invite over to watch 90 Day Fiancé, and help out during a hard time. They’re beneficial and pleasurable, and you also respect and care for them.

I’m extremely thankful for all of my top tier friends and I’m cool with warming my hands on the bridges I’ve burned with my limited time only buddies.

on being spiteful

The thing about being spiteful is you really only end up hurting yourself. Put down the can of Spite.

I think one of the main reasons why I have achieved what I have achieved is not something to be proud of. I am a person who works better when I am trying to prove something. I am a person that works harder because I don’t ever want to be a victim of anything.

I am a spiteful person.

When somebody does something to you and you get hurt, I think you get to choose whether you use that moment to propel you forward or to set you back.

I, like most people, have been burned a lot. By friends, by boyfriends, by coworkers, and family. But I don’t know whether how I handle it is entirely healthy. I tend to internalize things and out of spite I decide that I need to work hard to prove that I didn’t deserve that treatment.

I have a family member that lives to bring people down. They don’t put any effort into their own wellbeing or personal growth but they love to bash everyone else and judge everyone else for their actions. They lie, cheat, steal, and use other people and never care at all about how it effects the people that love them.

You could get recognized for something cool at work or at school, and they’d say it only happened because you’re a suckup or you got lucky. They know how to push your buttons just right because it’s the only thing they’re good at, the only skill they’ve applied themselves to. And I could write a whole other essay about how shitty saying someone is only successful because they “got lucky” is.

My response to that kind of behavior has been to prove that I can and will be better than that. I worked twice as hard, literally at two jobs, while they did drugs and insulted the family members we lived with. I got accepted to every college I applied for while they got denied, and I felt good.

I know you aren’t supposed to compare yourself to other people, and that’s my biggest flaw. For all of my virtues, for every time that I don’t lie, cheat, or steal, I make myself feel empowered by comparing myself to the people I know that do.

I dated someone that struggled to get a career doing what he loved, and my response after he dumped me was to get my dream job. Instead of working through the pain of a breakup, I worked for an entire year to make sure that I was nowhere in the same league of success as him. I wish I would have taken the time to grieve, to be sad and angry, because those emotions came later. They all flooded back like fresh wounds after I got what I wanted, and I kept cyberstalking him to make sure that he was still a loser and that what I did was worth it.

I thought that if he ever saw me again or looked at my social media profiles, he would see how much better I was doing and it would hurt and annoy him. I want my family member to look at my life and see that their life doesn’t shine as brightly because they are a pitch black pit of negativity. For all the pain they cause my family and me, I want to send it back harder with my success.

I hate flakiness and when my friends don’t follow through with their plans, so I set weird timelines for not looking at their snapchat stories, not replying to their texts, and not making plans with them. I asked you to go with me to an event two weeks ahead of time and you cancelled the day of? See you in six months, and don’t expect a text back from me until after I went to that cool new place you’ve been wanting to go to.

If I wasn’t so spiteful maybe I could stop and slow down and enjoy the life I have built. Maybe I would have more friends and be less successful, and maybe that would be okay. Maybe I’d be happier?

I’ve been trying to work on finding other reasons to push myself. I have been trying to stop comparing myself to other people and make time to stop and appreciate what I already have.

Being a spiteful person is mentally taxing. Because I don’t say spiteful things, or lash out at people to hurt them, in fact I really don’t think anyone would call me a spiteful person at all. But I do it all internally, and at the end of the day the only person who gets harmed is me. It’s very passive aggressive.

This is hard to write, and harder to come to terms with. I hope someone else out there feels like this and has a strategy to battle it. How do you deal with comparing yourself to others, and how do you motivate yourself in a healthy way?