Not everyone will understand your journey. That’s fine. It’s not their journey to make sense of. It’s yours.
Author | Photographer | CG Artist | Filmmaker
Even if attaining a state of happiness was as simple as making a choice, telling someone who isn’t happy that “happiness is a choice” is as about as helpful as teaching someone how to fish by telling them that “there are fish in the sea”.
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Bit by bit we create fictitious relationships with people when how we act isn’t congruent with who we truly are. And then if we rely on or grow fond of those relationships, we become conditioned to elicit behaviors that aren’t a reflection of our true selves.
This poses a number of problems. Not least of which is the fact that the bigger the gap becomes between how we act and who we truly are, the more friction we feel. Even if we don’t feel uneasy at the time, living in an incongruent fashion eventually catches up with us and manifests itself as any number of relationship-related issues.
Always strive to act as authentically as possible. By aligning how you act with who you truly are, you will not only form far more meaningful and rewarding relationships, you will naturally attract many more of the types of people you actually want in your life.
Originally Published on: May 21, 2017 @ 19:38
If you agree with a message, but don’t like how it’s communicated, understand that not everyone interprets information in the same way. A communication style that may be off-putting to some may be exactly what is necessary for it to be impactful to others.
It is nearly impossible to communicate with all people in the same way and have your words be just as impactful to every person who receives them.
Self-help books that cater to the masses, for example, are likely to miss those who need information communicated in a different fashion than most. Books that fill a niche tend to attract the kinds of readers who are drawn to a particular way something is communicated.
The fact is – for any number of reasons that are often beyond our control – people don’t always see us in the same way we see ourselves.
While it’s natural to care about how you are perceived, it is an exercise in futility to try to explain yourself or justify your actions to everyone who doesn’t get you. Not only is this often a waste of time, it will likely make you seem insecure on top of everything else.
People will often draw conclusions about others based on what they imagine or guess to be true rather than what actually is. They may even presume to know what motivates a person or declare with confidence that they know why that person took a specific course of action. When, in fact, these conclusions can paint a picture that doesn’t at all reflect reality. And that’s OK.
It is perfectly acceptable to ignore the fact that other people have the wrong impression of you. Because, with few exceptions, what other people think about you will have absolutely no impact on your life unless you choose to let it.
When you truly know who you are, it won’t matter so much that other people don’t. What matters is focusing on who you want to be and what you wish to accomplish with your life regardless of those who don’t get you, what you’re doing, or what you wish to do.
If someone who doesn’t know you has an inaccurate perception of who you are, it is not your job to correct them.
In some situations, explaining yourself may be helpful, but the occasions when people who could not care less about you make misinformed, misguided, or snap judgements about you are rarely those times.
Every lifeguard is trained to understand that the deceptive thing about drowning is that it doesn’t look like what most people imagine. The same thing often applies to depression.
Just because a person isn’t flailing their arms in the water doesn’t mean they’re not drowning. And just because a person smiles doesn’t mean they’re not battling depression.
“If I were you.”
When giving advice to those who ask for it, remember that what you would do isn’t always in the best interest of the person you’re giving advice to.
Often, the most effective advice involves revealing pathways & illuminating doors and letting the person you’re providing advice to decide for themselves which one is in their own best interest to take.
