Haters gonna hate

#41/100

“You will face your greatest opposition when you are closest to your biggest miracle“

-Shannon L. Alder

I’m sure each one of us has been hurt by criticisms, disagreements, sly remarks in our life. It hurts more when these comments come from our closest friends and acquaintances. Moreover, it completely shatters our heart when we put our heart and soul into something and it’s not appreciated by others. When I was in school, I was fat shamed by my cousins and few ‘so called’ friends. I used to look up to to them a lot and it physically hurt me when they teased me about my weight. I grew up with severe insecurity and low self esteem issues. These incidents left a deep scar and I grew up with a strong belief that I need to be thin to be appreciated. I overcompensated by becoming an insanely submissive people-pleaser. I used to say “Yes” even when my heart screamed “NO”, just because I didn’t want to be left out. Childhood is the most important period in a human’s life. The values and belief system that we grow up with becomes our reality during our adulthood and it becomes very difficult to unlearn and gain perspective from our own experiences.

Then came the changing point in my life, my weight loss journey. Two years back, in September 2018, I decided to give an all or nothing attempt to lose weight. No brownie points in guessing that I considered my weight the biggest hurdle in my life and truly believed that my life would change for the better once I lose it. I toiled hard for 3 months, put my blood (no kidding, fell down once while running), sweat and tears into losing weight. After a lot of hard work, I achieved my goal and couldn’t wait for the world to appreciate my efforts. You’d think my feelings were reciprocated well right? Well, it wasn’t. Only a handful of people recognized my efforts and complimented me, that included my cousins whose opinion I didn’t care about anymore. The larger chunk of comments were about losing “too much” weight, you looked better before, did you stop eating, why did you lose weight? so on and so forth.

I was dejected for a long time but eventually learned that I was wrong to let other people’s comments determine my worth. It took a great deal of learning to love myself bit by bit, every single thought, every single detail, to move past society’s opinions about the manner in which I should live my life. As they say, no matter how hard you try, there will be someone who doesn’t like you. You cannot please everyone. I was reminded about an amazing movie dialogue which goes like :-

“Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.”

-Will Smith from the movie “The pursuit of Happyness”

People who can’t achieve/dream of achieving their goals project their insecurity and disbelief onto others who try hard to work on themselves. What is the point of taking criticisms from such people who don’t have your best interests in their heart? I was reborn as a completely new person after my weight loss journey. Although my initial goal was to get appreciated by the society, today I work on myself for myself. Even if you reach the pinnacle of success, there will be someone who’d try to find your faults and bring you down. Love myself, love yourself, peace!

Rest it out

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.

-Napoleon Bonaparte

#23/100

There are days when I’m unable to sleep at night because of the nagging feeling of being unproductive throughout the day. Then there are days like today where I’m completely fine with not moving out of my bed at all. Humans are conditioned by the society to be productive. Wherever you go, we are told to work hard and utilize our time well. But is that all we are supposed to do during our lifetime? After a hectic workweek, I prefer a quiet weekend without any chores to attend to. But as the weekend ends, I feel sad about not utilizing my time optimally. Can our mind be ever happy with what we do?

I had to travel almost 8 hrs a day for 2 days this week for my office commute. Although I had planned to complete few chores during the weekend, my body wouldn’t listen to my mind. All my body wanted to do was rest it out. My mind could have pushed my body to do something productive, I decided to listen to my body this time. It’s completely fine to take an off day or more if you need it. I used to punish myself earlier for lazying around and wasting my time. I had almost convinced myself that I’m a chronic procrastinator. It took me a long time to realize that it was my anxiety that caused me to delay tasks and not procrastination. My anxiety has always managed to get the better of me before any huge event, be it an exam, an interview or any other place that required my complete efforts and attention. I have an “all or none” mindset unfortunately. No matter how hard I try, I always feel unprepared and low on confidence.

Now that I’m trying to understand my mind and emotions better each day, I treat myself better. When we look at other people who are hard on themselves, we realize how grossly wrong and unfair it is to behave in that manner. However, when it comes to our own selves, we can be the toughest task masters the world has ever seen. I’m trying to love myself more each day, be gentle towards my thoughts and listen to myself better. There is no fun in burning ourselves out to the point of no return. Rest it out if you need time, do nothing, eat whatever you want, just try to keep yourself sane. You are your biggest comfort after all.

Seven hours

#2/100

These seven hours have had a huge impact on my life. It’s the amount of time I am forced to spend commuting to and fro from my office. Why you ask? To satisfy the egos of few humans who are most certainly dead inside and seek weird pleasure by harassing those who help them run their business. Shouldn’t they be grateful? Of course yes! Do they lack empathy? A resounding yes! What’s making them do this? Primitive way of thinking which allows them to take selfish decisions and ruin the life of people who are the reason for their existence in the first place.

Even if I somehow get used to these seven hours that have made me lose my peace of mind, how do I deal with a person I’ve lost all respect for? I was made to feel like a nobody, unappreciated for my efforts and sincerity, thrown to the pits of doom with no return. What irks me further is the complete disregard towards the unsafe situation of the world outside and mental health condition of those who are dealing with it. How do you slowly destroy a person? Ignore their existence, make them do things which will crush their purpose and shatter their soul.

Is there a point of return from the very depths of doomsville? I believe there is! It’s the ladder of hope but there’s a catch! You need to build it slowly and steadily by sowing seeds of belief, faith, love and trust. Hope for a new you, faith in the process, belief in your inner superpower, love for thyself in it’s glorious mess and trust that you can make it.

When you have been let down multiple times, it’s time to pack and snap the fragile strand that’s holding the rope together. Look at your palm, it’s grazed from holding the rope so tight. It’s time to let go.

Life is simple, we do tend to complicate it. Happiness is a much better choice but somehow difficult to embrace. How do humans find negative banter easy to conform to? Does negativity present a more realistic picture than happiness?

I completely dislike how I feel when I’m down and about. Happiness makes me strong and indestructible. Life’s reality only lies in the next second, everything else is an illusion. Negative emotions are always about the next hour, day, year or life which makes them a bag full of crap!

These seven hours have given me a perspective, led me to the true face of the devil, made me realize what doesn’t confirm to my inner personality and helped me experience emotions that have absolutely no place in my life. I choose happiness now and always. I stand up for myself and will break all chains to keep myself sane, happy and content.

I deserve to be happy, I am happy!

L.O.N.E.R.

I’ve always been a shy, introverted kid. I never really wanted to have a big group of bff’s to share my life with. I’ve always loved my own personal space. Being on my own, with my thoughts used to be my favourite passtime. I could never really grow out of it.

However, as years passed by, I’ve turned into this person who needs soemeone around. I constantly check my messages to find something interesting. I keep flipping my phone to come accross something that can kill my boredom. I watch movies and series as much as I can. I try to spend time with my younger sister as much as possible. But, if there is any change in this routine (like yesterday when my sister was busy with something and needed the laptop), I almost died of inactivity.

Of late I’ve been feeling a lack of enthusiasm, lack of purpose in my life. I really have no clue why I have this feeling. But, it’s something I cannot hide away from.

Ironically, I hate getting up in the mornings, being a morning person! I thought deeply about this today and realised I do not seem to look forward to the mornings anymore. In fact, there is nothing to be excited about anyday as a matter of fact. I do not have any long term or short term goals. My future seems hazy! And no, I’m not sad or depressed!

I just lack focus! I’m unenthusiatic and unmotivated! I’ve recently joined a workplace where everyone seems super energetic and motivated and it has had an adverse effect on me. Instead of being inspired by them, I’ve started questioning my own life’s decisions!

While in school, I had my studies to look forward to, I wanted to top the class.

Come college, I wanted to do well in my 12th boards!

Degree college bought with it my identity, Charetered Accountancy course which I wanted to excel in!

Now, everything is done and dusted! I am a C.A., have a stable job, my regular set of friends who are quiet busy with their lives! There is nothing exciting about my life anymore!

I want to feel alive again! But I’m completely clueless about how to go about it.

There is one thing I’ve been delaying for a very long time. I’ll wake up early and go on a run tomorrow onwards! Let’s see how that turns out!

I really want to fall in love with my life! I’ll try to make an honest effort to achieve just that!

Wish me luck!