Know your worth

If you were to auction yourself off right now, how much would you think you could be worth?

Okay fellow bloggers! Before this seems all like me crossing some ethical border! This is purely a question to be left up to the imagination – nothing serious meant by it.

I know that I would not appraise myself to much worth. And that is me being honest and not fishing for complements.

The reason I’m asking that question is… You see… I’ve kind recently realised that I’ve been selling myself short.

After a dear friend of mine told me that I’m selling myself short in life and that I have to do some serious retrospection, I sat down and that same question popped into my head: How much am I worth?

Instantly I knew why my friend had told me this, as the worth I placed on myself seemed less that what I paid for lunch today…

In my last post, I spoke about how one tends to lose yourself in life. Me selling myself short, was apart of me losing myself in life.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking I was important, that I was just as equal as the next person on the street and that my worth was far more than I was selling myself for.

Being the type of person I was, I slept on this. And had a long hard grinding of some gears in my head.

People somehow have either become so egotistical that they can tell you their worth is more than a small country or they’ve become empty shells, selling themselves short. All I could account this to was that these people (AND MYSELF) had been taking other people’s expectations, words, complements and abuse to their heads and in turn have lost respect for themselves and others.

In my case, I lost respect for myself.

I can admit this now. I am not proud of it, but somehow I was giving up myself and my identity again for other people and to keep them happy.

At the end of the day, we all need to keep ourselves happy first and then tend to the needs of others.

This lesson is one I’ve found to be a hard one to learn… It’s still hard trying to think of myself first, but I’m glad I’m doing this. I’ve found myself smiling more and being able to make a better judgement call if I want to sacrifice a part of myself to keep someone else happy (who really deserves it, if I might add).

Basically, you should be able to know your worth at the end of the day.

We’re all important, have the same worth and happiness. It’s all up to you to work with that and take it from there.

In no means am I perpetuating anyone to become selfish – I am just asking you to start with yourself and then work onto others.

I guess, once you’re happy, you can share that happiness and love with others?! Right?!

You are your own superhero

Disney’s newest hit wonder, Frozen, has gripped the attention of many for it’s vivid and original plot based on how you don’t need Prince Charming to save you. Sometimes, you can save yourself.

This has blown the minds of many people, especially girls, out there on how we’ve been taught that you always need someone to save you. We’ve been full fledged damsel in distresses waiting on the world to swoop in and save us. When at the end of the day, we easily could have just saved ourselves. Mind blow?!

In what I would call irony, Disney stepped on it’s own toes. After years of creating this systematic approach that the Princess needs the Prince to save her, we know now that it’s just plain laziness and that the Princess could save her own ass.

In life, we may have challenges or problems that fall on our path which we might need saving from. Sometimes, we think we’re not strong enough to do it. Like Snow White or Cinderella we fall onto a heap in the corner and start crying melodramatically till someone swoops in and saves us. And if no one saves us, we cry even harder, ’cause then we’re “alone” and “no one loves us”.

Stop rolling your eyes. You know you do it. I do it too.
Guilty as charged.

As Frozen has proved to us, we can be our own superheroes. We can save ourselves by just refusing to admit defeat and that something can shove us down to the ground. All in all, any problem you face is smaller than you think. Any obstacle is easy to overcome and has a way or mean to be defeated. The ability to save yourself, has always been there. Even since the days where Eve or our primate ancestors were cunning enough to be their own superheroes. (Pardon to the Eve reference… She did eat the apple and all, but I bet she overcame childbirth as one of her obstacles without relying on Adam!)

It’s easy to lose yourself. In life, we have a sole mission to discover who we are and what we are capable of. But somewhere along the line, we totally lose the plot and just forget that we can rely on ourselves to be our own saviours. We miss this important point and then at some point any or all obstacles we face are just too much for us and we rely on others to save us from our own demises.

I’ve recently realised how easy it is to lose yourself in life. And how when you just think you have things figured out, something sneaks up and surprises you.

The important point is to never forget how strong you are and what you mean to yourself. If everybody fails you in life at the end of the day, you only have yourself. And you should love and trust yourself enough to know that you can do anything and be your own superhero.

So, are you ready to don your cape and be your own superhero? Are you ready to be your own saviour?

Lent

As a little boy, I heard the familiar tale of Ash Wednesday from a fellow student in primary school. In all descriptive detail she told me about how it was the celebration of sacrificing something “for a lot of days” and then becoming more closer to God.

Today, I am 23 and that same story has still stuck by me. Last year, my old boss Sam, taught me what lent truly is. In a lack of a better description, I’ve always been ill-perceived about what this practice is and I truthfully never took the time to really find out what it is.

Alas, now that I know lent is the practice of devout Christians to give up something in preparation of various religious practices that will lead up to Easter, or the time when Jesus was crucified.

Over the course of the day, I heard various mumblings in the office of what people were planning to give up. Some VERY interesting things came up and some really amazing stories also popped out. And this all had me thinking: what was I about to give up for lent?

I’m not a devout Christian, but by faith I do follow Jesus and practice my religion in my way. It’s ticked off a lot of people in my life and in general before. In a lack of understanding, they never tried to see my point of view. So, in true form, I was going to celebrate lent in my own way.

The word rolled through my head continuously and it was on my way home from my night out, that I realised what I need to give up.

My life right now is filled with so much angst and drama  – enough to fill a soap for a lifetime. It’s drama that I didn’t cause or invite into my life, but somehow dug a hole and found a way into my life. And certainly, for lent, I was more than willing to give this up. By this, I mean allowing drama into my life. For lent I was prepared to batten up myself against the waves of drama that were to possibly invade my space. By all means, I was even allowing myself the idea to give this up in total. But lent was a good start.

And while drama has it’s own space, the negativity that comes with it was also something that I wanted to give up.

While I am guilty of being a Negative Nelly at times, it would be tough to keep my mouth shut while I want to blab on about all things negative. It’s easy and a habit that I love doing. Maybe it’s even become a paradigm in my life, allowing me to pass over the positive and endure the negative. And maybe that negativity has also some deeper roots into the drama in my life and vice versa…

And as for the general unhappiness inside me: that was a thought I was also cutting out for lent.

For 2014 and my deeper spiritual experience I felt like these three things were the best things to give up. And while lent requires you to give something up for 40 days, I plan on giving it up permanently.

In the beginning of the year I made a promise to myself that I was to become a better and stronger person who would be proud of myself if I were to look back on the year gone by.

Lent was just the perfect reminder for me to pick up on this challenge where I left off.

To all my Christian readers: A blessed lent!

And to all my other readers of a different spiritual belief: A blessed time time to you too!