With the self help industry in full bloom reaching people in every corner of the world (or maybe not), the number one thing to sell is your potential- your optimal level of functioning, where it is possible to dream a life, dream of being someone who is recognized. The constant rows of the good life being sold in small social media boxes, make us believe that it is possible to have the life of our dreams. A life where we are constantly happy, with friends and people who love us, and creating and sustaining our work where we are optimally functioning, honing our creativity and bedazzling everyone with our personality. And this is where we prepare ourselves to fail.
Don’t get me wrong. I think it is quite helpful to have someone push us outside our comfort zones. To make us think and visualize the life that we want to live and breathe. Who would want to come home after a day’s work, only to feel restless that we are not living up to our fullest potential, things that we could achieve only if we tried hard enough, only if we were not constantly distracted and tired, only if we could escape our current environment. We are haunted by the thoughts and wishes to be somewhere else, to be someone else.
What if I told you that the only person who needs to accept you as you are is – you. You, in all your glory, in all your disappointments and embarrassment. What if I told you that it is okay to feel vulnerable and low at points in our lives, to feel that you are this insignificant being in a world which is too random and too big to take in anyway. Would you believe me? Or would you keep on feeling that it is not okay to be this mediocre of a person, a person with so many flaws and faults?
What does it mean anyway to live a life too extraordinary? If you look closely at someone’s rags-to-riches story, you would find that pieces of information such as greed, jealousy, callousness, depression, etc. are missing. These stories sort of take the humanness out of a person, making them into some sort of an outlier, and not the statistics kind. The one who stands out from the crowd, but also the same individual who is loved and adored by all. Does that really happen in real life? (if you do know someone who fits the description, let me know in the comments section below!)
If we start to scratch the surface of such desires, we may find that there is a dull hammering of terror inside us. Questions quite persistent such as, do we matter in this universe? Will we matter even after we are dead? Will we be able to leave behind a legacy? Death is inevitable, which brings me to an exercise you may want to try when feeling that familiar pang of not being good, not doing enough, not mattering enough.
With all things said and done, what gives your life meaning? What are the things that are truly important to you? What values are important to you to live by? Who are those people who make your life beautiful and worthwhile? Who do you share your deepest, darkest secrets with? And if they can see you as someone who deserves to be loved and cared for, can you look at yourself with the same lens, if only for a moment? What are the small things that you do for yourself that tell you that you matter?