Self Indulgence or Self Love?
Some people, when they take a look at my lifestyle, say I shy away from responsibility. I've put off having kids, I don't think much about the future except in terms of the projects I'm working on and my ability to realize them. I don't think much about when I'm old. If I don't like a job, I won't stick it out for very long, and if I don't like where I live, I'll move. I haven't thought about buying a house and I'm not incredibly worried about not having much money in the bank right now. As far as relationships go, I value friendship deeply but if we there is too much drama, I will probably not be contacting you often, unless we both feel we are fixing it, and this includes family. This all may change, I'd love to have a house and a family, but I'm not fresh out of school either, just to put it in context for you.
working up the ladder? image link
Am I irresponsible? Or am I just being true to myself?
I wasn't always like this. I used to have a lot of fear about how I was going to buy that house and get married one day. I was always penny pinching and trying to save up as much as I could, dealing with whatever the boss threw at me and whatever drama friends and family dragged me into and basically getting shat on a lot. I was knee deep in the rat race and always felt pressure to look for better opportunities because things didn't seem to be going anywhere. Still I trudged on every day like everyone else.
What changed?
What my parents called shirking from responsibility, I call loving myself.
You have to define your limits. If you don't you will always be victim to the whims of others. You will try to improve your situation and you will never succeed. You may manage to make more money but at the cost of becoming a slave to your job. You may have that "perfect house" and that "perfect partner" but you will be a slave to your mortgage or your relationship. Even with all the money in the world, you won't be happy and you will still run into similar problems. You will try to be a good person, and on the surface you may be just that....but inside you will slowly turn rotten and eventually become everything you hate. You can only hold in so many shits in order to make it to work in time before you start hating the world.
I'm not judging you, please don't get that impression! It's not easy to listen to your heart, I still struggle with it. We also all have different situations, some of which make it much more difficult to believe in the possibilities that will open to us when we are true to ourselves. Being true to yourself also requires persistence and time. You may have kids to support or you may be knee deep in debt. If you aren't ready to tell your boss to suck it, that's ok. One step at a time. Start with the things that come easiest to you and you will see your situation improve dramatically.
Loving yourself is not about justifying your shortcomings, but about being the best version of yourself at all costs, even when you feel circumstances don't permit it. If you see yourself as happy, you need to make the decision to be happy no matter how much your circumstances encourage you not to be, and change the circumstances with any means you have available. Loving yourself isn't about indulging in addictions and guilty pleasures. It's about giving yourself the respect you deserve under all circumstances, putting yourself first, not because you only care about yourself, but because you know with certainty that you will be able to give more to others when you give enough to yourself.
If you see yourself as an island, separate or different from everyone else, there is no loving yourself, there is only self indulgence. This kind of world view only allows for selfishness and competition without any true regard for others. If you act like a good person it's for the benefit of others seeing you as a good person. But when you see yourself as an extension of the world around you, a part of the whole, when you can feel that we are the same and just reflections of one another, and truly care about others, being good to yourself is a means of being good to others. You will be able to distinguish between that kind of self indulgence and self love by how you feel afterwards and how circumstances change. When you do something out of self-love, it fills you with more energy and inspiration to fulfill whatever purpose you set for yourself and to help others too. When you truly love yourself, loving others becomes second nature and without drama
My ownstruggle with self love
It recently came to my attention that I wasn't loving myself as much as I thought I had been. That would come as a shock to those around me because comparatively....it seems I already do what I want when I want to. I have a deep desire to make those around me happy and I realized that was causing me to feel the pressure of social norms. I dislike some of the common behaviors of others and because I wanted to avoid seeing it, I wasn't doing many things I wanted to do. I realized, I often have a hard time leaving when people are having a good time, even when I'm tired and not feeling it. I avoid places I want to go just because I'm worried about running into people who don't make me feel great. I try too hard to adapt to the culture around me and sometimes it saps up my energy. I dislike conflict and so sometimes I stay quiet when I shouldn't. A lot of my own struggles come from the dissonance caused by...basically the fear of causing more problems for myself, by overthinking.
Some good advice here.
What i usually see, when i hear the words at the top of your post is someone who is about to quit their job.... with nothing after that. No plan. No idea of what they want, where the want to be or what they want to do.
But they know step 1. "Take this job and shove it"
Unfortunately, that is not step 1, that is the next to last step.
Find what you love and go for it, that is the goal. Quitting the job is almost an afterthought.
The universe loves a vacuum. I have quit jobs with no plan before. It's just like uggggggh I cannotttt anymore. Jobs take sooooo much energy, especially when you hate them, that you don't have the energy to find another one or know what you want. Very often people need the space. I said this very same thing to a friend who promptly followed my advice and promptly got a job that she loved. She said it worked.
I see what you mean but I'm not sure if that's it for everyone. Some people are just too bogged down to even figure out what they love so in that case quitting the job would be step one. A lot of people don't get much further than that though and find themselves in a similar situation before long, but I guess no everyone is ready for the journey.
I think people should always love themselves, but we should also never forget the very fact that our minds lie to us, it has always lied to us and it wont stop. so most times, what want to might be wrong and we just don't see it. I advice we surround ourselves with people that share thesame values with us, so in times of confusion or decision making times, we will also get good councel.
Our minds always will always deceive us.
I feel that if we are able to identify the ego and step outside of it a bit, we tend not to trick ourselves so much, or we can easily identify when we are tricking ourselves.
Ha ha your shit-holding-in reference again. You've referenced that before here. That's the symbol of slavery for you lol.
Hahha you know me! You spotted it. I’ll probably use it a few more times!
The story of my life. Replace you - or 'I' - by 'me' and there we go.
Keep being you, it's the best you can do. I - on my turn - will keep being me, that's the best that I can be.
Together we are us.
Much love,
Vincent
I think it's awesome, I myself was about to do the same thing, for most of my life I was to afraid to take any chances, then I got the courage but ended up having a baby, then I bought a house... And now I feel a bit stuck in a job I don't love. There is this pressure there like I need to be free of it, but I made it harder on myself. I think it's been kind of making me stronger though.
Keep doing you man, I for one find it refreshing
The house/job/family and freedom are not mutually exclusive! But you may have to change a lot of your ideas about how it’s “supposed to be” in order to really love and respect yourself. I think you can move towards making a living doing what you love, there is a way!
I think it is so important to behave from a place of authenticity. I think much of what you are getting at and working at getting at through action is being authentic. Being present, authentic, and compassionate turns most situations around and you will find you enjoy being and doing exactly what you are doing:) That and focusing on one thing at a time ... there is zen there to be found:0
Authenticity is another word for it! I like that “present, authentic, and compassionate”! Sounds pretty all encompassing to me!
:)
My personal experience:
When i realized and truly understood and believed that whatever i do with my life has no direct impact on others life, including my beloved ones, i got completely free of those negative feelings about not being a good person. I've realized my definition of a good person is based on what i think other people are thinking about me. But like what you wrote couple of days ago about "you can't change anyone", we can't control or change the way people think about us. Everyone has their own definition of good or bad based on their own approach to the life.
If i hold a negative feeling towards you because you didn't reply to my comment i'm gonna give away my authenticity to you (other people in general) and suffer from it every time it happens to me, unless i learn my lesson that i'm not dependent on others behavior towards me. Then you've helped me to get free from it. As Matt Kahn says everything is here to help you. If i reply to your post or comment from a point of obligation then i'm your emotional prisoner and subconsciously i'll hold a negative feeling towards you, even if i'm not consciously aware of it. That feeling usually turns into hate and stops us from loving ourselves and others. In my understanding it's not being a good person.
So as you said about priority of self love, no matter what circumstances or situations are, love yourself so much that it overflows and pours towards others.
I don’t know if I’d say it doesn’t have any direct impact on their life, I think I’d say they are responsible for their own state of mind. You can certainly make it easier or more difficult on them, and but sometimes making it too easy on them comes at the expense of your own responsibility toward yourself, and in the end their happiness or dissatisfaction is their own business as long as you do what you can without ignoring your own needs.
You are saying the same thing though, essentially, and the second half of what you said was worded very beautifully!
I loved your comment and I will try to remember to check out more of your posts, without giving myself an obligation! You would love the Be Awesome chat, link in most of my post signatures, I forgot it in this one.
Yeah, we are essentially saying the same thing.
I still dare to say "no direct impact" because when, as you said, they are responsible for their own state of mind then whatever we do with OUR life not gonna make it easier or harder for them. It's just gonna be an arrangement by universe (if you believe in it) for both side to get what they need to get out of situation and encounter.
Since self love results in love of others in it's very core, the moment we think it's about them, before we think it's about us (not talking about being selfish in classic meaning of it) we gonna get out of that flow of love for both side. If, honestly in our very core, we feel doing something, it's what good for all regardless of whatever feelings anyone else has about it. They are supposed to feel that way because they need it right here and right now to grow, imo.
It's very good man! I love these conversations.
if I were in a place of 100% balance and peace, I would see it that way (if that were the case, I probably would be off on other realms), but I’m not and so seeing myself as having partial responsibility is really just me having responsibility for where I’m at, and where I’m at is in a situation where perhaps someone isn’t happy with me, that also doesn’t occur for no reason, you know? Sometimes it’s just a test, and sometimes it’s cause I’m not as clear and focused and balanced as I’d sometimes like to believe I am and so I think that kind of sense of responsibility can avert some real selfishness and blind spots. I hope I worded that well enough, I’m walking somewhere as I type,
I believe we get to that 100% balanced and peaceful condition when we love ourselves 100%. When someone isn't happy with us if we still cultivate the ability of selflove, then we are there and everything gets 100% balanced.
Very true. If someone has a wife, kids and a mortgage, he can't tell the boss to do one. He's got to put-up with whatever crap the boss dishes-out and show the top set. I worked the same thing out a while back and I've been remarkably irresponsible ever since.
If he’s got a plan to work freelance doing whatever he loves and set its into motion before he quits, then eventually he can say to the boss whatever he likes! Not always fast or easy but always do-able in my opinion!
Quite right. I just wish I'd picked-up a load of these Steem coins, when it was about .15c and I would have bought 10k plus. By now I would have a Universal Basic Income of sorts.
Anyway, I'll tell you how I pick-up coins now and you might laugh at this, but it works for me. I go onto Twitter and I may select the BNB page to begin with, for instance. Then I scroll down, clicking from one page to the next, just to see what coins keep being mentioned. Then, I do my own research in to these, to see what my assessment of them is. That's how I picked-up a load of Verge at 0.005 something and Dent at 0.0004 something etc. Now, I'm looking at TEL, currently trading at something like 0.0017 ish.
I recently bought some ZIL at 0.04 ish, I forgot to mention that on the other post before. I like ZIL, tps of 2.4k and I can see it gaining nicely, as long as BTC doesn't continue to falter. ZIL has actually held its ground rather well in this bear market.
Let's continue to exchange coin ideas, old bean.
So do we all! But even if I was there, I wouldn’t have had the money at that time, same way I didn’t have it in time for bitcoin cause deep inside I wanted this adventure I’m on right now. We will both get to our basic income sooner than we think!
I use the same strategy but on YouTube, perhaps I should move it to Twitter, everyone says that’s the best place for crypto info. I was eyeing ontology but it shot up before I had a chance. I haven’t missed the boat with Zilliqa? It’s hard to know how high a coin will go on hype, even if it’s got the credentials. cardano for example seems too high for me, despite it being a good project, just too early... usually when I see a coin in the top 50, I only buy it when it’s way down from btc comparative highs unless it’s EOS or NEO cause I’m so confident that those will beat bitcoin cash before long.
Oh I do hope you're right about Universal Basic Income, otherwise it's going to be hard times for the little man.
I've been toying with ontology, but I don't much like the price at the moment. I saw many people on Twitter enthusing about it, before it leaped up, but I didn't act in time. They also like Zilliqa there and I bought in. If we see a return of sentiment in April, then I think it will do well, but that's just my opinion.
I agree with you're assessment of Bitcoin Cash. Now that we have the Lightning Network about to be rolled-out and the reduced network fees that come with it, there seems little point having two Bitcoin projects that do the same thing, as you'll obviously know. EOS and NEO are certainly better bets than BCH.
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