Tag: attitude

Forgiveness

Should you forgive people who have wronged you?

I believe that, while forgiving others can be both a gesture of your own greatness and stupidity (fool me once…), more thought should be attributed to the forgiveness of yourself. We all walk down our own path of life and sooner or later you are going to take decisions that will change your life for the better or the worse. Let’s focus on these decisions that’ll turn out to be bad. You’re going to look back one day and realize that what you did was wrong.

And you’ll realize that you can’t take back words you said, nor can you undo the things you did. You don’t get to press restart. Maybe you’ve hurt somebody. And you feel regret and you’d do anything to go back to that particular day. Because it’s all you think about and you want to show that what you did was a mistake, you want to show the world and yourself that this mistake is not who you are, prove that you’re not a bad person.

But as appealing as it is, that’s not how things work. You ruin your inner peace because you won’t stop thinking about that one mistake and you start judging yourself. Because you don’t let go of the past. Because you don’t forgive yourself. Because you do not accept that you’re flawed. You do not want to accept that mistakes are part of life.

But a mistake is a mistake and it will still be a mistake in 20 years. You can spend the rest of your life looking back at that moment, accusing yourself. Or you choose to forgive yourself and let the past be in the past. Let yourself be human. Because forgiving yourself does not mean that you ignore what you did. It does not mean that you choose to delete part of your past. It merely means you’re ready to accept imperfection.

Make the mistakes work for you, let them teach you to become a better you.

“The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.” -Rafiki (The Lion King)

Invent yourself, CK

nicotine is out

In times of endless possibilities to keep in touch with others, we’ve become more anti-social than ever. We’re slowly becoming a society full of people who live in their phones , rather than using it as a tool. The roles are reversed, phones have started telling their owners what to do. They own people.

The various profiles we created to fake a perfect life, made us so aware of how we’re supposed to present ourselves, to show the best of us in every situation. We’re worried that people will notice that this is not who we are in real life. We’re no longer hiding behind false fronts, we have turned into them.

On the one hand, when we’re in public, we’re looking at our phones, pretending to be really busy, hoping no one looks at us or judges us. As soon as we look up, we see other people avoiding social contact in just the same way, for what?

On the other hand we’re seeking social contact, we’re looking for social interaction. That’s something you can’t find on a phone, yet we replace real, face to face communication with chats. We’re becoming robots, machines, addicted to our phones. While social networks are meant to communicate, we’re losing the ability to actually keep up a real conversation, simply because we’re no longer used to it. An online chat is not an alternative to a real conversation.

We’re bored of reality, we think that we can find real life on the internet and hope to find purpose on our phones, where all we really find are Donald Trump memes. How  do people not realize that phones are keeping them from living? How much more could we do if  we spent this time, looking down at phones, to improve our lives and change the world around us. We’re so keen to find out who we are, who we want to be, yet we waste our time because we’re afraid of real life and would rather be entertained. In my view, exchanging personal growth with entertainment is not too great of a deal.

You’re human, perfection is not an option, accept it. Don’t hide who you are. Put down your phone  and talk to the people you love.

Invent yourself,CK

The more social media we have, the more we think we’re connecting, yet we are really disconnecting from each other. – JR

Bring back dates

‘I have to drink until I’m courageous enough to dance with her’
I’m aware that the way dating is depicted in movies is exaggerated but in Luxembourg, there seems to be no romance at all anymore.

You see a beautiful girl or some handsome guy and instead of just going over to her or him  and get to know them, you have to fear that you’ll be ridiculed by her friends for actually having the courage to meet someone in person and not on Facebook or Snapchat (which is really common because it’s so much easier to get to know each other if you have time to think about what you’ll say next. This way you can make them think that you’re really smart and funny when in reality you’re as smart as a stick).

The only other way is to wait for the person you fancy to accept a freebeer invitation on Facebook, where nobody cares who you’re talking to because everybody is drunk.
(Note:  how can you build a relationship if you won’t even remember the first time you talked to each other? I mean it’s not impossible, but there should be other options.)

I might be too harsh on this and you might argue that I’m overacting and that you should just go for it if you want to meet someone but I hope you’re aware that most people discourage others simply by giving them a daunting look (very common feature in Luxembourg).

A little more sympathy and a little more romance would do us good. Think about how your parents met, they couldn’t access social networks and hide behind their screen and got together anyway. Of course it’s awesome to be able to connect with people over internet but when it comes to love, you should grow a pair and talk to them, even if you risk being ridiculed. I mean you want to spend time with them, right? That’s the main desire if you like someone. Then why would you prevent this by writing them on Facebook, Snapchat etc. I know you can arrange to meet them on those networks but to say it in Ted Mosby’s words:

Nothing in this life quite compares to the sweet, terrifying exhilaration of making your move- when you just put it all on the line and go for it. (HIMYM)

I think we should go back to this. Bring back dates.
Invent yourself,CK