My Big Ego

One of the more surprising truths I have learned about life so far is that having a big ego will only cause you trouble in life. When I was about 15 years old I was the most selfish I have ever been in life so far. It makes sense, most teens are quite self-centered. I remember that my mother used you tell me “You are so selfish” at least once per day during this phase in my life. She was right. I was selfish and I always wanted things to go my own way. I was self-centered, mean, rude and low on empathy.

Looking back I’m still grateful that I had a really selfish phase back in high school because it thought me so much about life. I learned early on that living a selfish life just doesn’t work. Living life with a big ego won’t just hurt those around you, it will also hurt you. Many people think that they need to be selfish to protect themselves from getting hurt or being stepped on in life. Many people still believe that unless I am tough and loud I won’t be heard or taken seriously. I have noticed that it’s sometimes very surprising how much people will respect you and listen to your opinion if you are loving and kind.

You might think “but if I stop being tough people will take advantage of me.” I have noticed that we often mix up being selfish with self love. Self love means that you love and respect yourself, which means you will speak up for yourself when somebody hurt you or try to use you for example. You take care of yourself and won’t let people treat you badly. You do these things because you know that you are valuable and deserve to be treated with love and respect from everyone around you. You aren’t easily upset by others because you know that what they say about you are only opinions, it’s never the truth.

There are many ways we can speak up for ourselves without having to be rude or disrespectful of others. People are also much more likely to listen to someone who speaks to them in a respectful way versus someone who is loud and rude.

One of my life goals is to continue to “shrink my ego”. I know that the smaller my ego gets the better I will become at relationships and the more loving I will become. I also want to continue to become better at Self Love, because I know that I need to love myself well to be able to love others.

A less selfish person will make decisions that are best for everyone, not just best for him or herself. I know what life becomes when you choose the selfish road. Life is great in the beginning, you get everything you want and nobody can stop you from reaching your goals, but in the end you are left with a lot of people who you have hurt including yourself.

Selfish people are terrible at relationships and sooner or later our own selfishness will sabotage our relationships. The only way to do well in this life is to learn to love yourself and others well, because the human experience is all about relationships. We interact daily with our spouse, friends, co-workers, neighbors, family members, our kids etc. The better you are at love, the better your life will become. Love is not selfish, love is kind.

 

Possessions, Power & Perfection

New Year’s Eve is coming up and a lot of people are thinking about what their New Year’s resolution should be for 2016. I have a few ideas myself, but today I wanted to write about my resolution from 2015. My New Year’s resolution last year was what I called “Finding Freedom”. I decided it was time to choose freedom in particularly three different categories in life: possessions, beauty and career. On the other hand, it is almost impossible to break free from the culture’s expectations on us unless we replace each cultural ideal with something new.

The three cultural ideals I wanted to break free from were: materialism, perfect beauty and power&money. When it comes down to possessions we are constantly fed that we should buy more and newer stuff. Beauty is extremely important in our culture and the ideal we are all encouraged to strive towards is perfection. Our careers are one of the main things in our culture that define us and give us our value as a human being. The more power we have and the more money we make the higher value we get.

I see a lot of people talk about these negative culture ideals on social media, the biggest problem is how do you break free from the negative ideals? I see women talk about how they won’t tolerate the negative beauty ideal for example, but the following week they are considering if they should get plastic surgery. I don’t blame them, it’s almost impossible to not follow the ideals in our culture, unless we replace them with new ideals. We can’t just hate that the culture is telling us to strive for perfection, we have to start striving for something else. If we decide to stop striving for perfect beauty, power and materialism we will still move towards these ideals subconsciously. We are fed these ideals daily through commercials, advertisements, magazines, TV and social media.

Our survival instinct will naturally adapt to any surrounding, if we are surrounded by magazines that tell us we need botox we will soon be convinced that we need botox. If we are following tons of people on Instagram who believe that perfect beauty is what we should strive for we will also start striving for this ideal, whether we like the ideal or not. “You are what you eat” they say, the same is true when it comes to what we look at. Your environment will always form you, so if you don’t want to become like it, change your environment.

 

I didn’t want to waste any more time in life striving for cultural ideals I don’t agree with, I needed new ideals to strive towards. I decided that instead of materialism I was going to strive for the opposite: Minimalism. I changed out the perfect beauty ideal for natural beauty. I didn’t want to strive for power and money in the career category since research is showing us that neither one of these things are what bring joy and satisfaction to human beings. I decided I wanted to strive for what I call loving work in the career category. I want to love the work I do, and I want my work to give me opportunities to love others. I personally believe that’s the whole point with work, to love others as we serve others through our jobs.

As I googled the new ideals I had chosen I found out I wasn't the only person who was tired of our culture’s negative ideals. There are already a huge movement out there on social media with minimalists, women who strive for natural beauty rather than perfection, and people who want to do work they love. I personally believe that the change this world so badly needs right now is going to come through the younger generations, I’m so proud of what the millennials are doing around the world.

What I needed to do to be able to stay free from the negative ideals that I had been striving towards for so many years of my life was to make some changes to my environment. I threw out all the catalogs that came in the mail (I already have enough stuff) and I stopped reading women’s magazines filled with headlines like “When is the right time to start taking botox?”. I started reading blogs by inspiring people who love the work they do and I stopped following people on social media who strive for perfect beauty and materialism. These changes made it a lot easier to resist the urge to shop more, want to change the way I look, or choose the job that will make the most money.

During the spring of 2015, when all the magazines in the grocery store had headlines like “get the perfect body for summer”, I would think to myself “I’m perfect just the way I am, I don’t need to change a thing”. That’s a huge change for someone who has been on the border to developing eating disorders for many years. I wish I could have felt that way already ten years ago. I hate that so many young women dislike the way they look because of the negative beauty ideals our culture still feeds them.

My possessions have become a lot fewer during the past twelve months, and our home has become a lot more organized as a result of that. I love sticking to fewer pieces of clothing in my wardrobe. It’s so easy to get dressed when I love every piece I own, because nowadays I only buy something if I truly love it. When it comes to career choices I’m excited about all the new opportunities that open up when you stop looking at work as only something that will give you a paycheck at the end of the month. There’s so much more to work than making a lot of money and building up a good retirement fund. Work is our chance to leave a legacy on this Earth, to change the world as we love and serve other people. I’m excited to see what year 2016 will bring!

7 Steps to Self-Love

In this video we will learn about Self-Forgiveness. Why is Self-Forgiveness important? What can happen if we don't forgive ourselves and accept our past? Debbie Spellman explains to us what Self-Forgiveness is and why we need it. She also gives us a few quick tips on what we can do to practice Self-Forgiveness.

The great thing about Self-Love is that the better we get at it the more peace and joy we will experience. Self-Love also comes with a great "side effect", the better we get at loving ourselves, the better we will also become at loving others.