Thursday, January 31, 2019

MANIFESTO 2019

If I'm given the opportunity to change my life, what will I change? How will things finally be different so I will happy and stop feeling such terrible dread?

So many books talk about living with a different kind of mindset. To think positively, to live positively. Everything we've ever wanted is a thought away. Everything I've ever wanted, I just have to believe in. It's going to happen as long as I believe. The most powerful and terrifying thing to realize is that I have the power and ability to get, to reach everything I've ever wanted. I just have to believe. I have to have the courage to chase after it. I can't let fear consume my life. Fear can't live my life for me. I can't make fear-based decisions. When has something life-changing started with a belief in failure? Who would chase success if they believed that they were destined to fail? Success doesn't happen that way.

It's all in. Let this be the year of putting all the cards on the table. Let this be the year where it is all or nothing. Be dramatic. Be raw. Be honest. Hold no prisoners. Stop living as if your dreams won't be accomplished. Stop living as if the greatest parts of you will never be discovered. Don't live believing that what you have is all you deserve; the best you can hope for. Don't live never asking for more. What kind of life is it to accept complacency? What kind of life is it to accept anything less than extraordinary? That's not you. That's not your life. Life has never been ordinary. It will never be ordinary, but it can be extraordinary.

In the grand scheme of life - in my now 25 years, in my lifetime, in the years that humankind have walked this earth, the years existence has breathed this air, in the years of the universe... In all of this, why can't I take a year to be intentional with my efforts and my time? Don't I deserve to treat my being and my time with a bit of respect? Shouldn't I take the time to learn this for myself? It will be good to take the time, make the effort.

If I make a promise to myself, can it be worth something? Can I make it so that my time and presence is worth something?

I want to make this year different. I want to make myself different. I want to force it to be different. I will make thing different. It's going to happen. I refuse for it to be otherwise. If I could take everything I didn't enjoy about this previous year and force it out of my life, how much better would things have been? How much happier, how much less stressful? If I pack all the anxiety and doubts about where I am and where I am going, and push them away, how much lighter will I feel? How much freer will I be? How much more good could I fit into my life if only I got rid of this negativity? What if I could get rid of the voices that doubted my competency?

Are we our own greatest enemies? We are certainly our own biggest and meanest critics. I'm not sure there's someone else in the world who could say all the same mean things about myself as me. Who will spend all that time on someone else with little to no benefit to themselves? I don't think anyone will. It does so little. Yet here I am with all these mean things ready. What if I treated myself as if I loved myself? What if I did all the loving things even if I didn't love myself? How differently will things be? How much could things improve? Wouldn't I just like to see what it could look like? Why not? There's nothing I could lose if I spoke to myself kindly, lovingly.

I think - I'm sure I read somewhere that we're actually really afraid of letting ourselves be happy. If we've grown accustomed to our narrative of being sad and unfortunate, we really struggle to let it go and choose to be happy instead. For so long, our identity was one of dissatisfaction, and even dissatisfaction carries with it, comfort, if you've stayed there for a while. I've grown so accustomed to my narrative. My narrative that is sick, sad, unlucky, lonely, not good enough, ugly. Even though these thoughts are unkind and it doesn't feel good to think this way, it is easier than to question, to challenge, to make some noise and stop apologizing for my existence. I don't want that anymore.

I want to change my life to one where I celebrate my life and existence. I want a life where I celebrate myself above all else.

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