Hey. I have a question for you. This question could change your whole life. It's a powerful question that I have used in so many areas of my life. Every time something feels a little bit sticky or a little bit uncomfortable or a little bit like I might have screwed something up, this is the question that I keep coming back to. It always brings me back to my true authenticity, mission, and sense of self. And that question is, “What if nothing has gone wrong here?”.
We are taught to beat ourselves up, to belittle ourselves, to question our judgement, to defer to authority or to anyone who is slightly more privileged than us. Be that men within a patriarchal society or a whole load of white CIS heteronormative hierarchies that play that defer to power within our decision-making capacity of what we should know about ourselves and about our own lives.
What I want to invite you to keep coming back to is every time something feels just a little bit icky, bring yourself back to that question, “What if nothing is going wrong here?” what if it could be possible that things are unfolding just as they should, with the information that you knew in that moment, with the person that you are with the situation that's in front of you, with the knowledge that you had. There is no situation where you should know more information or should have done things more quickly, or you should have behaved, responded, or reacted differently because you didn't.
It's probably in your interest to assume that most of the time, you're trying your best with the things that you know. And what becomes even more liberating is when we start to look at other people around us like that as well. What if the people around us who we think, I don't know, are being dicks, what if they are just trying their best too?
When we step down from a defensive position of needing to be right, to ourselves more than anyone else, but also to other people, we have the potential and the possibility that may be everyone's just trying their best. I can tell you my life got so much better when I stopped needing to be right. It's so liberating. It frees up so much more of my time when I have the potential inkling that someone else might have information that is just as valid as mine, an opinion that's just as valid as mine, have read something, heard something, thought something, which is equally important or valid. Something which destroys my argument and tells me upside down being willing to change is one of the most important character characteristics for you to be able to grow into someone who is constantly comfortable with yourself.
So when you look at yourself with the possibility of change, and you look at other people with the case of change, suddenly everything stops being so stuck and painful and stagnant. We are prone to seeing ourselves as complete, rounded, wonderful human beings. Whereas everyone else is like, “they are just an angry person”, or “they are just boring”, or “they are just stressed all the time”. It's like everybody else is in these static life states, but we are the good ones who are fully-rounded humans. But maybe everyone's just a whole load of mess, and we're all trying our best, and that's okay.
So that's my little nugget for this week is, leaving you with the possibility that what if everything's just OK and we're all trying our best to get by? I hope that serves you.
Please do get in touch with anything that has been useful or why you want to argue with me, I always welcome that too.
Have a beautiful week, and don't forget to take some time out for some self-care.