Life Will Give You Everything You Need If You Trust That You Deserve It
Life takes its course when you accept, understand and internalize that you deserve to be happy. The days stage new possibilities. Locks open. Enemies turn into statues of salt that the wind leaves behind. Nothing can stop us when we consider ourselves worthy to experience joy. Nobody has a voice anymore that surrounds our will with fears.
Emily Dickinson rightly said in her poetry that we humans ignored our own greatness until we stood up. The most interesting thing about it is the circumstances. Often it is education itself, society, or the people around us who prefer to see us sitting still, submissive, silent and obedient.
“If you do what you shouldn’t, you will suffer what you don’t deserve.”
This is exactly what happened to the poet from Massachusetts, USA. Her disappointments, fears and worries locked her in her room in the family home in Amherst. Transforming into something more than a wafer-thin person, a warm shadow that the neighbors saw behind the windows. Of her more than a thousand poems, she saw only a dozen published in her life. She loved only one of the people who made up her life. Neither of the two, however, was brave enough to take the first step.
Without question it was different times and different mentalities. As strange as it may seem, the complex universe of emotions, the insecurities and a lack of self-confidence are a refrain that never goes out of style. Like a slow-motion recording that never stops. That brings us the magic of an opportunity and lets go of it. That teaches us what happiness is and that it takes away from us. Leaving us with desires, worries, memories and remorse – remorse because we didn’t dare to “do something more”. Because we didn’t fight. We felt unworthy of this non-recurring opportunity. Not having gathered enough courage for this lost love.
You deserve a better life
Anna started going to the gym because she wished she could lead a healthier life. She goes every day from 7 to 8 p.m., but still smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. Matthias lost his job 9 months ago. He goes out of the house every day to hand in his résumé. But when he comes home, he begins to eat compulsively. That already led to a very noticeable physical change. Silvia ended an emotionally stormy relationship a month ago and has been addicted to internet dating sites ever since. Your obsessive idea is to find the “ideal partner”.
All of these examples can be summed up into a central idea that we are all familiar with: while we find balance in one area of our life, we are taking an enormous step backwards in another. It’s like we didn’t understand that we deserve a better life. This often drives us to stop paying attention to ourselves in a holistic way. Why are we doing this Why don’t we take control of our reality for wellbeing?
We should seek the answers to these questions not only in our past but in our own inability to look after ourselves. In the lack of promotion of psychological well-being and above all in the management of our own emotions. In the three examples given, we can see that each person is doing something right: One goes to the gym. Another is looking for a new job every day, and the other ended an unhappy and difficult relationship.
However, the rest of the behavior forms these so common black holes. These include insecurity, fear of the future, the inability to be alone, the dependence on a certain substance. We all know we deserve a better life, but we don’t know how to meet our real needs. They live within us, almost inaccessible in a deeper layer of our being.
Trust yourself because being happy is not a necessity, it is a right
Life will only bring us more opportunities if we put one foot in front of the other and look for them. Happiness will only knock on our door when we are receptive, attentive, prepared and, above all, ready. Anyone who lets themselves be carried away by fears and insecurities will end up shipwrecked on the island of missed opportunities. Because whoever indulges in disappointment will sooner or later choose the same physical and psychological captivity that Emily Dickinson imposed on herself.
“I guess I’m not like Emily Dickinson, who kept her finest work wrapped in a ribbon in her drawer.”
Jeff Bridges
In these times when we find lucky pills in the form of beautiful sentences on Twitter and Facebook, there is something that we should never lose sight of. Something that the opponents of positive psychology remind us aptly: We should learn to accept painful experiences, no matter how difficult it may be. A goodbye, a disappointment or a failure is something that one has to “swallow” one way or another. Now that we have plunged into the chaotic abyss that negative emotions represent, it is time to emerge. We will feel stronger and more useful.
Even more, in our complex and demanding everyday life we should internalize that we humans not only deserve to feel good, to be calm, to experience contentment, freedom, success and the taste of happiness. All of these conditions are really rights. Because it doesn’t matter what our story is, where we come from or who we are. We all have a full right to be happy and choose the path to happiness.
