If You Don’t Like Your Life, Do Something About It
Accept your lot of life and turn it into something better
If you could be anyone on this planet, who would you be?
It’s an interesting question to consider, don’t you think?
This was one of my favorite questions to ask my friends when I was a teenager. I didn’t know why, it just felt like good fun to imagine being someone else — and it was, for a moment we would marvel at the idea of being this person who seemed to be free of suffering and filled with success.
But I stopped asking this question now(unless I try to understand someone) after I spoke to a friend who is quite close to me. I would see him every day in the midst of his failure. And it was terrible to see him in such mental and physical pain, so to lighten up the mood I asked him this question.
He didn’t laugh it off or change the subject like he usually would, this time he was quiet and to himself. I didn’t know what to expect because he wasn’t looking around thinking about others, it looked as if he was looking inward — it looked like he finally knew what to say.
And then he said, I would choose me.
This wasn’t what I was expecting, so out of impulse(with a confused look) I asked him, why would you want that?
And he said, even though I am here, there’s no one else I would rather be. I would always choose to be me.
This answer was far deeper than anything I understood at that point in my life, so all I could offer him in response was my silence.
As you can imagine, my walk home that night was not a normal one either
I didn’t think about this moment for years, not until I felt sort of nostalgic whilst reading about Self-Acceptance in the book, The Courage to be Disliked.
This book talks about how many of us are not able to accept ourselves, our environment and the circumstances we have to face. We often look at other people’s lives and that leaves us feeling terrible about ours, so terrible that we sort of reject our lives.
And this often ends up being the root cause of many of our issues with others and ourselves.
- We blame our parents for not giving us a better life
- We attack our relationships for being so toxic
- We blame our friends and family for the bad habits that we’ve developed
And there could be many reasons why we can’t accept our lives — maybe our ego holds us back in denial and regret, maybe we feel entitled, or maybe we just don’t know any better(like my teenage self).
But regardless we have to move away from self-rejection and move toward self-acceptance
Because there comes a point in every person’s life where they have to accept themselves for better or worse, for richer or poorer — they have to accept the lot of life given to them, and that they shall only reap from the toil and effort that they put into their lives.
I may have paraphrased the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but the sentiment is still powerful. Life will always be filled with unfortunate circumstances, and some will have it better than others, but regardless of where we are, what we do with our lives is what matters most.
We can dwell on our unfortunate circumstances and slowly reject ourselves more and more. Or we can accept our unfortunate circumstances and do something about them.
Even though it’s more convincing to feel sorry for ourselves, and we may even succumb to it for a bit, at some point we have to move away from that and towards accepting ourselves.
We have to stop blaming, stop complaining and start focusing on what we can control.
This asks for a lot of courage, but this is our moral obligation
It’s our moral obligation to humble ourselves and take responsibility for our lives, to no longer be led astray by our ego, fears and insecurities.
Because once we do, we can start to move forward.
Accepting where you are brings you back to reality, a place where you can see what you don’t like about your life — it helps you understand what you can do about these things and focus more on what you can control instead of what you can’t.
- You no longer blame your parents for the life they never gave you, and you can take responsibility for the path you follow
- You can build stronger relationships with others by cultivating your relationship with yourself
- You can take responsibility for your bad habits and start to grow better ones in their place
It takes courage to get out of your comfort zone every day and commit to bettering yourself and your life.
But as you do it, you will see that the only person standing in your way is you.
Because your greatest obstacle will always be you…always
I strongly believe that everything starts within and that everything we neglect often externalizes itself in various ways. This is why we ask others to love us, accept us or make us feel better about ourselves, even when we don’t know we’re doing it.
But we have to be aware of these neglected parts of ourselves before we go too far.
And instead of wanting others to make us feel better about ourselves or finding solace in wishing we were someone else or somewhere else, we need to do as my good friend did and accept where we are and who we are so that we can move forward through our fair share of life.
Because life will always be filled with suffering, but it hurts much less if we’re there walking beside ourselves every step of the way.
So, accept your life for the good and bad that it is, stop wishing you were someone else or somewhere else, and let that humble you enough to turn your life into something truly beautiful.
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Invest in your existence,
René
