Only You Can Help YourSelf – Conversation Part I

Yesterday, I decided that today I NEED to sit somewhere quiet and catch up on the entries on my daily journal before life gets even more busier (read: Crazier+busier). So, I stopped at Espresso at Dolmen City Mall. Coincidentally, I got to sit in the same booth I once sat with someone who is an inspiration for me. Sitting there I went back to that day I surprisingly ran into this amazingly strong, very sweet, humble, caring, down-to-earth, and a very lovely lady. That day we had a little chit-chat over a cup of hot chocolate. Our conversation was filled with epiphanies for me and I suddenly remembered that on the way back home I decided to start a new series called “Conversations” on my blog where I’ll do a post about what I picked/learned from a conversation with a friend or a stranger. Why? Because we meet people every day who teach us a thing or two. If they don’t teach us something, they help us stop denying a reality or a truth that we have been running away from or maybe blocking it intentionally or maybe even unintentionally. Sometimes what we need is someone to say all the things we know, out loud for us. Not everyone needs it but some people do. For the last 2-3 months (when I stopped blocking people out cause all anyone had to say to me was how sorry they are for my loss and I had more than enough of it at that moment and I needed people to stop being sorry and hearing me out instead), I have been meeting a  lot of people on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Some of them were people I have always looked up to and all those conversations helped me ALOT(I mean it!)

What better way would be to start the series with what that amazing lady taught me that day? I am a firm believer of ‘Only YOU can help yourself’, but the stubborn and self-loathing person I am, I need a hit(from the very few people I listen to) on my head to actually believe in myself. At times I need someone to say certain things out loud, things I already know are right but I need a little assurance that I am thinking out right. I know this sounds seriously wrong but that how it is. I am weird in a very weird way. And NO, I AM NO LONGER DEPENDENT ON ANY ONE SINCE MY FATHER PASSED AWAY! So anyways, while talking to this awesome lady I realized what I was running away from. The moment she said, “It’s always going to be you who can actually make a change”, it was like the hit I needed.

Deep down we all know that it’s always going to be you, yourself who will make you pick yourself up, stand and fight. Our loved ones, family & friends can offer us help and support but there is a limit to how much they can help or support you. At the end of the day, it’s always going to be you, yourself who will fight your own battles cause let’s be very honest, nobody can fight them for you. Its you who have to fight them and wining or losing is not even a question at this moment. Well maybe it is but that’s the later part but the most important part is that you make yourself be in a position to fight, then put in all your energy and let your efforts and time decide if you win or lose.

Now this may sound very shocking but in the past couple of months I have been offered to be helped (emotionally, morally, financially..etc) so much, probably more than I have ever been in my entire life that my immediate response was to shut the world out. Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful to every single soul who either helped or offered help to me but like I always say, apart of me was expecting it from elsewhere, which I never got and I have finally come to terms with it that it was meant to happen that way. However, a part of me still hope that I might get some damn words from them. Anyways, so as I was saying that I didn’t take help but shut the world out because deep down I knew that only I can help myself. I knew that I can never open up to a stranger or someone I know but I am not close to. Also, I knew that those were things I needed to take care of on my own and at the end of the day I wouldn’t have anyone to even hold me or my hand or just sit with me because no one could stay; no one could feel what I lost, what I was feeling and going through. In reality when I was all alone at night, it was me who forced every fiber of my existence to pull myself up in order to keep my fallen apart family together. It was me, who tried to build our world back together. It was me who helped myself to be strong enough to hold my family in the toughest time of our lives. Yes, this fall was far more painful from any of the falls I have ever experienced in my entire life but as my friend said that day, “you know nothing could be worse than this to happen to you, right?“. That is what has kept me going on.

Here I would like to mention something one of my very dear friend has always tried to teach me but I only applied it recently in the toughest phase of my life and it helped me the most. He taught me, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how YOU handle it”.  Again, its YOU who can help yourself.

I will end this post by two quotes that pretty much sums everything up.

“Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”- Stacey Charter

“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.” – Milton Erickson

 Part II will be coming very soon!