12 Pieces Of Tough Love That Will Make Life Easier

1. The world doesn’t need you to feel upset and sorry for yourself over the things that you are neither good at nor interested in. Stop beating yourself up, stop the unnecessary comparison. Stop focusing on the things you are not good at and stop harping over your weaknesses.

2. Nobody cares about what you are bad at, they care about what you are good at and what you can bring to the table. Stop putting yourself through silly comparisons, don’t allow other people to put you down and tell you that you ought to feel upset and sorry about yourself in comparison to other people.

3. Stop feeling bad about whatever perceived achievements others might have. The world doesn’t need you moping around over the things you don’t have and go feeling all sorry about yourself.

4. Stop thinking that others have a much better life than you because they have things that you don’t. Everybody is different, everyone has a different set of baggage in their life, there are things you see on the surface, skin deep appearances, but there’s so much more to the lives of others that you don’t see, their personal demons, their deeper fears, their private life, their family life and everything else underneath.The sooner we realize that we are all different in composition, in the internal sense, in the personal sense and in the external world we create and project, the sooner we might be able to realize that:

5. The world doesn’t need you to blend in and become the same cookie-cutter robot clone as ‘everyone else’. The world really does not need you to do that and you are not making some noble sacrifice by ‘choosing’ to go along with the flow in becoming a cookie cutter robot clone because you somehow believe that ‘the world needs you to do so’ and that it is important that you fulfill your ‘sacred duty’. Stop kidding yourself. The world does not need you blending in and becoming someone else. It also does not need you to kid yourself about it. Sure, there’s always someone out there in this world who might want you to remain dutiful in toeing the invisible line and performing your tasks like the cookie cutter robot you are.

6. Just because there will always be other robot clones to fill that need, doesn’t mean you should bend to that demand. How else would it be possible to find someone to do the job that they would hate to continue doing? It would therefore be in their best interest to have a lot of similar clones who are easily replaceable, easy to manage and are as plentiful as spare parts in a workshop. They would like you to be as replaceable as possible. The greater the supply of replaceable clones, the easier it is for them to exploit and potentially abuse human resources instead of resourcefully developing human potential to create win-win working arrangements and collaborations. We are all equally guilty of thinking the same way, we think that we can pay someone somewhere to perform some mind-numbingly unpleasant task because we hate doing it for ourselves. Maybe in an ideal world, there would actually be people who would enjoy the kind of work we hate doing and revel in them. I can only wish that such efficiency in matching up true interests and passion with work can be possible… and that means what we really need, is for all of us to start being honest about what are the things we would love to do, that we won’t mind doing and what are the things we would absolutely hate doing. Fittingly, there is freedom in not needing to suppress who you are, what you stand for, and what you truly believe in.

7. There are always people who will get offended. But you should not discount who you are, what you really believe in and what you choose to stand for just because someone else might get offended.

8. You can be offended but it does not always mean you are right. As long as you believe what you truly believe in and stand for what you stand for from a position of genuine good intention and doesn’t harm anyone else, there should be no reason why you should not voice the convictions, beliefs, and stance you have on issues that are personal and fundamental in how you live your life. Expressing these beliefs is how we learn from one another. Perhaps someday, some of us might even find out in rather embarrassing circumstances that we have been misinformed, misled, mistaken or simply dead wrong about some of the things we believe in. When that day comes, we can only hope that we are wise enough to recognize the value of the new information in adjusting the assumptions and assessment guiding us in the decisions we make and to have the courage in acknowledging our mistake or error and to be adaptable enough to adjust our positions in light of new knowledge or information.

9. You might be wrong about things. In order for us to be proven wrong, to be corrected and to expand on our own body of knowledge, we must first expose ourselves to the possibility that we might be wrong or that we might have been mistaken about certain assumptions. To do so, we have to take a stand for what we believe in, to share it with people, to speak of it so that there are possibilities for our erroneous assumptions to be corrected, for our limited understanding of how things work to be expanded, and for us to allow others the same opportunity to expand their perspectives by sharing what we know and currently hold to be true. So if you feel that something is done wrongly, if you feel strongly that ‘this should not be the way things ought to be done around here’.

10. The world does not need you to shy away from it or simply just go along with it. Conversely, the world doesn’t really need you to speak up or speak out against it and be the hero. Maybe someday, some of us might find ourselves in such a position where it is really down to us to step up and be that ‘hero’. But for most of us in most situations, it is YOU who needs to do something about it to make yourself feel better about it. It is up to you to find ways to reconcile two seemingly incongruous things—in what you believe is expected of you, and in what actually is expected of you, what you believe to be right. It might help if you were to voice your concern, it might help if you were to tell your direct supervisor that you believe that this is not the right way of doing it. It might feel even better if you can walk away from it all as a matter of principle and choose not to participate in doing something you believe to be wrong, unethical or immoral.

11. Can you afford to? Can you afford not to? It’s all really up to you to decide, what is it that you are prepared to do, able to do and can afford to do at that point in time. Only you can decide for yourself. But don’t kid yourself about how the whole world depends on you sucking it up, knowing your place and shutting up about it in order to ‘not rock the boat’, ‘upset the apple cart’, get everyone in trouble or start a long drawn and time consuming debate.

12. The world doesn’t need you to be intentionally mean, of ill-will, or do harm to other people. We already do a fair amount of damage by being honest, tactless, and misinformed in spite of ourselves and our genuine good intentions. Even with the best of intentions, sometimes the things we do, the words we say, and how we say or do everything we say and do might result in outcomes that could be less than ideal or even detrimental.

As it is, words get lost in translation, emotions are imperfectly communicated, actions sometimes betray the intentions behind them, and all the things left undone and unsaid might very well stem from absent-mindedness and busyness rather than intentional neglect. If we can see beyond all of that and recognize that these actions, words and expressions are driven by genuine good intentions, goodwill and honesty, perhaps the world would be a better place to be in if we can do our part in enhancing all that is good rather than waste time dwelling on the terrible.