During my mental health recovery, I began seeing some of the bad things that happened in my life happening in my friends’ lives. When you’ve been through these things before you can identify the little red flags that crop up now and again in certain situations with your friends. Let’s take Paul for example. We’ll call him Paul because I’d like to protect his identity.
Paul was always having trouble with women. Paul just couldn’t understand why they always wanted to be his friend and nothing else — this in itself is a big red flag for me. I’d been down this route before, not stating my intentions clearly, being unsure, and letting her be the main decider. Clearly, women were just not interested in him.
I took Paul aside one day and told him all that he was doing wrong in the greatest of detail, gave him book recommendations, and told him a clear path to sort his life out. Paul listened to me, took it all on board; he told me I was right, thanked me profusely, and off he went on his merry way. I remember patting myself on the back, thinking of what a great deed I had done for him. If it wasn’t for my short intervention today his life would have been endlessly falling over women and not getting anywhere.
But you know something? Nothing has changed to the date as I write this. He’s still falling over women sideways and getting nowhere. You know why? He wasn’t really interested in what I had to say. And this is important for me to know.
See, for a good two years I had carved a life out for myself on social media at the time; telling people where they were going wrong, and how to make their lives better. I sort of imagine that I must have been a bit insufferable to be around. I mean who am I to tell people their lives are wrong? Who placed me on the pedestal of almightiness and made me grander and wiser than everyone else? Who made me moral commissioner of the grand high court of humanity??
It didn’t come from a bad place though; it came from love. I had a lot of people ask me in those days why do I feel superior to them, and I’ll admit, looking back it likely did come across that way. But for me it was because I was changing my life and seeing how amazing things in the world were — I wanted everyone else to see it too. Sorely wanted them to see it.
Having your eyes opened to abundance from a scarcity mindset is an amazing experience. The world changes from a den of horrors to an open space of endless opportunity. I wanted to share this. I’ve never wished ill on anyone; I enjoy it when people I know do better than me.
But to change in your life you need to be ready for it, and most people are never ready for change. I wouldn’t have changed myself if I wasn’t desperately ready for it. If I didn’t have lawyers, teachers, doctors and happily married couples in my immediate family I probably would have readily accepted my fate. I wouldn’t have known there was a better life out there for me. I would have carried on as normal.
But I was ready. So bitterly ready to grab the world by the balls that I would have done almost anything to achieve it. I was sick of failure. Fed up of building my life up only to waste it on an alcohol-fuelled night or two saying the wrong things to the wrong people.
Change is hard. It takes hard work, determination, and focus. It’s not easy.
It’s why I rolled my eyes at Gillette’s Toxic Masculinity advert. Whilst I totally agree that there are systemic problems in this world today, it’s not going to make anyone think any differently by pointing out their failures. It’s only going to anger them. How well do you think I would have done if all throughout my journey of change all my peers did was point out how bad I had been in life? The world isn’t lacking in pointing out any of our failures. People do it to everyone, every day.
A turning point in my recovery was when I sat with my counselor and she said,
Raymond, no matter what you say to me, you can’t convince me that you aren’t just a decent bloke trying to do your best in life.
And these words stuck with me. At the time they hit me like a train. It changed my pattern of thought from, “I’m a bad person” to “I’m a good person.”
Answer me this: Who makes the best choices on average throughout their lives? Those that think they are a bad person? Or those that think they are good? I tend to help and give more now that I think I’m a good person. Beforehand I tried to grab everything I could because I didn’t think I deserved it.
I watched a YouTube video a few days ago. It was about a man acting as a role-model father figure in his community for young boys. Now that inspires me to do better, you know? That inspires me to help. Pointing out my failures just aggravates me and furthers the conversation no more.
And through all of this, I’ve realized that I can connect people through my experiences. By sharing my stories; I can etch long and hard-fought lessons in with strong relatable experiences mixed in with an inspiring ending.
I’m not saying you have to listen though. You can just enjoy a good story. Again, who am I to preach? Everyone has their own good and bad.
Where I excel at communication, compassion and empathy, I absolutely suck at organization and timekeeping amongst other things. But that is for me to work upon when I’m ready! And when I ask for help.
I like to let people live their lives these days. No good has ever come from me randomly forcing my opinion on someone else. I learned a long and hard lesson from this and have lost more friends than I’d like to admit. People I have really admired in the past, lost to the block function of Facebook.
Live and let live is my motto now! Love people enough to be who they are.
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