Don’t let Doubt be your Friend!

Don’t let Doubt be your Friend!

One of the lessons learned and believe me, this wasn’t an easy one.

It is natural I guess – throughout or life we are doubting… if we are on the right path, doing the right thing, meeting the right people … this is needed as check or ourselves. We build up confidence like that as well.

Doubt becomes a problem when we doubt more than being sure we did something right.

When I write don’t let doubt be your friend I don’t mean it should be your enemy, you will need it, until the end of your life, like a person you meet once in a while but not regularly. Like this person you know your whole life which tells you after a couple of years that you look great, that you changed your style and it suits you, that you were always adored for your skills in whatever, you get what I mean I hope. This person can also tell you that the old car was better than the new you have chosen, but in the end you are driving that car and you need to be feeling good in it.

What are you doing with the car for instance? You may reconsider changing it back because this person had some proper arguments, or you stop thinking about it because it was well thought over in first place?

Doubt is ALWAYS just an adjuster or a confirmer, it is rarely a complete changer but more a lesson learned.

But what if you think you are doing the right thing and all of a sudden Mr. Doubt shows up regularly? He considers himself your new friend and crawls into your life. He is telling you his opinion whenever he can and it’s always the opposite of what you were considering to be right. He starts to drain your energy because it is not easy to be criticized for every step you make. And it’s wrong!

Many may have this colleague who’s acting like that, or even a boss.

Believe me, a good colleague or a well-trained manager would NEVER make you doubt everything. they would make you aware if something isn’t going to the right direction and offer advise, training or help to fix it.

I doubted – too much, so much that I fell exhausted into my bed in the evening because I felt NOT ENOUGH. From the depth of my heart I knew that I did the right thing(s). I even knew it because I got feedback from many others but that one stupid Mr. Doubt was so present and so nagging with his comments that I started to doubt – more and more.

He stepped into my life as if he was an old friend but that’s not true. I knew him and I met him once in a while but I never considered him to be one of my close friends. The opposite, I was always happy when he disappeared and his permanent presence made me feel not good at all, not sufficient and not enough.

I had to learn this and especially I had to learn to tell him STOP!

Stop for the sake of my health – mentally and physically. Once this step was done it felt better because I gained my worth back. My knowledge that has been built up over the years could not be completely wrong as Mr. Doubt tried to make me believe. I was able again to hold my head up high and face him and tell him that he will not succeed in breaking me, because this is what he wanted as my “friend”.

Doubt is like a toxic person

We all know them and we all know that we should keep them very distanced as they otherwise would start to influence our life (and not in a good way).

Almost a year later I am sitting here typing, my stomach still hurts and seems twisted from time to time which is a reminder of what I went through. I’m not complaining because in the end I know who I am and what I am worth! In the end Mr. Doubt and his companions are the poor ones. They will never be happy in their life because as long as you are constantly criticizing others you ignore your own problems which probably are more intense than I can imagine them to be.

We are all human beings, we are all not perfect and that is perfectly fine!

We are supposed to make mistakes to learn and grow. We are exactly where we should be and if someone makes you start to doubt be careful. We can support, we can share experiences, we can give a helping hand, but if we start to put ourselves higher and make others doubting their worth we are the problem, not the other persons!

The struggle to accept and realize that not everyone is my friend even though they pretend to be was long and intense and I don’t want to go through it once again. But truly, I am more mindful and focused than ever before. I’m thankful to know that not I was the problem but others.

If you read my blog before you have an idea of how I think and in this case I could be mad, I could start to hate persons who tried to harm me but that’s not me.

Karma will catch them sooner or later!

I don’t want to poison my thoughts with hatred, I don’t want to invite negativity to my life and I don’t want to hate. To focus on what’s positive in all this is much more rewarding and makes me happier than giving attention to the bad. It doesn’t mean that I ignore, no, I acknowledge, analyse, take my lesson out and then put it aside as it no longer serves me.

I truly hope that whenever you doubt you don’t let these thoughts taking over the reigns – they won’t guide you in a good way. Doubt is not supposed to be permanently present but occasionally only.

Always tell yourself that you are doing the best you can at that time in your life and you are learning along the way. At every second you are where you are supposed to be as the best version of you.

You are worth to kick Mr. Doubt out if he starts to approach you more than you can take. It’s your life!

Stay strong and never doubt the wholeness of your being!

Why being an egoist isn’t always bad

Nobody will tell you to take care of yourself!
Your life – your responsibility

Why being an egoist isn’t always bad

We are growing up learning to take care of one another and to share, which in general is great, but what nobody is telling us along the way is that we will face times where nobody will take care of you.

We should not act egoistic, being an egoist is bad – we are bad if we are an egoist. While I partly agree, because I’d love to see non-egoists everywhere, I partly disagree quite strong.

To put myself behind is something which is valuable in many ways, if I stand up for elder persons and offer them my seat for instance. I can start and collect many examples why it’s good to think about others. The main problem is that it will not work out 100% because nobody is perfect and social and caring like I would like them to be.

To be a caring person is wonderful as long as it’s not affecting my own sanity and here the egoist has to step in.

Only if I take care about myself, if I give myself enough time to rest, to recover, to grow, to meditate, to move, to think, to whatever makes you feel good – only then I have the strength to be there when others need me. Center yourself exactly where you are!

We are often truly exchangeable – which is not nice but sadly the reality.

If I just think about work-life, be it my own or everyone else’s, every single one of us can be exchanged within the blink of an eye. The world isn’t stopping just because I’m not there anymore. Even if many think that they are very important especially in their professional life, I can assure you, YOU ARE NOT!

A waitress is kicked out and the next is starting right away, of course that can work, you think if you are the vice president of a large traditional family business and nobody can replace you? From whom did you take over? There will always be someone coming after and that’s life, nothing is permanent.

Knowing this and knowing that I can only be the best version of myself if I take care of myself taught me to step back if I need to. I worked through many “just a small” colds instead of going on sick leave and recover properly before being back at work. NOBODY will say thanks for that and that’s good because only then you learn what’s important.

No work is more important than my health. Only if I’m healthy I can work.

So here we are – if I answer the phone with a croaky voice being obviously not healthy not many will ask you to go to the doctor and stay in bed. Many will ask you with the pity in their voices if you don’t feel fine but will switch in the next second to tasks that need to be done.

Be an egoist and RECOVER properly, long-term this is the only possibility to stay healthy and maybe to reach the change you want to see in this society.

What about invisible problems? A croaky voice, ok, but if you have mental illnesses it’s not even visible. You will tell me now that you are happy about that fact but that’s wrong.

I would love to invent something like a face turning pink-striped when having mental health issues not to put the spotlight on that person but to raise awareness of how many people are affected. This taboo needs to be broken and people should be treated properly as if they have a broken leg. It may take longer, yes, but it’s as important as any other illness to be cured!

I seriously don’t want to stamp persons as sick but I am sure that many are not asking for help or are going to get help themselves because this stamp “crazy” is still so active in our society. If you are not visibly ill then what? You have a day where you don’t feel fine, that’s normal. If it’s more than one day, then pull yourself together, it’s easy like that, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t and everyone who thinks it is has luckily never experienced mental health issues!

So please, don’t be shy, don’t be ashamed, don’t feel ‘not normal’ or crazy – there is help out there and please reach for it!

There is slowly a re-thinking on it’s way in our society but it needs people to go out and to show their pink-striped faces, people to say “Yes, I have problems”, people to assure that it is nothing to be afraid of! I promise you, if we really would put stripes in our faces the ones without would even be in the minority.

To reach a change we need to start.

Be the change you want to see…

Be an egoist and take care of yourself!!!

(Because nothing is permanent 🙂 )

Counting days…

Counting days…

I'm so happy as I finally can start to count days until we have again precious time just for us.

After our holidays on Cyprus we saw us each day but just over the web and now I'm able to check flights while he's working and prepare myself for wonderful four weeks. It will be an exciting time as he will meet my family for the first time and I will meet part of his, living in Europe.

Even when it will be winter time and days are often grey and foggy and rainy and cold – this is lightening up my mood so much!

After the last days with lots of struggles in Libya it was shortly not sure if our plans will work out and rumors are still ongoing in many countries. What a world we are living in…it's sad to see to what people are able to do and as always normal human thinkers don't see the sense of acting like this and as always the innocent are the ones to suffer. The death of the US ambassador in Libya was shocking us. If you ever checked who he was and how he lived in Libya and travelled to many Arab countries you'll realize that he was the last person on earth to deserve this. This link is showing a wonderful picture of how he was: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwYAT5wxI2E&sns=em

But not to forget that also Libyans died on the same day. They also fought against injustice and left families behind. They were working hand in hand with the US people and that they aren't mentioned in most of the discussions is again a sign that people only hear what they want to hear. It's easier to blame a whole nation afterwards. There is so many hatred if you read comments wherever you check the news and I honestly get the feeling that only the minority of people is thinking at all. Why do I not fear as European woman to live my life as the wife of a Libyan? If I would follow the general opinion I must be insane. But no, I am desperately looking forward to have my love near to me as I know that the majority isn't like these stupid people. If it's Libyan, Egyptian, Muslim, non-Muslim, black, white or whatever is existing on this earth – all has the right to exist. The minority of people who are against everything which isn't fitting to their lower minded thinking is starting to rule our life's and that's the part which is so hard to understand for me. I'm German which doesn't mean that I'm a nazi, and in the same way it doesn't mean that all muslims are terrorists or all Chinese are eating dogs. Is it the lack of education or the lack of self esteem or the need to have a leader whoever it is? These people seem to have no other problems in their life than to make trouble up to the worst. It's hard to believe that they will ever get the real meaning of faith, trust and love, because if they knew I'm pretty sure they would not be able to act like they do.

I can't wait for the day to visit Libya for the first time to see all the beautiful places and meet the family which is already giving me the feeling of being more than welcome. My future sister and brother in law are waving hellos to me on short videos we were exchanging and uncles, cousins, etc already invited us to their houses although it's completely unsure when I could be there for the first time. And this should be a country full of extremists and terrorist because the are Muslims? NO WAY!

By the way, my german family is welcoming him in the same loving way and they don't care where he is coming from or what religion he belongs to, the most important thing is that we are happy and love each other and this for sure is the case.

Keep the faith, nowadays more needed than ever!

Von meinem iPad gesendet