Category: Encountering New Experiences

No.

“NO is a complete sentence” – Breeny Lee 2020

When I heard these words above they resonated with me. When I heard that people pleasers can’t say no, I felt attacked. I realise now that I have been a people pleaser all my life, but it did not start that way.

When I was younger I was confident about what I wanted to do and how I felt about myself. No matter what anyone said about me or to me, it did not touch me. When I was leaving fifth form (grade 11) I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and I was about to start. Then I caved to the pressure of my grandfather’s expectation and ended up doing nothing I wanted to do.

Being a people pleaser is really a drag and can lead to major anxiety and depression. I realise that there are people who ‘love’ me because they can depend on me to do what they want or expect me to do, but they don’t really know me. They don’t know me because they did not want to get to know me, because it did not matter. Those who do appreciate that I’m not just a ‘nice person’, that there are dimensions to me that make me perfectly imperfect. It is a lot of pressure when people expect you to do and say the right things all the time and when they have known you for some time and cannot appreciate the need for you, to make many mistakes and passionately oppose what they believe to be true. A lot of persons claim to like variety but they only like it in specific persons and put them in the variety box, while you are stuck in the one dimensional ‘nice person’ box they crafted for you. Tragedy strikes when you cannot keep up appearances and break code and show a side of yourself that does not match the box they put you in.

You bite your tongue until you draw blood rather than offend someone or, you stop talking. you find yourself playing a washed up role and get little credit for your efforts. I remember when my grandmother asked me once, when I was much younger if yes is the only answer I can give and I cheekily said”no!” However, I think back on that and looked at how much my life has mirrored that perpetually volly of yeses. It is true that by trying to please others you lose sight of your own path and end walking through worlds of wilderness that you are not prepared to walk though. In such wilderness you have very little strength on which to draw upon, because you are just a ghostly impression of yourself. You turn away and look back again and it has been six years in that wilderness and you wonder where the time went. You have fragmented memories of things that took place in that time and they don’t make one. good. day.

saying yes all the time can work your nerves until they are frayed because all the nos you could have said attack you in the darkest hour of the night. It can cause you to wonder about your purpose, because you are forever the cheerleader and not the star in your own show. There are all these talents and potential that you bury under the weight of other people’s expectations and you wait. You wait for a miracle that will save you from your timidity and resentment of being held back to help everyone that needs helping.

Well…..

You don’t have to. It is as simple as that. Just as it is simple to say no. It is a two letter word but many people pleasers like myself have a hard time with it. We get so embarrassed because we cannot meet everybody’s expectations, and I mean everybody that we know and want to please. The curse of being nice is that you are never your true self but a character woven; started by someone and elaborated on by you. Yes at the end of the day the biggest contributor to your position is your own misguided acceptance of the role. So, it becomes natural to see yourself as a fraud (whether intentionally or not) and eventually others begin to see the cracks. But because they do not know the hows and whys, they construct a new identity for you, something that does not match who you were are and can be. One that stunts your growth and leaves you going in circles.

So, being a people pleaser stops now. Do not be fake if something bothers you, and be honest with people. Be honest in your actions and by your words about what you stand for and against. Also, no matter how old you get, it is never too late to learn that the most important step in curing this curse, is by learning to say no and meaning it.

Greatest Source

Everyone has their own basket to carry, their own story to tell…

On this blog you will finds posts about success and happiness. Many of us have and will read all there is to read on what makes someone a success. We want to succeed. We want to succeed because society tells us we have to and we then take the baton to carry out society’s will. Overtime, because we are busy looking for success, we forget what we need to be a success, we do not realise that the success we seek was never ours to receive. All along it was based on someone else’s dreams and someone else’s desire.

Many may spend all their lives trying to be a success and they never achieve it. Many may struggle at work, getting mediocre results, competing for a prize that is guaranteed to epitomize their success, but they never achieve it. They never achieve that prize, not because they are unworthy or lack talent but because their intentions were all wrong and the prize was never your to obtain.

We may have been conditioned to view success by how well others around us are doing. The person who has all the boxes ticked and has done everything by twenty, is the standard that the majority of us will not reach, but we still try to get there and then operate in uncertain defeat because we did not get there in time. However, there are a few among us who realise the trap of society’s success. Those who do not view success by how well they can operate within the box they have allowed themselves to remain in, but by understanding where their true success lie.

Success comes from God yet many of us do not seek that kind of success. We do not seek success outside of peer recognition and material wealth but instead, decide that if and when we achieve those things, God confirms our success. And yet, if we do get those things does it make us happy? If everything we do is motivated by a need for a reward, when we accumulate things unto ourselves are we winning?

True success comes from God…

True success comes from God. If we had to give up everything in this world that we see as important, would we still be content. If today no one sees us in a positive light because we turn out not to be what they expected, do we then become a failure?

Our worth should never be tied to what someone thinks of us but often times we allow ourselves to be commodified and in turn commodify others. For too many among us, how well we can sell ourselves will determine whether or not we achieve illustrious success. Again this is what we think. The reality is that for many commodification, conformity and self-gratification never yield the kinds of success they envision. They end up either heart broken or hardened by this reality. They are ever recognised, never given the credit that they think they deserve and never placed in the limelight for everyone to admire.

We need to do some reflection on what we truly want. Do we want to chase a success that we will never achieve or will have little pleasure in finally gaining. Or, are we faithfully enough to recognise that success comes from God and once we have placed the Almighty before us we will always be successful.

If we stop comparing ourselves to others, stop cross referencing timelines, if we stopped stretching ourselves into someone else’s lane, we will not be disqualified and fail to finish the race. Maybe it is that in order to find our individual and unique success, we need to draw away from our own understanding and the understanding of others and draw closer to the word and direction given to us by The Almighty.

In a season of uncertainty, chaos and loss, the only free and constant thing we have is the love of God. This constant source will help us to peel away the layers of ourselves, so that we can face who we are and not who we wish we were. It is also a source that will help us to embrace our limitations and flaws as we strife for a success not defined by man but that comes from The Great I Am.

Shallow Focus Photo of Glass Ball Near Body of Water

Impotent Rage

The Problem:

Have you ever felt as if you are drowning under the a wealth of raw uncontrollable emotions?

Eva Hoffman Quote: “Anger can be borne – it can even be satisfying ...

When you try to catch a breath, you draw empty? Somehow all the air has been sucked out of your world and the only thing you have left, is deep and shameful inadequacies.

Have you ever felt as if you have been encased in a layer of thin ice? You see all who walk over you, leaving their imprint but they never see you. You call to them but that thin layer of ice is just too thick for you to be heard, too thick to break through.

There are moments where without the bars, you still feel like a prisoner, without the chains, you have become a modern day slave. You shake so badly that your teeth seem as if they are having a good old time in your mouth and just below the surface the lava is licking your insides, causing steam to shoot out from the very depths of you. Confusion assail you and you don’t know what to do. Where is the solution, how can you stop the fire from burning you down, to dust. Do you feel as if in that moment nothing matters except that burning red haze that blinds your vision?

Your voice gets louder, your temperature rises, but no one can hear you, because no one listens to you. You plot, plan and construct all the ways you can rid yourself of this deadly haze, to see clear blue skies instead of boiling hot monsters, huffing and puffing to blow everything down!

Is there nothing that can be done. no cure for what ails you at those moments? Are you doomed forever to suffer in your sense of impotent rage?

It only takes one match to light a spark or to burn down a forest. It only takes one careless act to destroy another person’s life. Just one moment when you forget what it requires to be a human being and to see beyond your own needs. If you cannot see beyond your own problems then the hurt you inflict on another to solve that problem, could be the feather that breaks the camel’s back.

When the back is broken there is a wailing of anger that you try to cover with words of kindness, smiles and fake humility. You sit in your corner and are fed upon by fear. Fear becomes your constant thorny bed upon which you lie and bleed slowly, continuously.

The Cure:

The only cure is to shed false virtues of loyalty to the thing that brings the fear. Renounce and find your voice to speak out, no matter what may come. Take the time to discover if this anger is just or not, and what you want to do about it. Or, may you need to exit stage left to find that you are happier without the blinding lights of a bad situation. Make an escape plan and work until you get it right, then go far, far away and never come back.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:3 )

Or you can find peace in the only place you can; in the presence of The Almighty.

When Self-Help Becomes Trendy.

It is fascinating and quite horrifying to realise that things are not always what they appear to be. It is also embarrassing that you have been doped by by your own imagination and not facts. I use to think that self help books were the answer to solving many of my problems. But I guess by now you know, where I am headed. They did not work.

First of all, I was under the misconception that once I started reading them, I would be so motivated that things would somehow click into place. I would develop a better mindset and start feeling great about life! Never happened. Why, you may ask? No amount of advice or reading is going to take you to where you want to be. If all you do is sit around and think of all the things you want to accomplish and read a million and one books about how to do the same thing, then you’ll be dreaming forever.

Essentially at some point in all this reading, you have to take action. In all these challenges of writing all the things you want to do or accomplish, you have to get up and do.

Also, I realise now that some of those advice had nothing to do with my reality and so were not applicable to me. I was looking externally at a solution that never matched my problem. I got so caught up in the thought of making a change that I kept tripping up myself.

Wow! I made a vision board or I wrote down some goals, let me take a nap, that was hard work after all.

Then, next years comes around and the plan is still there. Well at least I had a plan, but this is no comfort at all. You have a plan that was based on someone else’s because it seemed like a good idea, not because it really was a solution to your problems. So in the end I continued on my quest to find the next book or video that would be the one and the only thing I ended up with is a collection that I need a home library for. By the way, I love books, just not those that remind me that I have failed at yet another attempt at succeeding!

I know what to do and I know how to go about getting it done, but strangely I was hoping if I stalled long enough there would be a miracle that would take the decision out of my hand, and that is the escape that those self-help books offered, an escape from making the tough, unpleasant and unpopular decisions.

Then, there is the fallout when you realise that you have not made the kinds of gains you thought you would, when the example of what success is is not in your reality. Then you realise that the after images fed to you by these books and videos never really guaranteed it would be the same for you. I realise now that I was more invested in someone else’s reality and not my own. Maybe the author or that personality made it, became a success but did I stop to think if that was for me or if I even wanted their success. After all, a certain concept of success has been ingrained in many persons that have no bearing on their passions or personalities. Being a certain kind of success had me running to get it from a book, from a video and from images readily available.

So what is left when all else fails? Where to turn when success cannot be found in the self-help trend? Well, because of this pandemic I have had to deal with health challenges that have made me a bit paranoid and the struggle to practice mental wellness a daily event. It has forced me to look within and to realise that I can only be happy if I am brutally honest with myself about what I have not gotten right and work in incremental stages (baby steps ) to improve. It also means accepting that there are dreams that were never mine to dream and therefore finding pursuits that really matter. My success is knowing that I take care of my physical and mental health, that I recognise that everything that happens to me after this is within my control. It is in knowing that no person can tell me what my future will be, because God has placed me squarely in the driver’s seat and He is my instructor.

Useless Rage

Imagine being so angry about something that you feel you are about to burst a blood vessel. Now imagine talking about whatever is making you upset until you are blue and black in the face. Now imagine doing this for the rest of your life. I know, it is exhausting! Not to mention unproductive! There you are cussing and complaining up and down left and right, making all kinds of crazy gesticulations and nothing happens. How frustrating, how annoying. However, maybe we need to stop with the cussing and complaining long enough to think about what all of that has accomplished.

Mason Cooley Quote: “Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and ...

Usually nothing is accomplished.

When we fail to act, nothing changes. Yes, some may argue that making noise is doing something. However, I believe that action is more productive than mere words. Many quote from the scripture this popular idea, “faith without works is dead”, focusing on the idea that all you have to do is have faith and everything will change, but that’s because they have not read what comes before:

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

I am tired of persons complaining about injustices, profiting from their complaints but not actually being the change. But it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that I also do it. I also complain and cuss how unfair life can be at times and continue to traverse the same places from which this unfairness resides. However, when you see someone doing the same thing that you do then you realise how both self-sabotaging it can be or self-serving. Some people claim to be activists but all they are are bandwagonist, who will hop on a cause if it does something for their image. If they are called on to make some kind of sacrifice in the name of that cause, they suddenly realise they have so much to do that will be stunted by being more involved. It is easy to have a running commentary on any number of issues but when the jokes and the talking has been exhausted, then what? For too many, it is to pack up and head home, until another such occasion comes around to talk some more. Far too many of us have become good talkers and not good doers.

There are so many persons who get fired up to the one hundredth degree about things that, yes we need to be angry about, but what next? How do you turn that rage into something productive? How does it become an agent for change in the lives of those who are the most affected, the most vulnerable. Now it is easy for anyone to stay in the comfort of their homes and either watch commentary on the injustices of the world or make said commentary, but, how many of those persons will actually do something to start and be the change that the world needs? How many are willing to have real faith and stand against the many that stand a part from the few?

Rage is useless if it goes nowhere and does nothing.

The One Sitting on the Throne

Power can be very deceptive. This coming from someone who has never had much and who does not desire much, beyond a measure of control over my own destiny and how my story unfold and is told.

However, I have observed that any measure of privilege and lead one to be consumed with a sense of self importance. As I hear an old woman tell her young caregiver to look wood to roast breadfruit, instead of using the coal she bought, I see the evidence clearly. Her position as employer and her caregiver as employee, has given her the right, in her mind, to see her as less than. The man who has the handle is seemingly in a better position than the man who holds the blade. Therefore, the one at the lower end must be careful not to antagonise the other or else his very life may be short lived.

Jamaica Culinary Tours :: Home
Jamaican wood fire…

Imagine the one who has the power to determine, who eats and goes hungry. Who lives and who dies. What great power that persons has! And yet his or her power is never complete, it is always finite.

For all the millions, billions and even trillions, one thing the rich cannot buy is more time. At some point the fabulously rich, those who have some measure of wealth must face their own mortality. They will get sick, some will make it to old age, but, all will eventually die. When we think of all those great kingdoms around the world, the one thing they all have in common, is that at some point they only remain great in the memories of those who chose to remember and tell their story.

“the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever.They lay their crowns before the throne…” – Revelation 4:10

Even if you have a throne that you sit on here on earth, one day you will have to give it up. You will have to throw in the towel, give up the crown. If the natural order of life does not lead to this inevitability then someone else will come to claim or take it. Quickly the ones jostling at the top on their tippy toe point realise, maybe too late, that they were never meant to remain there forever, but only for a while. Because we all came and saw the world it is reasonable to assume that nothing here really belongs to us. The crown we wear, if we do, will have to be laid down as we acknowledge that any power we have is limited. If the elders around the throne of The Most High were compelled to lay down their crown in acknowledging a greater power than their own, what does that say about each of us!

For some it may be very hard to consider those who he looks down on from his lofty spot. He may shake his head in pity and the poor misbegotten souls. Never thinking that they can very topple from that envied spot. Some never consider that they are are very short distance away from where they started or sinking even lower. The horror at the indignity of once again being ordinary is a fate worse than death for many. However, it is a fate that we all begin with and all must end with.

Some will say that this pandemic has been the great equalizer, but it has also revealed that many cling to their throne to the detriment of many,and many cling to a crown of Pyrite.

cross on the top of the mountain sunset sunsetsky awesomeshots ...

Day and Night

A dash of dreams...
A tupse of twenty-twenty vision.

let's turn the page!
Do things
important things.

But the latch felt and we were
trapped.
whispers everywhere
whispers to ripples
ripples to waves
waves become liquid mountain
crashing down.

We ran into secret places
invisible
unknown.
All dreams, attacked, 
grasping desperately for air.

It wasn't fair,
it didn't care, 
man woman and child
all had a fair share.

We raged, we cried, we begged - 
Mercy!
It did not hear, Misery kept us company.

The carnival had ended and so masks were removed.
Many Medusas were unveiled that day,
No Oracles to spin fantasies.
Helpless to the onslaught we cowered in dark places.

Out of despair many turned to Him.
Will He hear their cry?
Will He care?
Will He...?