Let Me Remind You Again, The Biggest Enemy We Have is Ourselves.

It may be an old saying that I believe everyone perhaps feels so familiar with. It is too familiar that we often end up neglecting that fact and letting it sink somewhere in the cripple of our brain. Hence, I wrote this to put it not merely as a memoria, but also as a slap in the face for all of us, including me, when we need it.

Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash

I bet we will always need this and let’s dive deeper into the whys and the hows.

Our mind is the center of all, the beginning and ending of all.

When I was in an elementary school, my teacher told me that everything will happen as what we have in mind. If we think something will be hard, it will be hard and so it will be easy when we think so.

One time, a shameless little me was eating a mango with my dad he was afraid that the mango would taste sour. I tried to put into practice of what my teacher said and I believe with all I might, that the mango is sweet. I don’t know up until today whether the mango was indeed sweet or it was my perspective, or that we have a different standard of sweetness because to me it was so sweet and delicate, but to my sister it was sour. I ended up finishing the mango all to myself.

Grown up today, I realize that this has something related to what my friend written in his post, a “Self-Fulfiling Prophecy”. Although the perspective of me believing a mango would taste sweet take no visible action from me, but in my wild thinking, I perhaps prepared my saliva, my mouth, my tongue and everything that will come first hand with the mango to believe it taste mango.

Now, this kind of event is actually happening all the time. Starting from when we woke up, if we believe that today will be hard because we have too many stuff to do, most cases will prove that your day is indeed hard and even stressful. When we believe today will be a good day despite all of the hard things that have been happened since in the morning, sometimes we will end up with an eventually good day from being able to see things from different perspective.

The battle of this thing is really hard especially for people who are prone to thinking negatively. Even worse when we hate ourselves for thinking bad about ourselves and that makes us feel double bad. Mark Manson says this in his book “The Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, a feedback loop of hell. I’d suggest you to read the book to find one way to win this battle with ourselves, and let me give you a spoiler: don’t give a f*ck.

Oh yes, I agree with what you think now. It is, easier said than done. It took process, practice, and time to eventually be able to control, challenge, counter, argue, and make the best of our thoughts. However, now that you know your mind is the beginning of all, that perhaps also the beginning of your misery, let’s start to be aware that this is not to be just taken for granted. They can be challenged, they can be changed. Those negative thoughts can be defeated and that hard battle have to and can be won only by you yourself.

Don’t worry, I got your back!

We live in our own standard that often when we reflect to other people is irrational. But we neglect the fact that we’re being irrational

People are a fragile being that could be shattered by people’s expectation. Having the obligation to fulfil people’s expectation is actually no other started by one’s expectation to be able to fulfil people’s expectation. I’d suggest you to read the phrase again in case you’re confused at this point.

It is time for you to get married, prepare your future family, start a credit to buy a house, think about how best you will run your own business, think about purchasing tangible things that are useful, save your money to buy fancy cars and everything. Ever heard of it or even worse be demanded the same thing? You’re not alone. However, you need to check with yourself again if you feel like you are obligated to fulfil all of those things they’re saying.

It is people’s expectation, but does anyone ever say we’re obliged to fulfil people’s expectation? No one but ourselves. When we have a tendency to fulfil people’s expectation, we tend to blame people and be like

“what the hell, don’t mind my business. I feel disappointed because of your expectation”

or something like

“You go with your business, I will do mind as I wish so please stay away. Don’t make me feel bad about myself”

The problem is, seeing from the first reason, it is us, ourselves, who from the beginning felt the need of fulfilling people’s expectation. Because when we don’t feel like so, we will not even get hurt by what they’re demanding. We will simply ignore it and take it as a wind goes by around our ears. Not even heard!

This might feel hard for you to take but hey, a slap in a face never meant to be easy. There are a certain expectation we put to ourselves that oftentimes we wouldn’t put to others.

We might feel fine if someone ever make a mistake, but we would be so hard on ourselves when we do a minor mistake to our life. We might feel fine if someone doesn’t mean what we expect, but we would be so sad when we’re not as what others expected. Even worse, we tried so hard to make sure people are not feeling pressured with our expectation, yet we indulge people’s expectation as if it is a sashimi.

So, at this point in time, stop. Just stop with whatever expectation we have to ourselves. Stop expecting ourselves to be always be able to fulfil our own expectation, people’s expectation, and our own’s expectation about being able to fulfil people’s expectation. It will bring us to nowhere but disaster with thy mind, soul, and body.

Trust me, this one is on another level of not easy. It is hard, very hard in fact. Lowering our expectation will feel like lowering our standard at most of the time but let me tell you, it is not. It is about us befriending our condition, accepting our mistakes, and letting be whatever is meant to be.

It is not said that you may not have any expectation at all, no. But keep it in a level that is sane enough and remember the rule: our biggest enemy is ourselves so don’t be too hard. Being too hard with our enemy will only trigger bigger rivalry, bigger battle, bigger hatred from the enemy itself which in this case is no other than ourselves.

The biggest enemy we have: the hardest to forgive

Last but not least, one that I am also in progress of doing and perhaps might share a separate writing to share more specific in the ‘how’ section, forgiving ourselves.

I learned it the hard way that giving a forgiveness to ourselves is not that easy. Especially to me who ever write “we forgive but never forgets” when it comes to forgiving others, I found it very hard to actually forgive myself.

I have this certain expectation, thoughts, and believe that I myself nonchalantly break them all. The moment I realize that I have drifted too far, I cannot forgive myself. It’s a very hard process that if you read through the passage, this one will sound so personal because indeed it is. In my own thoughts, forgiving myself for a mistake that I should have never made in the first place feels like lowering my standard, diminishing my virtues, and assaulting my principles of life. To the point that as a life connoisseur, I can’t see the point of loving myself anymore.

It hits hard, so hard! The exclamation mark is needed to exist there but hey what I also realize in the journey is that loving ourselves is not an overnight work. It is a whole process that we need to take seriously and enjoy every bit of it even when it means it involves hating part of ourselves again in one moment. My other friend also ever write in her story that loving ourselves is indeed not an easy journey. Although I am not there yet but happened to be there, I believe and I want to believe that the journey will all be worth it.

Forgiving ourselves should start with seeing that the ‘us’ in the past is not the same with the ‘us’ in the present. You have been so unfair to yourself if you judge your past-self with the thoughts that you have today, Nin! oh yes thankyou for the slap and that’s correct. I judge my past so bad because of the knowledge that I have today. I have the tendency to condemn myself for my wrongdoings but I believe, my past-self has her own justification why she did what she did. Come to think about it, yes, I have the justification but if we come back to our first point, it is not always easy to actually win the battle with our mind.

My advice, to me and to everyone reading the post, start forgiving ourselves by not blaming ourselves, not condemning ourselves, not cursing anyone.

As Dale Carnegie wrote in his book “How to Win Friends & Influence People”,

Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism: and it breeds sympathy, tolerance, and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all”

As Dr. Johnson said: “God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days, Why should you and I?”

And as you have thought, I am talking to myself for this advice. It is to be realized that after not blaming ourselves, try to understand ourselves.

In the process, our own thoughts will give a rebuttal, a justification that make us feels bad again, a very emotional process that we have to went through to survive.

“But hey, the biggest project we have is ourselves.

So, if it’s not us who work on ourselves, who else?”

I myself still have so many homework to myself, and one of those is fighting the bad in me. If you feel relate to what I write, please believe me that although you’re alone in fighting yourself, you’re not really alone. We’re all in a battel with ourselves.

Differences are some people don’t realize it and tend to give up with themselves. I don’t want you be those people. I want you, me, us to survive the storm and win this battle.

Be strong, be okay.

This too shall pass.

Love,
Anin.