31 Days 2 Get You Started! January 24: Lose Your Hate.
I think Dr. King’s quote about the “burden of hate” is exceptionally precise. In fact, I think it’s an idea that becomes more powerful as you become older, and see how easy it is to lose yourself in hate. You get older and you see how easy it is to take refuge from all of your disappointments and fears and heartaches in hate. Taking responsibility is exhausting. It’s frustrating. It never ends, dammit. The more you know, the more you have to fear. Oy.
But of course, hating everything and everyone else makes it damn near impossible to love yourself, which means you’re stuck in the worst way possible. Hating is easy, but frequently, the easiest choices are the ones we regret the most.
I had a very tough week. Some poor choices I made caught up with me. I understood that I had made those bad choices because at the time, I had a lot less confidence in myself and I was more prone to sabotage. The week is over, things are going to work out, and moving forward, I won’t make those mistakes again. (Lucky me: so many other mistakes to choose to learn from, yay! #sweetgodwhy) I have to shrug it off and move forward, learning what I can because there’s no alternative. I didn’t come this far to give up. I’m done hating myself because that is boring. It’d tedious, and it wastes my time and energy and I have too many clients to help, one of whom is myself.
A huge part of getting yourself started is understanding why you make choices, both choices that help you, and choices that harm you and waste your time and sap your energy. If you spend so much time cleaning up your own (self-created) mess that you never have the time to build and thus achieve your goals… what’s that about? Why are you so set on thwarting your ambitions? Just realize that many of us manufacture problems to focus on, so that we can avoid the life-changing, big picture problems. It’s easier to chase a lover or a perfect weight or a six-figure salary than to understand and fulfill your own dreams, right?
Maybe it’s time to set down that burden of hate you may be carrying for yourself, for your life, for all you could be… you must be feeling pretty damn tired about now, I bet. And there’s so many people you could be helping…starting with an old friend.
