keep on plodding

Everybody hurts themselves sometimes, whether we realise it or not. Possibly the most common way, is how we can destroy ourselves with how we perceive our flaws. And the most unfortunate part of finding and identifying our weaknesses, is that it gives a small illusion of power. That we're taking control, finding out what's wrong, then fixing the chinks. Just like smoothing over the nicks in a car's paint job, once started, there's no stopping until it's perfect.

When we look for our weaknesses…we may feel somewhere between somewhat satisfed to utterly self destructed. If that is all we feel, why bother doing it? Why don't we do the reverse - that is, find strengths and make them stronger instead?

I grabbed a bit of paper and wrote down everything positive I could remember people have ever said about me. I chose not to write down anything I thought of myself personally; only the words of other people were written down. So even though I thought myself to be ugly, people have only ever said that I was cute, so down that went. It was quite addictive. I stopped myself from going into my email archives to find random nice things my friends had said about me, which would surely have taken all week.

And I felt great. I've been tempted to keep the paper on me for others to see and write on, but for now I've kept it only as another personal motivator in my wallet.

There is an individual, who I will not name in any way, that I despise. This person has caused great pain and anguish to a number of people very close to me, and the thought that I am somehow connected to this fool is disheartening.

For a time, it was one of my greatest fears, that in spite of all my efforts, I would somehow turn into a copy of this person.

But today, I realised that this was completely impossible. Simply because this individual had little ability to blame his problems on himself, thereby hurting others with his fury, while I had a "problem" of almost always blaming myself for my problems. This "problem" of mine, is in fact, my greatest weapon in preventing myself from ever turning into that abomination, and is something I now consider to be one of my most precious character traits.