A Journey to Self Compassion: 1

Every time someone made me feel a certain way or hurt me, I always thought it was my fault. I believed I was thinking negatively, and that’s why I felt the way I did. I never considered that it might not be my mistake. Once, my therapist told me, “It’s not your fault. They made you feel this way. You felt it. They might not have meant to, but they did. It’s not your mistake.” It took me years to finally understand this. Actually, it's still hard for me to accept it. I often overthink these situations. But if the person is close to you, the best thing you can do is tell them how they made you feel. In most cases, the other person might be completely unaware of how you felt. In some cases, you may even discover whether the person was intentionally trying to hurt you.

Starting from scratch

Starting from scratch is one of the most romanticized phrases in movies and books, especially in those inspirational ones, with the elated music and slow motion scenes it has given us all goosebumps. I don't really what I feel about those right now at this point in my life. Given that I have done that not once or twice multiple times I have become quite tired of it now. But at the same time, I know how it feels when you finally reach that stage of accomplishment. In movies and books, its shown as the happy ending. In life, the ending is when you die, until then each day is a battle. You have to do it every day, no matter how tiring it gets. I don't know if that's the case for everyone out there, but there are a lot of people like me who had to build it all from scratch. When am saying this am not just referring to my adulthood, even in my childhood I had to build from scratch. I wasn't that privileged kid or an adult who had it all served in a silver platter. I worked my ass off most of the time to get what I got and continuing the process.

The courage and determination it takes each time while you are starting from nothing is immense. Sometimes it's our choice whether we want to start from nothing or choose a more safer option. When you have made that choice yourself it gets even harder, not essentially the process but dealing with the people around you will get harder. You have to deal with the people who try to pull you down. I can state my own experience on this. I decided to quit my well-paying job in a reputed global company because of many reasons. The first and foremost reason was that I didn't like what I was doing. Yes, I was a good performer in the company, I got a lot of appreciation, but at the end of the day, I knew this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. The second reason was something more serious(for most people). I was working in a nightshift job and that took a great toll on my health. My health was deteriorating every day I was on that job. I worked there for almost two years and finally, when I took the courage to leave the job, there were many people around me telling me that I am doing a dumb thing as the job market is down and leaving this job without another offer in hand was the dumbest thing to do. 

I am dumb. I did exactly what they told me not to do, so according to them I am dumb. It took a lot of courage for me to do that. They were all right, the job market sucks. I am not getting the job that I want. I moved to another country. The job market sucks here too. For the last four months, I have been doing everything I can to build a life that I want from scratch. It's not easy. It's way harder than I thought. I don't have any money with me. I am doing a lot of things to get a job that I want. I have learned a lot of new things, done a lot of certifications, build a strong linked in profile, working my ass off to understand some technical skills. I know I am doing a lot more than most of my peers. I am learning and working to get that dream job. Am not gonna lie, somedays I feel like giving up. When I see people around me who don't work even close to one percent of what I do, still get that job. I feel that the world is so unfair. And then I remember who told it's all fair here. 

I am sorry If you expected this was a whole story that is going to inspire you by the protagonist achieving the dream. Yes, the protagonist is definitely going to achieve the dream. But this is just the first part of the story. I am living this story I don't yet know the length of this story. I don't know about the twist that is going to happen next. I am as excited as you are ( I hope you are!) to see what's next in store. I will update you as it happens. 

So if you are someone like me who is starting it all from scratch again, just know that you are not alone and I know what it takes to be here. Yes, we are dumb, courageously dumb. No, it's not the same as Dumb Courage. We are doing it because we know we can do it. We will get there. Not sure how long it will take. But we will reach there for sure

Until then,

Keep swimming!