More often than not, mistrust in ourselves can spoil cognitive function until our choices become unrecognisable. You begin to question these choices, your sanity and above all, trust in yourself.
Building a relationship with yourself is just as, if not more important, than building one with others. Sometimes, knowing yourself and being yourself can be disrupted by unwelcome friendships we thought were necessary. These friendships demand the fall of practical and rational actions and thought, and to counter these aggressors, we need to be able to stop them before they take full control.
Just like Pavlov’s dog, we can condition ourselves and our environments to challenge our psychological factories. We choose not to believe this because it takes lots of energy to change our trajectory. But as stated, we need to begin trusting ourselves in order to embrace the full bloom of life.
You may have heard this advice in a similar old adage that goes like this ‘in order to love others, you must first love yourself’. It’s cliché advice that comes in many forms and application of this Magoo like romanticism is a driver to more soppiness you probably can’t handle. But it is something we should all embrace.
Deciding on the types of people we associate with greatly influences the types of character we build. As we get older, we begin to encounter people that frown at life and are pessimistic of the opportunities that surround them. I call these people horsemen. They sit on their horses all day, spurs and all until life throws them adventurous possibilities they cannot handle to which they charge away, shouting negative comments at passers-by.
In order to free ourselves of these people, we have to walk away from cowboy places. A high horse can be difficult to get down from, and they have no intention of dismounting.
This is the most difficult part of trusting yourself again. It means letting go of relationships we believed provided foundations for a social circle that will procure the necessary ingredients to flourish in a chosen lifestyle.
Almost always, we choose friendships based on the career we wish to have, or the people we aspire to be like, not the ones that make us feel better about ourselves
As humans, we have a complex, yet simplistic psychology. We love strangers that adore us and dislike attention from close ones. You will often find this personality trait common in school friendship circles, and as we grow older, it metamorphizes into passively accepting friendships that do us more harm than good.
Like toxic goods, toxic friendships must be safely disposed of. One major cause of lack of trust in ourselves lies in the friends that we keep. And it makes up a large chunk of the environment that surrounds us.
The toxic people we associate ourselves with and their negative tentacles can have far-reaching and upsetting consequences for identity. We may think we enjoy their company, and to remain within their circle we assimilate into a personality we are uncomfortable with. This can wreak untold mental stress on the mind and in-turn on the body.
Safely (meaning kindly) removing these people from our lives is the Berlin wall to reacquainting yourself with, yourself. We often get caught up in the nature of being seen that we can forget to see ourselves. But we must hold on to the core of character preservation. Once we knock back the bricks of imprisonment, we can begin to exhume the once-promising and vivacious side of the soul we once rode with.
Stanisland Magazine 