Wednesday Wisdom

Yesterday, I was reading the 2nd Dune novel, and I came across a passage that made me stop, pull out my phone and take a picture. I’ve never done that before.

Essentially, the passage said: “To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. Whether you are an earl or a serf, you cannot hire someone to solve this problem for you. You can dress your wound or continue bleeding, but it’s up to you.”

I’ve paraphrased a little bit and taken this out of context, but it’s true.. while situations, support structures and others can help or make things harder, true growth takes a lot of work and must be done for oneself.

For me, it helps to think of this in terms of flaws, habits, who you are vs. who you want to become. We all implicitly know we are flawed and can improve ourselves, but how do we interact with this? Do we just ignore it and live our lives?

Cue Brené Brown’s Podcast “Unlocking Us”. Should we instead put in the work gaining awareness of everyday actions and feelings? Can we then consciously learn and unlearn behaviours?

As an aside, I started listening to this podcast today and I read that passage yesterday, so I am no expert, just sharing.

In an episode I listened to today (Shame and Accountability), Brené talks about the importance of Love, Connection, and Belonging to us as humans, and that we all are deserving of these. Period.

However, shame, which is something we experience in many well-known places in our lives can make us feel unworthy of love, connection, and belonging, among other things. It can erode the part of us that believes we can be better.

Brené’s example was that telling yourself that you are a liar might actually put you in a rut where you continue to lie. In the case of guilt, you would say you lied, but that lying is incongruent with your values/who you are, so now you feel.. guilty.. which may urge you to change the problematic behaviour.

Building emotional literacy enables you to become aware of, break down, analyze, evaluate, and change as you undergo the journey of deeply understanding yourself. I think that during this pandemic, many people have dived into the topic of mental health, which I’m sure will benefit them.

Brené further explores these concepts and more, but the idea I wanted to communicate is that you do not have to pigeonhole yourself into thinking “that’s just who I am, or how I was raised.” It is quite common to do, but you do have the agency to unlearn and relearn. It’s not easy, but I’m rooting for you if you are trying.

Let me know if this also resonated with you and check out Brené’s podcast as she breaks this down much better than me.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday, learns to like themselves a little bit more, and feels worthy of connection, love, and belonging.

Riley