Secrets
Romance Novels-Why We Read Them
No, We Don’t Secretly Want to Make It With a Dragon Someone asked why women read romance novels. I’ll tell you, but if you are a man, maybe you should sit down. This may be a two-by-four to the head. I wouldn’t want you to fall over and hit the ground. Some of you have been patting yourselves on the back for years, while your girlfriends or wives are reading spicy romance novels, paranormal romance, and even science fiction romance. Yup, you heard it here. We read a whole lot of weirdness under the romance fiction heading. We secretly wish it were not fiction, though. Did you know that?
By Alexandra Grant4 months ago in Confessions
How to Find a Good Mate
In the beautiful valleys of Swat, there lived a wise teacher named Baba Karim. People from nearby villages often traveled to him with one common question: “How can I find a good life partner?” Many believed it was all about luck, beauty, wealth, or status. But Baba Karim would gently shake his head and say: “Finding a good mate is not about chance — it is about knowing what to look for, how to prepare yourself, and how to see beyond appearances. A true partner is not just someone you live with; they are someone who helps you become the best version of yourself.”
By The Curious Writer4 months ago in Confessions
The Competition
Nobody in the building had declared it a competition, but everyone knew it was one. The community garden on the rooftop of the Meridian Apartments had twelve plots, and the unspoken understanding among residents was that the end-of-summer harvest display was absolutely, entirely, fiercely competitive.
By The Curious Writer4 months ago in Confessions
The Day My Boobs Started Stealing the Spotlight. Content Warning.
--- Hey friends, I still laugh (and cringe) every time I think about it. I was the classic late bloomer. Flat as a pancake through most of middle school. My best friends were already shopping in the junior section for bras while I was still rocking training bras that did absolutely nothing because… there was nothing to train. I used to stuff my socks in my shirt when no one was looking, praying to the puberty gods to hurry up.
By Chahat4 months ago in Confessions
the desire to be sad: "tragically beautiful" art & romanticizing mental illness
"The fact that there was no answer to the question he screamed, "Why do I suffer?" Man, the bravest animal and most prone to suffer, does not deny suffering as such: he wills it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not the suffering, was the curse that lay over mankind so far." Between the ages of 11 and 14, I was, like many preteens, riding an emotional dip in my life. I was extremely insecure about my acne and weight, about being judged by the popular kids. I wasn't allowed to sleepover at friends places, or have a phone, or go to the mall without an adult. And my relationship with my parents was… rocky. It felt as though they never trusted me, and that I would never be a good enough daughter. One of the ways I tried to disperse of my emotions and thoughts was to write a diary entry every day. I did this for three years. January 11th, 2015 "I don't know why but during French today, this heavy weight feeling in my chest and stomach (I have it all the time) just got really bad. When I breathed faster, it got heavier and I felt like I was going to break down so I went to the washroom… I cried, I picked at my skin… I wish I could forget every mistake in my life. aka all of it." March 10th, 2016 "Is there a purpose to all of this? I'm so helpless, so hopeless, so everything less. My heart constantly aches for love, for joy, for meaning in life. In the book I'm reading, Clockwork Prince, someone called Magnus Bane says that he once met an immortal who had lived for so long that they felt no emotions anymore… except fear. And when Magnus asked him why he did not simply kill himself as life had no purpose for him anymore, he said that death was still feared and unexplored; the only thing in his thousand years of life that he had no experience of. I feel like that's me. I do not wish to take my life but logically speaking, why shouldn't I?" I sound pitiful in these diary entires. I sound deeply in need of help, but here's the kicker: I was a fraud. Yes, I was sad a lot. Yes, I had low self esteem. But I wasn't suicidal. I never had a real panic attack in French class. It’s so embarrassing and disappointing to acknowledge that that’s how I once acted. But being chronically on Tumblr in the early 2010s did something awful to me: it made me desire intense depression. Mina Le has a video where she discusses how Tumblr, which is kind of like the blog version of Twitter, made being sad an essential part of what made you interesting and so it led to romanticizing mental illness. Mina and others have talked about this quite a bit, so you can check out their content for a deep dive on Tumblr. But I really want to zoom in on this desire to be sad and to have trauma. Tumblr allowed us to masochistically indulge in self-pain because we received attention, support, and #you’resorelatable comments because of our pain. But what about the situations where we desire sadness for the sake of being sad? W hen there is no outer audience to give us attention for our sadness? When I was 9 years old, I used to lie in bed with my iPod nano and blast “Demons” by Imagine Dragons as I daydreamed myself being pulled away from my loved ones, watching them thrash in agony. Creating tragic daydreams in my head—starring myself— was one of my favourite past times. No one knew I was conjuring up these imaginary scenarios and so no one was giving me attention for them. So then why did I enjoy doing it? I also want to explore our love for sad art. If “tragically beautiful” art aestheticizes suffering and mental illness, then is it moral to create it? And why do we have tropes such as "the troubled artist"? Are the sad and suffering really more creative and “deep” than those without existential dread? Before I get into the content, enjoy 90 seconds of me cooking and eating. It’s a HelloFresh sponsorship. I was actually really excited for this HelloFresh sponsorship because I see them sponsor a bunch of other creators and I also want yummy food for free. These recipes all sound great, but I’m gonna try this shrimp one because… shrimp. Being a university student who’s trying to do YouTube and also study for the law school exam, planning meals really takes up valuable space in my mind. I don't have time to browse the internet for exciting recipes anymore, so having HelloFresh send me a bunch of yummy and healthy recipes with all the ingredients packaged is so nice. They have a variety of meal kits such as Veggie, Pescetarian, Fit & Wholesome, so it really works with whatever your goals or diets are. Okay, first try. mmm! This is really good! I usually stick to one flavour combo in my cooking so it's really nice to eat something that isn't just soy sauce and hoisin sauce. If you’re interested, go to HelloFresh.com and use code OLIVIA16 for up to 16 free meals AND 3 surprise gifts! Again, that's HelloFresh.com, code OLIVIA16, for up to 16 free meals AND 3 surprise gifts! August 9th, 2016 It's been bothering me all day but there's a pair of scissors beside me on my night table that I left there somehow and every time I see it, I stop. I'm really trying not to cut myself. It's tempting and I deserve it but I'm resisting. I've been wearing lots of bracelets lately though. I think I just want to give myself an illusion that I'm cutting and getting what I deserve without actually doing it. I just want to be sad. I don't deserve otherwise. In Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, he argues that humans experience pleasure in having the right to be wicked to others for the pure sake of being wicked. "The carnal delight de faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire.” We weren't born with a set of morals in Nietzsche's eyes. We didn’t start punishing and torturing people because our inherent moral compass told us that this is a bad person. Labeling someone as deserving of punishment because they have done something wrong is actually a really advanced concept that most people think is natural. It requires us to recognize that certain events happened in a specific causal chain and that these events weren't just accidental, but intentional, and that these intentions were the wrong kind of intentions. Nietzsche didn't think our cavemen ancestors were big brained enough to be able to think like this, which, fair enough. Instead, he says that the origin of punishment is actually rooted in the “oldest, most primitive” relationship between people: the contractual relationship. Punishment was premised on the idea that “every injury has its equivalent” and thus, if you hurt me, your “debt” could be paid off by me hurting you an equal amount. In place of material goods or money, people were compensated through the satisfaction of imposing suffering onto someone else. Nietzsche describes many incredibly cruel torture methods that litter human history, such as stoning, boiling criminals alive in oil or wine, tying people to horses and having their limbs ripped apart, I don't even want to continue listing the examples. It makes me shudder. And these tortures and executions were displayed at royal marriages and festivals for entertainment. It was like comedy show for them. Yeah, people are scary. However, when humanity started to enter civilized society, it was necessary for people to regulate their cruel pleasures in order to be able to establish a peaceful common existence. Like can you imagine if today, someone came up to you and said, “Hey, you're really cute. I was thinking... there's this new live show where they boil people alive in oil. I heard it's hilarious! We should check it out! It sounds like a fun time! Nietzsche claims that this is where the moral concept of guilt comes from. Humanity became ashamed of our own cruel instincts because they were now deemed immoral; thus, people could no longer openly acknowledge and express those instincts. As a result, our pleasure in cruelty became spiritualized in popular culture. We see this in horror movies or violent sports, where people can enjoy cruelty from a distance. Still, our instincts could not be fully discharged this way, and so they became directed inward, creating bad conscience. It's that voice in your head that yells at you whenever you feel guilty or immoral about doing something. Humanity experienced what Nietzsche calls “the internalizing of man”. The pleasure that people derive from cruelty is now satisfied through causing ourselves to suffer through things like self-denial and self-sacrifice. Our consciousness turned against our own uncivil urges. Enjoyment from punishing others was redirected to enjoyment from punishing ourselves. A further reason why Nietzsche believes we desire pain is because the concept "good" was originally synonymous with the traits the aristocratic nobles possessed. These were the high social ranking men who honored bravery, wealth, strength, and physical health because that's what they believed they had. Calling themselves 'good' was a way to use language to assert that they are superior by nature, and Nietzsche cites etymological proof such as “gut” being German for both 'good' and “man of godly race”. From this aristocratic framework of goodness, the concept ‘bad’ emerged as the absence of these good traits, which the aristocrats associated as the traits the common people had. This bred a mixture of resentment and desire for revenge among the masses. Now, I'm glossing over a lot of details, but to keep it short, eventually, the common people end up establishing a moral system of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’. Now this is different from 'good' versus 'bad'. Remember that the aristocratic form of morality defined ‘good’ first and contrasted the concept of ‘bad' afterward. However, for the common folk, ‘evil’ was defined first. Evil was associated with all the previous ‘good’ traits that aristocratic morality praised, so that wealth, power, ambition, pleasure became evil. ‘Good’ was defined as merely the opposite of ‘evil’; ‘good’ is not powerful, not strong, not wealthy. We see this is basically every religion where it is a virtue to not seek power over others, to sacrifice our things and time for others, to resist worldly pleasures. We see it in popular culture too where people prefer to be the victim because that's who the masses will side with, not the powerful. So in Nietzsche’s eyes, we purposely subject ourselves to pain, and then call it "being as a good person." Are we stupid? Well, if suffering and sadness is an inevitable part of life, then to make ourselves suffer gives us a sense of control over our pain. We have self-mastery over our existence this way. And we attach moral value to feeling shameful, feeling guilty, and depriving ourself of pleasure, because then at least suffering and feeling bad about ourselves makes us a good person, and we aren't hurting for nothing. There is meaning to our pain. "He who has a why can bear any how." Viktor Frankl says that the ultimate drive of humanity is a will to meaning. As a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, he said that merely surviving the camp wasn't his main concern. What he really wanted to know was whether all the dying around him had meaning, for if there was no meaning, no purpose for the death and cruel torture of innocent lives around him, then what was the point of survival? What was besetting the question the problem which was besetting myself was not as much whether or not I shall survive the camp but whether or not all this pain those pains people had to undergo innocent people had to undergo there, whether all this dying around us has a meaning an ultimate, a higher meaning or not. For if it had no meaning, I didn't see any meaning even to survive. In his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he writes, “In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice… That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.” This heavily reminds me of the episode “Good Damage” in the TV show “Bojack Horseman” where a character named Diane explains that she needs to write a profound memoir about her life because if she doesn't, then all the trauma and hardships she's faced will have happened for nothing. But I'm not writing a book to have fun. If I don't write my book of essays now, I never will. So? Don't write your book of essays! I have to! Why? Because if I don't... that means that all the damage I got isn't good damage, it's just damage. I have gotten nothing out of it, and all those years I was miserable was for nothing. I could've been happy this whole time and written books about girl detectives, and been cheerful and popular, and had good parents. Is that what you're saying? What was it all for? I... I don't know, Diane. This idea of “good damage” is exactly what Frankl and Nietzsche writes about. Damage with meaning is acceptable. It can even make us feel special, like we are stronger than those who haven't endured hardships. But damage as plain damage? Now that's what really hurts. When I was a little girl, I thought that everything, all the abuse and neglect, it somehow made me... special. And I decided that one day, I would write something that would make little girls like me feel less alone. And... if I can't write that book... December 10th, 2016 “I plant all my frustrations and words I'm dying to tell someone—anyone—away deep down inside of me. One day, that seed of misery I planted will blossom. Or maybe it already has. Now it's only a matter of time to see if that sprout dies or flourishes until it's all that's left of me.” Wow. I thought I was quite the little poet, didn't I. You know, I thought that in order to give my sad emotions meaning, I had to make my sadness sound “right.” I couldn't just scribble down diary entries however I wanted with simple language and basic sentence structure. Who am I, Rupi Kaur? God no, I had to write beautifully. Preteen Olivia made sure that her sadness was translated into words that sounded straight out of black and white deep Tumblr GIFs. I needed my thoughts and feelings to be beautiful because that's the only time I saw society value mental illness: when it was delivered to us in the form of aesthetic art. In fact, I felt that to be deep and introspective, I needed to be sad. I had to be lonely and pessimistic in order to be truly enlightened about real life. These beliefs I held were heavily influenced by the sad art I consumed. When it comes to TV shows and film, it’s a special and powerful type of communication because it's not limited to one sensory input. As McCloskey puts it, film engages both our sight and hearing, which puts us in a "'trance' or dissociative state similar to a dream, causing the viewer to become so deeply absorbed into the film that all of the technical aspects that go into its creation are largely forgotten and unbothered by the viewer.” The ability of film to mimic real life experiences makes it easy for us to forget for an hour or so that this story has gone through countless layers of editing, cutting, colouring, effects, music choice, etc. For those who don't know anyone struggling with a mental illness, watching a film about mental illness will play a huge role in how they perceive real people with mental illness. But to make an enjoyable movie, especially for a younger audience, filmmakers want attractive characters with interesting plot and memorable lines. This means that many serious films about mental illness must incorporate unrealistic aesthetics into the project. In the film Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen is a character who is in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt. She’s played by Winona Ryder, who is gorgeous, and the cast is full of other A list attractive celebs such as Jared Leto, Elisabeth Moss, Angelina Jolie, just to name a few. The script is filled with poetic lines. In one popular scene that was reblogged a lot on Tumblr, Susanna says, It makes this suicidal woman sound like a depressed poet. She's attractive, she speaks like an insightful poet, and one of the male nurses in her ward ends up falling in love with her. I find that one of the common ways films and shows romanticize mental illness is by adding in a love interest. For example, another highly popular TV show with mentally ill characters was American Horror Story. Tate tells his therapist that he is interested in a girl, Violet, based off of their first interaction where he catches her harming herself and then tells her how to harm herself permanently. Violet, the girl Tate loves, even commits suicide because he asked her to. American Horror Story fans called it romantic and shipped them like no tomorrow. Preteen Olivia was constantly surrounded by this kind of media and it made me want to be the mentally complex girl who attracted love because of my deep insight on life. I was scared of not being able to relate to sad songs and quotes anymore. I didn't want to enjoy life and be satisfied with myself because I believed that would make me stupid, and boring, and blind to harsh reality. So many great artists I learned about had dark histories of alcoholism, or depression, or abuse, and all the songs that were considered artistic were created from a negative place. Bubblegum pop music with lyrics about having fun? That was considered trashy and shallow. Only art that touched on the dark sides of life felt truly authentic and intellectual to me. This is not to discredit the artistry and bravery that goes into creating vulnerable art— I have so much respect for those people. But does being sad and mentally ill really make you more creative and deep? There appears to be many past studies that think so. For example, in 1995, a study by Ludwig examined the biographies of 1005 accomplished people in a variety of fields, including academic, business, artistic, social, activist, military, and athletic fields. He claimed to find that writers, actors, artists, and musicians had the most “psychiatric difficulty” but also the highest levels of creativity, Moreover, in 1994, a study by Post assessed 291 biographies of accomplished males in a variety of fields as well. He also found high rates of psychiatric disorders in writers and artists as well as high rates of depression and alcoholism. But one big problem connects all these studies: there is no universal agreed upon understanding of "creativity" nor "mental illness." In trying to define creativity, here's just a quick glimpse at how many studies differed in their definitions: “Becker equated creativity with genius or intellectual giftedness. Richards suggested that intelligence was necessary but not sufficient for creativity. Storr defined creativity as a dynamic of normal drives to play. Independence was mentioned by Andreasen and Glick, and fluency and flexibility were cited by Jamison as essential to creativity. Rothenberg defined creativity as the ability to simultaneously conceive opposites or antitheses... Weisberg stressed that creativity required hard work and collaboration.” Defining “mental illness” runs into the same problem. Foucault, a French philosopher and sociologist, suggested that labeling people as mentally ill was just a socially constructed category to control people that were deviant from the norm. Other studies might just use the standard DSM definitions. Because of a lack of agreed-upon understanding for these extremely fundamental terms, it's hard to trust whether these supposed associations that these studies found between mental illness and creativity actually exist. In fact, more recent studies proposed that the mentally ill seem more drawn to the arts because they offer methods of expression and catharsis. It's not that mental illness biologically wires your brain to be more creative. Art is just an appealing avenue for those who hold such passionate emotions. Once artists heal from their illness, studies find that they tend to create and enjoy their art even more. Any artistic product though, begs an audience. And sad art from sad people definitely draws a crowd. Again, something that is sad is often immediately equated with depth. Young alt girls love to let you know that they listen to Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers. No hate to these two wonderful musicians, just sometimes, their fanbase can feel reminiscent of 2014 Tumblr girls. There are two main psychological theories as to why people enjoy sad music. The first claims that the motive behind music choice is hedonic, i.e., shot term decisions about what will maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Supporters of this hedonic motive theory argue that many study participants describe sad music as making them feel good, whether it's pleasure from how depressingly beautiful it sounds, or how it's lower energy levels feel calming and relaxing. The second theory says that listening to sad music is motivated by self-verification i.e., sad music verifies your sense of self. Self-verification theory says that people prefer having information that is consistent with the beliefs they have about themselves because having a solid concept of ourself allows us understand the role we play in the world. February 9th, 2015 “My piano teacher pretended not to know who I was today cause I tied up my hair and he said, “are you the best piano student or the worst?” I wanted to say worst so badly cause I actually suck really bad. At the end of the class he was like “Now remember who you are in case I don't know who you are again!” But how am I supposed to tell him who I am when I don't know myself?” We feel stable when we know who we are and so people are really motivated to maintain self-concepts. As such, individuals may be motivated to experience emotions that affirm existing self-concepts they believe in, regardless of whether those emotions are positive and pleasurable or negative. For those who struggle with mental health, they may actively seek negative emotions to maintain their negative self-concept. For instance, individuals with depression were shown to use sad music to intensify negative emotions and to focus on negative thoughts and memories. Even for mentally healthy people, when they feel down, listening to sad music is "...an important way to reveal one's true self... to express emotions consistent with one's current psychological and emotional state." Even if I don't usually feel sad all the time, if I feel sad right now, then listening to sad music makes me feel like I am affirming the concept I attached to myself in the moment. And that feels good. It verifies my identity. What this paper proposes is that the theories of hedonic motive and self-verifying motive cannot be generalized. the motives differ between those with mental illness, especially those with mood disorders, and those without. “...depressed subjects seem to be driven by the need of preserving a stable self-concept, regardless of any hedonic gain. Those quality differences in motives might make the desire for sadness more harmful in depressed than in healthy individuals, as they may be more persistent… the hedonic driven consumption of sad media might occur on an occasional basis [for healthy individuals]... and does not impact the affective well-being in the long run, [but] consumption driven by self-verification motives may occur systematically as sad stimuli might be constantly sought out to stabilize the negative self-schema.” I feel stuck in a tricky spot because I don't know what to say about the morals of sad art. On the one hand, many philosophers and psychologists talk about how aesthetics and sad art are extremely important. It may provide catharsis, help you feel less alone, find beauty in hard times, or express feelings that you never could. It can provide unique positive emotions that happy or neutral music struggles to, such as nostalgia or calm. But is this the case for everyone, or only the mentally healthy? I remember when I was constantly sad, I pretty much only listened to sad and angry music because paradoxically, I wanted to reaffirm the sadness in me. I was scared of what would happen if I became happier. There's this one part from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil where he says, “It almost determines the order of rank how profoundly human beings can suffer… Profound suffering makes noble; it separates.” And I truly believed that. The more I suffered, the more profound I must be. I don't want to blame artists who release sad content because there is undeniable value in it and they don't control how people interpret their art. But when someone like Preteen Olivia reads lyrics like this, "You must've made some kind of mistake I asked for death, but instead, I'm awake The Devil told me, "No room for cheats" I thought I'd sold my soul, but he kept the receipt” It makes suicide and depression sound so poetic. How could I not feel a sense of beauty attached to it? Let me know what you think. Is tragically beautiful art immoral? Or is it unfair to label art as moral or immoral if the artist is not responsible for every single person that consumes their art? Is it only healthy for some people to consume sad art? I... don't know. Pain of not having enough pain. Still pain, young man. On December 10th, 2017, I wrote my very last diary entry. “Long time… been a while. I've had quite a few urges to write over these past months but I never did. Was it out of fear? Fear of falling down a deep tunnel where only writing could calm me down? Or was it denial of how bad I still am? I think it's a bit of both… It all started in sixth grade when I moved and I watched as my friends’ promises of forever friendships crumbled. H stopped calling me after 2 weeks. R ended up hella pissed and they dedicated a full page paragraph to me on how shitty I was. Then there was M, T, A, R, and B. Thank you so much for ditching me as soon as you got the chance to… Yeah, I know. I'm a fucking awful person but we already had that established 3 years ago so… I've been writing for a long time now. I was supposed to dance but now I wasted around an hour writing. Great. Those numbers on the scale will never go down no matter how much exercise I do. I'm still trying to accept the fact that I'll always be fat no matter what. It's never going to change. I should go now. I think I've spilled enough depressing shit for today.” Sometimes, I can't help but wonder: what would my preteen years have been like if I didn't go out of my way to induce sadness? If had stayed away from Tumblr communities that romanticized mental illness and convinced me that without sadness, I wasn't interesting. I may not have been suicidal and I may not have been clinically depressed, but... I was sad. And Tumblr only made me want to stay sad. Maybe it was unavoidable. Maybe Tumblr and tragically beautiful art was only fueling what already existed inside me. In Sapiens, Yuval Harrari said that humans are biologically born with different sets of happiness and so by nature, some people are more capable of happiness than others. Person A may be able to feel happiness on a scale of 1 to 10, while Person B may only be able to feel happiness up to the highest level of 8. Now, I am the last person to ask about biology or neuroscience or chemistry, so I have no clue how credible this claim is. But if it is, I think it has huge implications for how we approach the desire to be sad. Being sad is fine, there is value in negative emotion. I just hope it isn't a state people obsessively pursue and glorify, the way I once did. This phenomenon of desiring illness isn't new by any means. In the 1800s, tuberculosis was widely romanticized. Tuberculosis had awful symptoms of coughing up blood, significant weight loss, intense fatigue and eventually death. But the illness was addressed with an air of “tragic loveliness.” 19th century popular literature depicted tuberculosis as the illness of a beautiful young artist, who despite their suffering, continued to engage in painting, music, and other artistic and intellectual activities. This became known as the aesthetic of the "faded flower" that so many young girls tried to actually strive for. Young women began to purposely try to appear frail, thin, and pale. However, as medical knowledge advanced, better hygiene, nutrition practices, and medical tools allowed society to understand what was actually going on when someone contracted tuberculosis. Physical illness became understood and so it was demystefied, There was no mystery surrounding tuberculosis anymore, and with that curious mystery gone, its charm was also lost. Slowly, people stopped romanticizing it. Today, rarely do people romanticize physical illness the way they do with mental illness because our knowledge of physical illness is quite comprehensive, but mental illness has now taken the position of mystery. There's still a lot we don't understand about the mind and so it leaves room for people to create their own perceptions and imaginations. Maybe, as medical knowledge about mental illness evolves, it too will lose its charm. I just cut my bangs recently so they look awful in this video. Um, but... If you found this video to be okay, you can like and subscribe if you want. Leave a comment if you want! Thank you so much for watching. Let's keep talking, and I hope to hear from you soon. Bye!
By LUKE THOMAS4 months ago in Confessions
BECOME A DO-ER
I literally will tell people I'm hard-headed when it comes to my goals. There's nothing that I can't do. Like, if I say I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. Who would have thought that a goal as small as not crying every single day would lead to the life that little Beda dreamt about the life that I watched on TV to being in the same rooms as Danessa Mrick and Haley Bird? >> People have asked me for the last 24 years, how do you develop an above average income? And the answer is become an above average person. Develop an above average handshake. Some people want to be successful. They don't even work on their handshake. As easy as that would be to start on. Develop an above average smile. Develop an above average excitement. Develop an above average interest in other people. Develop an above average intensity to win. See, that'll change everything. Probably one of the most frustrating experiences in life is looking for an above average job with above average pay without becoming an above average person. It's called frustration. >> I feel like a villain in this jacket. Leave it to me to wear the most ridiculous jackets ever. But hello guys, welcome to or welcome back to my channel. My name is Bahra. If this is your first time seeing my face, then hey, welcome to the channel. And if you've been here before, like always, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you here with me. My motto in my 20s has been to just do and that has completely changed my life. The past four years have been some of the most transformative years of my life. I have built a life that I am so proud to live. I've become a version of myself that I only saw in my head. And that comes from being a doer. And it's because through action is where real confidence is built. It's where you learn who you are. It's where you discover your strengths and your weaknesses, what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy. Your life becomes a mere reflection of what you believe about yourself and who you believe yourself to be. When you don't keep your own promises, when you see yourself as someone who's lazy or a procrastinator, you become that. You move through life in that way. And your results continue to reaffirm that. But when you become a doer, your self-concept becomes unshakable. And there is nothing in this world that you cannot become or you cannot achieve when you have a strong self-concept. It's one thing to dream, to plan, to vision board, and y'all know I'm all for that. But action and becoming a doer is the key to success. That is it. That is all. There's no way around it. So today we're going to be talking about how to become a doer and how to break the cycle of breaking your own promises. I probably start off every single video with this, but vision is everything and having a vision for yourself and a vision for your life. Now, you don't have to have it all figured out. Your vision doesn't have to be 100% but you just have to have an idea of the direction that you would like to go in. I'm currently reading Start with Yourself by Emma Greed. I actually have it right here. I've been reading this book and one thing that I really love about Emma Greed and I've always loved and respected about her is the fact that she does not shy away from talking about hard work. She doesn't shy away from talking about what it actually takes to be successful and the fact that it takes grit and hard work and consistency and discipline. I was really happy to crack open this book and see that the first chapter is literally called vision. The first thing that she talked about is the importance of having a vision, a direction for your life. Because if you don't decide where you want to go and you don't create a clear vision for yourself, you are going to keep recreating the past. Dr. Joe Despensza talks about this all the time. He says that you don't create a vision of the future, you will be left with the memory of the past and your future is going to become predictable. Something along those lines. So, it's so important to give ourselves a direction to go in so that we can wake up every single day and make the proper decisions. The reason why a vision is so important and so powerful is because when you're in that place where the emotions feel so strong, you have to remember the vision and you have to remember the goal. When you are working so hard to bring your vision to life and you're doing the hard work and the boring things and you're truly in the trenches, you have to remember that vision because that vision is the only thing that's going to pull you forward. You will face a lot of pain in life. And if you don't have something to work towards, you don't have something meaningful that you're moving towards, you are going to just be the pain. You're going to become one with the pain. So having a vision, a clear vision of who you want to be and where you want to go is so important. And it doesn't have to be perfect. And you can't sit here and tell me that you don't know what you want. You cannot sit here and tell me you don't know what you want. You know exactly what you want. But a lot of times that is clouded with people's judgments or what people think that you should want or what people say that you should be doing or society. So, it's really important for you to sit with yourself and ask yourself, what do I actually want? What makes sense to me? Another thing is that keeps a lot of us from even starting is I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do first. I have this grand vision for myself and I have all these plans and I have this idea, but I don't know what to do and I don't know where to start. And to that I say start where your feet are. Momentum forgives bad strategy. As long as you're moving, messy, unsure, that movement will turn you into someone who can hold more, who can handle more. There's this quote by Steve Jobs, very famous. You probably already know it, but he says, "You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking back." We often try to sit and map out how we're going to get there. Or sometimes we might not even know where there is. But the reality is, regardless of how much you plan, things will always go differently. So start where your feet are. I can't even count the amount of messages or emails or comments that I get of people saying, "I don't know where to start. I don't know what my purpose is." When you don't know what to pursue, pursue yourself. Start with yourself. Ask yourself, "What are some things that I can do to make my life better?" Now, I promise you, you know exactly what you can do to make yourself better. When we look for clarity, we often try to look for that in everything external and everything outside of ourselves. But I promise you, when you start to look, and this is gonna sound woo woo, but like when you start to look within and you start to better yourself and you start to get to know yourself better, because on that journey, you get to discover parts of yourself that you've never met before. And it can be as simple as like trying to lose a little bit of weight. That journey will allow you to meet parts of yourself that you've never met before or, you know, starting a side hustle or whatever it is. When you create, when you look at every aspect of your life and you ask yourself how can I improve these areas and you start there and you start to pursue yourself, you will learn so much about yourself and you will gain so much clarity. And this again is going to sound a little woo woo, but I truly believe there is a part of us that knows more than we do or that more than more than we can consciously comprehend. We have an inner compass that leads us to where we're meant to be and who we're meant to become. And so the more that you learn to listen to yourself, the more that you get to learn about yourself and you gain clarity, the easier it is for you to find the things that you're actually meant to do. My first goal was to not cry every single day. I wanted to be happier. I wanted to feel better. It was nothing crazy. I started to journal. I started to eat healthier. I started going to the gym more. And it was through those habits and those new ways of living that I got to discover my love for self-improvement. That I got better at speaking, that I got more confident in front of the camera, that I started creating content. I wouldn't know any of this about myself if I didn't actively pursue myself for the past 4 years. Create a vision for yourself. Then start where your feet are. It is that simple. It is that simple, but it's not easy. Before we get into how to overcome resistance and how to prepare yourself for resistance or what to do in those moments of procrastination and understanding your brain and all the good things that will help you become a doer. I want to talk about the decision and I want to talk about how powerful and how important making a decision is. Most people hope that their days are different. Hope that something outside of themselves comes and changes something for them. hopes that you know they'll just figure it out along the way. There is a difference between hoping and deciding. The reason why hoping never works is because there is a weak belief system behind hoping. But when you make a decision, there is certainty. There is faith. And so I believe that decisions are life-changing. And what does a decision look like? Right? Because you can say, I want to do this or I'm going to do this when I'm going to do this when I have the perfect body. I'm going to start making content when I have the perfect backdrop and I have the perfect house and I have the perfect aesthetic. I'm going to start that business when I have all the knowledge and I and I'm ready and I have this. We don't actually make decisions when we are saying that. >> You know, decision- making is a funny thing. You and I think on frequencies. If we could see a bunch of lines and we're thinking on a frequency and we're on this frequency here and we say, "I'm going to do that when this changes." This is never going to change until you get up on this frequency. See, the good that you're after is on a higher frequency than you're operating on a greater awareness. And if you're down here and you're thinking here on this frequency and the good you want up here, you got to get your mind up there. How do you get up there? Make the decision. Be there. And that's really what you have to do. The second you make a decision, you flip your brain onto a different frequency and you start to attract things to you that you couldn't you never get without making the decision. >> A decision is I'm going to do this point blank period. Rob Dial always used to say this. just used to say, "I'm going to do this thing or I'm going to die trying." >> You'd said um that if you didn't make it on SNL before the age of 25, you were going to >> I was going to kill myself. >> Were you actually? >> Yeah, I wrote that in something in some journal or something. >> You wrote what? >> If I don't get on Sent Live by the age of 25 that I'll I'll kill myself. >> Did you mean that? >> Yeah, I did. But again, I knew that I was going to be on Sarah Live, so I guess I didn't really mean it. Decisions change everything. Everything you see changes. My first decision was I'm going to be happier. I chose happiness before I felt it. And so I went from crying every single day and being so down and depressed and sad. And I chose happiness. I started to see and find opportunities of happiness and opportunities of joy. These opportunities have been around me this whole time. But it wasn't until I made the decision and I said, "I'm going to do this point blank period that they started to appear." There is this part of our brain is called our RA, our reticular activating system. And it filters reality. And so, whatever you hold on to, whatever you focus on, whatever you believe is what you're you literally will experience and see in the world. But if you have this weak one foot in, one foot out. Oh, I'm gonna do this when, I'm gonna do this if, I'm gonna do this later down the road, I'm going to first do X, Y, and Z. And it's going to be so much easier for you to sway. The easiest example to use is weight loss because I feel like if you've been on a weight loss journey there, like there's nobody who understands discipline and consistency the way that you do or even entrepreneurship. If you're an entrepreneur, nobody understands discipline and consistency the way that you understand discipline and consistency because it is hard. You have to make sacrifices. It is so much more easier and more comfortable to do the easy thing. So when that when the decisions come up, right, and you can either do the thing that will bring you closer to your goal or do the thing that will, you know, keep you the same. It's so much easier to always go with the thing that keeps you the same. There's not a lot of discipline that's necessary, a lot of willpower, right? And so if you already have that weak belief system and that, oh, I'm just hoping and wishing and praying. It's going to be so much easier, girl. It's going to be so much easier for you to not show up for yourself. Make the decision. I'm going to do this point blank. Period. And remind yourself of it every single day. This is who I am. This is how I'm going to show up. This is this is the life that I'm going to lead or I'm going to die trying. Now, let's talk about resistance, right? When you decide you're going to do something different, it doesn't matter how small the habit is, you are unlearning everything that you ever know. You're unlearning. And and this is why showing yourself grace and compassion is really important when you're in a season of change. And this is why building a relationship with yourself is going to be the most important thing that you do on this journey. There is going to be a lot of resistance. There's going to be a lot of pain because you are unlearning everything that you've ever known and you are becoming someone different. It doesn't matter if you if your only goal is to lose 5 lbs. You are becoming 5 lbs lighter. which means unlearning old habits, letting go of old identities and belief systems. Prepare for resistance because it is coming. Understanding our my brain has been so helpful on this journey as well. Our brain's job is to keep us safe. Okay? It isn't to have us excel. It isn't to have us stand out. Our brain is meant to keep us safe and that means keeping us the same. And a lot of the behaviors that we do, a lot of the habits that we've had, we've been doing for a really long time. These habits are deeply deeply ingrained. These beliefs are deeply ingrained. These ways of thinking and moving is deeply ingrained. And so when you start to switch it up, right, your brain will literally do what it's supposed to do and it is going to bring up fear and doubt and create random scenarios to sabotage you from being able to move forward. It'll piss me right off every time I think about it. But it's a good thing because it means your brain is working and your brain is healthy. However, it really does try to keep you back. So you might feel when you start something new there's a lot of doubt right? First thing that you think about is oh what if what what if when you start doing things there's a lot of anxiety around it. Sometimes there's waves of sadness and you don't even know where it's coming from. All of that is to protect you and keep you the same. So when you understand that it is so much easier to feel the emotions to see the blockages and overcome. And the thing is overcoming fear is not something that you sit and work through. I mean you can sit and work through it. It might just take you longer, right? But it's not something that you just sit and work through and think about and journal about. It is a byproduct of becoming someone who feels safe in that environment. You need to teach your brain that you are safe going to the gym, online, posting, putting yourself out there, speaking on stage. You need to show up. And that is why action is so important. It is more important than anything you'll do. You can talk all day. You can journal all day. You can sit and cry all day. by moving and and proving to yourself that you are safe in these new environments is what's going to help you overcome that fear. Now, fear never goes away, right? We all feel that bit. I've been making content for so long now. I've been sitting in front of a camera for so long now. Even I get in my head and I'm like, "Oh, what if it doesn't turn out good? What if I sound dumb? What if you know what I'm saying? That always shows up." But it's so much easier to bypass it than it used to be. I used to cry after filming every video when I first started cuz I I felt weird showing up online and being vulnerable. I've never done that before. But now I'm like, I got it. It's never that deep. It's never that serious. And so, yes, it comes up here and there, but not as much anymore. And it doesn't affect how I move and how I show up. I made this video a while ago. It was actually my first video that really like popped off on my channel. And it was I called it like you're not lazy. I forgot what I called it. But in this video, I talked about a lot of people have decided that they are just procrastinators. I'm just a procrastinator. I'm just lazy. I even asked in my last girl talk video. I was like, "What is holding you back from doing the things you know you should be doing?" It was the same things, right? The fear of being seen, the fear of success, the fear of being misunderstood, the fear of pressure from family and friends, whatever it is, it was all the same kind of things. But it was interesting to see people say, "Oh, I'm just lazy. My laziness is holding me back. My procrastination is holding me back." We have identified ourselves as people who do not take action. When the reality is the reason why you procrastinate again is because your brain is meant to protect you from the unknown. Your brain is protecting you from being uncomfortable. Because change and growth is uncomfortable. And so by procrastinating or putting it off, you feel a little bit of relief, right? So when you feel this relief, your brain sees that as a reward. Your brain sees that as, "Ah, I protected myself. Hey, this is a good thing, you know?" And then you continue this cycle over and over and over again. Do you know how you break that loop? I'll give you a little hint. You do it, girl. You do it. You get up and you do it. You break that loop and you break that cycle over and over again. And you practice doing. That's how you overcome procrastination. In that video, I talked about there's a moment between you and making the decision. Whether you do the thing you know you're supposed to do or you put it off, there's always an emotion and that emotion always stems from a thought. It's really important to be in tune with yourself and your thoughts and to kind of become a guard of your mind until you it becomes easy for you to understand where those blockages come from. What are you thinking and feeling in that moment when you are about to give up on yourself? That is the real block. Okay, that is the block. There is a belief there. There's a thought there. There's a feeling there that keeps holding you back. So, you're not lazy. You're not whatever you want to call yourself a procrastinator. You're simply a normal human being going through change. You are a normal human being with a functioning brain. Okay? So, I'm going to need you to cut that out real quick. It's quick, too. When you feel the emotion, it's quick. Like it happens so quickly that you don't realize and then all of a sudden you've made the bad decision and you feel crap about yourself and then you do it again and then you do it again and then you do it again and you spend months and sometimes years just feeling crappy about yourself because you're stuck in a loop. Becoming a doer is breaking the loop over and over and over again because it never goes away. As you evolve and as you grow, you will find yourself in uncomfortable positions doing things you've never done before. It never goes away. But when you have that confidence in yourself and and you consider yourself to be a doer and you know that you can show up even when you feel uncomfortable, that is what gets you where you want to be. Self-confidence, right? That confidence that you have in yourself, that belief that you have in yourself through evidence, it comes from those those moments where you break that cycle. So your goals don't have to be big for you to become a doer. They get bigger and bigger as you go. You just have to become someone who's willing to break that cycle. Now, we're not just going to brush past the emotions. If what we feel and those emotions and those thoughts are what holds us back from showing up is what makes it harder for us to break that procrastination loop, then what the heck are we going to be doing in that moment? What what are we going to do to overcome that? How do we self-regulate? How do we build an a relationship with ourselves so that we can feel safe doing hard things? Another thing that I love about this book, guys, I'm literally only I'm only 58 pages deep, but she starts with vision and then she goes straight into emotions and how to deal with it. That is the foundation of success. That is the foundation of being a doer and actually showing up. So, here are some tips and some things that have helped me over the years and some things that I've learned the hard way. There's this doctor, her name is Dr. Jill Taylor and she explains that the initial chemical surge of an emotion only lasts for 90 seconds. It is 90 seconds and anything beyond that is usually usplaying, re-triggering. So by understanding this, it helps us realize that we do in fact have some level of control and we do not have to be in an emotion for any longer than we want to. It's so much easier said than done to say feel the fear and do it anyway. But how do we actually do that? For me, the biggest thing was learning to sit with my emotions. I do not come from a touchy feely emotional talk type of environment. And so when I finally sat with them, I was crying. It was so bizarre to me. It was so weird. But for the first time in my life, I was actually processing it. I was understanding where it was coming from. And over time, I became more and more comfortable doing it. I built self-rust. If I could give any advice to anybody on how to show up, how to do, how to succeed, how to excel, it would be creating a safe space within yourself, how to change any habit in your life. Creating a safe space within yourself, being able to come back home to yourself, feel emotions, being able to be honest with yourself. Journaling has helped me with that. And just sitting with it. And I guess another little hack or habit would be to move. Let that emotion move through you or like physically move your body. So going for a walk, exercise, getting up and drinking water or physically changing your location. I know when we in Islam feel like we feel anger or we feel an an immense ooh this is another one. Why am I not adding this to the list? When I feel a lot of emotions, I go and I make woodoo. So, if you guys don't know, we do is like a ritual that we do with water to purify ourselves before prayer. You go and you pray. There are times where I feel so overwhelmed with my emotions that I just go and I pray and I feel so much lighter and better after. Not only are you moving your body, but I'm leaving my worries on the prayer mat. I'm saying, "Lord, this is a lot for me to handle on my own and I'm asking you to help me with it. And I'm leaving this here with you right now." That's what I do when I journal as well. I'm like, "I'm not leaving anything. I'm not taking anything with me. I'm leaving it all on this journal and it's going to be all on this paper. So, I sit down, I write how I feel, what I'm going through, why I feel that way, X, Y, and Z, whatever. Whatever I need to write, I write it out. But when you just like sit with your emotions and you replay it, it'll paralyze you from doing what you need to do and showing up the way that you know you can. I want to very quickly touch on fear as well because that's something that holds a lot of people back. And when it comes to fear, I think we feed fear a lot. We feed it, right? We think about it. We think about the worst case scenarios. We think about the things that we're afraid of. We imagine it in our head. We are constantly feeding it. The more that we focus on fear, the more that we feed it. And the opposite of fear is faith. So start feeding faith. Okay? Start feeding faith. And this sounds crazy, but imagine the best case scenario. You pray about it. You are grateful for the best case scenario. A gratitude practice that I do is I sit and I say, "Oh Allah, thank you for all that you do for me. Thank you for all that you've done for me. Thank you for all that you've done for me that I've yet to reach. So like everything that you already did for me that I haven't reached yet. Like everything all the good that's coming in the future. Feed faith. Remember God, be grateful. Say thank you. Have conversations with him. When you feed faith and you focus on faith, fear just continues to go away. Like it quiets it. It you silence it basically. Do something that brings you closer to believing. And for me, that's always remembering who God is. That's reminding myself of my vision. That is, you know, doing vision walks, which if you guys don't know about that, it's a practice that I like to do of just like embodying the version of myself that I want to become by driving through the neighborhoods, going to the stores, doing the things like just like immersing myself in the environment that I want to be in. Another thing is create an evidence portfolio. What an evidence portfolio is, it's a folder of proof that you are becoming who you say you want to be. The little things you celebrate, the little things, the little wins that you have every single day, whether it was drinking enough water or going on a walk or going to to the gym or doing a 10-minute walk or hitting a PR, whatever it is, write it down. It's so easy for us to overlook that stuff and not really like pay attention to it. But when you remind yourself of it, you build so much confidence and you are telling your brain, I am safe here and I am the person that I say I am. Another tip that I have for you is to be quick. When you I guess this can go near like decision or when you make a decision to do something or you want to do something, be quick with the decision. Go and do it immediately. Thinking about it for too long creates a lot of anxiety around the thing. When you're quick with the decisions that you make, you are cutting off that overthinking. There's no space for it. There's no time for it. And one thing that I've learned is that success loves speed. Success loves speed. If you are quick with the things that you say you want to do, success becomes inevitable. I'm telling you, not only do you reach success quicker, whatever that means to you, you learn quicker, right? You learn what works and what doesn't work quicker. You experience quicker. you become quicker. I just saw Michael in theaters. And one thing that Michael Jackson did that I just love so much. He did not sit and wait around. Okay. When he didn't when he had an idea, he was in that studio. He was in that studio because he was like, "If I don't go do this and I don't go make this song, God is going to take this idea and he's going to give it to Prince." And I think that's just such a beautiful way of thinking. You're honoring the ideas that God gave you. you are honoring the the life that God gave you, the ability, the creativity. And that's just another way to think about things, too. When you're sitting here and thinking, oh, like I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of success or it's like God has given you, he's entrusted you with this thing, this idea, this vision for your life. And you know what? It will impact other people and and impact the world in a way too, which is always the point and the best part. And so when you sit around on it, you are doing a disservice to yourself and God. What a disservice that is when you have this opportunity to serve. It's so lame to sit around and not do anything about it and be afraid. God gave you that idea. And you know what else? He gave you the capacity to hold it. The capacity to show up for it. If you're praying about it, you sure as hell can start working towards it. And don't worry about not having it all figured out. How boring would it be if you knew exactly how everything would work out? There would be no point in doing it. Yesterday, I was putting up my curtains in my bedroom and I thought to myself, I was like, "Wow, like when I was younger, I used to watch all these room tour videos and these people had, you know, their bathroom was connected to their bedrooms." And I had the ugliest little bedroom ever. I'm not kidding. It was like the brown brown wooden walls. It was kind It was like a storage room converted to a bedroom. And I remember watching these videos and I never thought for a moment that I couldn't have that thing. And I always told myself, one day I will have this. One day I will have a home and it's going to be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing and I'm going to do YouTube and all these things. And I am living in that reality right now. And so yesterday I had a moment and I was like, subhan Allah, it's so crazy how God will place these dreams in your heart. It's only a matter of time before you're actually standing in it and a matter of time before you're sitting in it. You just have to move. You just have to go and you just have to do and you have to do and you have to do and you have to do. Become a doer. I literally will tell people I'm hard-headed when it comes to my goals. I tell people there's nothing that I can't do. Like if I say I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to like I'm going to do it. And I have that level of faith and belief because I've done it and I've and I've built evidence over the years that I can. The first thing that I've ever done for myself was my weight loss journey. And I did it. And that gave me the confidence to do the next thing, the bigger thing, the bigger goal, the bigger dream. Who would have thought that a goal as small as not crying every single day would lead to the life that little Beda dreamt about, the life that I watched on TV, to being in the same rooms as Danessa Mrick and Haley Bieber. All praise truly is due to God. And starve fear and feed faith and show up. You got to show up. It's uncomfortable. It's hard. There's so much work that will have to go into it. There's so much work that goes into just overcoming negative beliefs. There's there's so much work that goes into doing the inner work. It feel it felt like a full-time job. It doesn't have to be that you're an entrepreneur and you're worth $400 million. Whatever it is that you want to do, whatever success looks like to you, whatever goals that you have for yourself and for your life, whatever standards you've created for yourself, it's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of healing. It's and that's why I say emotions is so important because you are grieving an old version of yourself. You are unlearning who you used to be. You're literally deleting a whole version of yourself and you are becoming someone different and it will be painful and it will be hard. You'll get to a point where you're in this in between stage where you're not who you want to be yet, but you're no longer who you used to be. You have to move. The only way is to take action. The only way is to be a doer. Those are just some things that helps has helped me become a doer rather than just talking in a world full of talkers just talking just telling people I'm doing this and this and that. We got to be doers. We got to be doers and we got to show up and we got to do the work cuz regardless of what your goals are, there's always going to be a lot of work. And so I hope this video is very helpful. I'm never going to be filming and sitting on the floor ever again because my legs are like my legs are not okay. But I love you all so very much and I'm forever proud of you guys. I'm forever rooting for you guys. I'm forever praying for you guys. Thank you guys so much for trusting me enough and allowing me to be a part of your journey. But I love you so much and I hope to see you next time.
By Luke Thomas 4 months ago in Confessions
A Day Of Small Disasters And Revelations. Top Story - June 2026.
Introduction Sometimes you think that everything has got it in for you. It is a hot day, around 28° C , but I still thought I would trim the bushes and mow the lawn, before it got too hot.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 4 months ago in Confessions
