Whatever You Wish To Receive, You Have To Give It First

Life is stressful. We accumulate unhealthy amounts of stress from our environment. This weight we all carry is so heavy today that we don’t have enough energy left to care about others.

We don’t listen to each other. We desperately need to unload our emotional and mental baggage, and we use every opportunity to do so — not realizing that we’re not giving first, that very thing we crave. Listening.

Our collective behavior shows that we learned to focus on our agendas overtime. What choice did we have after all? We were lost in the jungle, we felt separated from our “homes,” we felt threatened by the environment.

Things have not been easy for those who came before us, and that’s why our ancestors gave us this legacy, so that we survive too. But here’s the thing, the world is not the same anymore. And what once worked won’t anymore.

This is obvious in today’s world, the old ways don’t work now. And we’re showing this by being “broken” apart in the face of adversity. The news is filled with mental health issues. The numbers are going up.

We can’t rely on what we always did in order to confront our new challenges. No one is going to give us what we need. Nothing is going to simply fall into our lap.

Whether we want love, peace, compassion, validation, acceptance — we’ll have to give it first. We’ll have to serve first. And then get to receive it.

We’ve been putting a lot of pressure on ourselves.

For some people, it starts later in life. For most, it starts during childhood. Parents, teachers, friends. Everyone expects so much from us. More than they could possibly achieve themselves.

Being pushed forward by all those voices from our past, we put an unhealthy amount of expectations on ourselves. And before we realize it, we get sick, tired, overworked, and worse — we don’t even know why we’re chasing those things in the first place.

While we don’t realize it most of the time, we’re expecting the same from a lot of people. And it makes their lives harder too. We expect our spouse to do so many things and we get angry when she doesn’t. As if we clearly communicated our needs in the first place.

I don’t think you’d want to know this. It’s for the most curious of us. Expecting comes from feeling insecure. Why would you expect things to only happen in a certain way?

Because it would reinforce what we believe in, our “psychic structure.” And if things don’t comply to our views, and most of the time our expectations are not met — we get mad. Either we blame the person “responsible” for it, or we blame God.

You don’t need to live up to people’s unrealistic expectations from you. And they don’t too. Give yourself a break, and give people a break too.

There is this belief that time is passing, and that we’re not going anywhere. We fear being left behind. Everybody seems so cool on their flashy social media accounts. Yet we’re here.

Are you living? Before you answer “yes,” what does living means?

It means being in this very moment, appreciating the oxygen you inhale and giving back to life by exhaling. Living means being grateful for being healthy, having a roof over your head and enough to eat each day. Living means opening your eyes to the beauty of Nature, of life.

And living is what matters.

Ultimately, we’re all chasing those different things so that we finally get to live, but it works the other way. You live first, then you can keep yourself busy in the world. But remember, live first.

As long as we live, we can’t be left behind.