So much relief comes to me when i realize like, oh my god, i don't have to be responsible for other people's behavior and we think no, like if i beat myself up about this thing long enough or i hate this thing about myself long enough, then i'll feel the desire to change it.
Negative things will happen or other people will be crazy.
I can't control other people or the things going on around me, but I can control my perspective and I can control the way that I utilize whatever conflict is in my life or whatever it's showing me.
Wanting to be this way but feeling insecure about being this way or wanting somebody to be different or treat you differently or be that thing that you need, but they're not, and having conflict with yourself and them or whatever is in your external environment like that.
Resistance takes so much work and the real healing and love for yourself and the compassion for the world around you begins from acceptance.
Here we are here.
We are here.
We are here we are.
Hi guys, today we have a simple bouquet setup.
I just got three different flowers because i just wanted to make something simple.
I'm feeling like i've sort of been making some arrangements, that they haven't been cluttering the space at all, but they've definitely been like the attention in that corner of the room that i put them in.
So i kind of wanted to chill out a little bit and make something a bit more mellow, more simple.
There's still some texture and color going on, but it is.
It's peaceful to look at.
It's simple.
Today, we are talking about the relief of accepting yourself and others for who they are.
So much stress and anxiety and energy goes into trying to resist something and become separate from something else and separate ourselves a lot from our dreams and our ideal goals and looking at our life in a way of i need to get rid of these parts of myself in order to be what i want.
So there's like so much resistance in that instead of acceptance as a whole and then same thing with other people.
Our conflicts in life come from wanting someone to conform to whatever would make our lives easier.
We want people to fit the narrative that will support us.
If somebody's doing something or they're acting out in a way or doing something that doesn't align with what we want and what makes us feel good or makes our life easier, then we're going to resist that, we're gonna try to change them, and i think that also just causes this level of like, resistance and resentment.
And the first thing that comes to my mind is responsibility.
We subconsciously are carrying a lot of weight.
Like i said, when you're not really accepting yourself as a whole and you're trying to not look at something, resist parts of yourself, throw parts of yourself away, constantly having to put energy into looking the other way and hating yourself.
You know it takes a to actually be discontent with yourself and parts of yourself that you're reminded of all the time.
The same goes with people.
We feel this responsibility to control our environment and to control the people in our environment and make sure that they are lining up to whatever is suitable for us.
We'll get into it all later, how we deal with that.
I know that I've just felt really overwhelmed with having to block out things that I don't like about myself, that I just don't want to accept about me or my circumstances, and also trying to change other people and getting really upset with how others are treating you or how people are behaving in your life and wanting to control that and wanting to make them do what you want them to do for you.
You know what I mean?
It's a lot of heavy weight and responsibility, especially if you're observing whether that's family or friends or classmates or coworkers whatever, whoever you're surrounded by, if they're treating you in a way that you don't like.
It feels really heavy to have the responsibility of making sure to change them.
Or you fight with them to get them to see what you mean.
And I think there's so much effort and heaviness in the resistance and responsibility that comes with trying to change people and trying to get them to align to your life and your boundaries.
And that's why I wanted to make this video because I've been thinking a lot about boundary setting, because i didn't really know like, what that meant.
I just kind of felt like boundary was a word that was really aggressive.
It felt very like a big deal and like something you kind of bring up when you are cutting someone off or you're fighting with somebody.
I just i didn't understand what it meant to actually implement it into my everyday life and how i interact with myself world around me.
That's why i wanted to make this video in the first place is because of how much lighter i felt recently.
Also, it's crazy when i say that the sun is actually coming out it's been really cloudy today.
I felt a lot lighter and i've asked myself why.
Why do i feel different?
Why am i responding differently to my own thoughts and the world around me?
I think it is because of acceptance.
It's sort of this like peace that i've acquired from understanding that there are things that I can't change and there are things that I can change and that I can control.
And i'm gonna let go of the things that require so much effort from me and Let them do whatever they're supposed to do and put that effort, that valuable energy that I would be placing there into Wow, it's sunny into what I can control and what I do want you know.
So, I don't really like that.
So much relief just came from understanding that I can yes, fight my whole life to control others or the things happening around me, or even my own anxiety and thoughts, or I can just let things be and take their natural course.
And we're talking about this in a dual sense here, right?
We're talking about accepting ourselves and others.
So, when it comes to the relief I felt with myself, I can accept what I'm feeling right now because whenever and anybody who is prone to anxiety or overthinking or anything like that knows that when you try to extinguish the conflict in your own mind, it just gets more intense and bigger and bigger.
I had to kind of try a few years ago, when I was really really suffering with anxiety, to bring that understanding of okay, it's not gonna go away if i keep trying to beat it away.
I have to actually like accept it for what it is, what it's trying to do, how it's trying to serve me.
I think i've been able to stop identifying so much with every emotion and thought that comes by and just sort of accept it, accept what purpose it's trying to fulfill and move forward.
But then also with people, which is definitely well, i don't want to say the more difficult part, but i think like doing work with yourself and learning to accept parts of yourself is one whole journey, but then having to deal with others at least for me, I feel like that might even be more difficult.
I think it has been and I think I've really been learning that lesson recently.
It is not easy to accept people for who they are, especially if you are very close with somebody and you know that if they just did this one thing differently, or if they just heard you out here or whatever, then everything would be fine like it feels like that so much of the time, whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship or family, you want that person to understand you and your motives and you i'm somebody who just i love harmony, i love to avoid conflict.
I don't want to stir things up and like i just i want things to go smoothly and if they're not, it is really frustrating.
So having to deal with that and Deal with it with if it's like roommates, like people in close proximity to you, family members, intimate relationships love, romance it's a hard pill to swallow to realize that we can't actually change people.
They're the only ones that can make change within themselves if they want to and if they are willing to do that.
Accepting that can be hard.
We just we don't have that power.
And also, even if we did, like i said, it's not really worth it to be placing so much energy into trying to change people when you could be putting that into something that you actually do have agency over.
But then that brings me to my next point, which is boundaries, right.
So, of course, maybe we can get to this place of accepting others and ourselves, but that doesn't mean accepting a bunch of negative or harmful behavior and just oh, that's just how this person is.
Or, oh, that's just how I treat myself.
Like whether it is accepting yourself and accepting maybe parts of you that aren't so healthy or happy or things that you do want to change, and also like accepting people who are negative or have harmful behaviors, like you can't.
It's not about making excuses.
I think acceptance and excusing things is a little bit different.
That's the tricky thing, right.
Is.
It's up to us to discern what we are willing to accept from people, and that's when the whole boundary thing comes in.
Like I said earlier, I think I'm starting to finally learn what that means, and having boundaries allows me to accept other people, if that makes sense.
So like if there is someone who I'm not getting along with or they're doing something that I don't like or is harmful to me, or is just something that I don't wanna be a part of, it's my responsibility to discern what I'm willing to accept and what boundary I want to place there.
Will I communicate that?
And will I uphold that?
And whatever that looks like, it's so different depending on the circumstance, the situation, the relationship.
But once I know, okay, I do not want to be a part of this thing.
This is not a behavior that I will accept or whatever I decide I can accept.
And guys, it's really crazy to talk like this.
Like I never thought that I would have this much self-respect, like why I'm making this video in the first place and why it's something that I've even thought about so much is because I am a people pleaser.
I always have been.
I think I've always sort of come across as like the more shy, submissive person, like not really.
But I think in some dynamics where other people tend to dominate and control the environment, I've always been scared to stand up for myself, scared to draw attention to me.
I'm not somebody who naturally just speaks up for themselves and voices all their opinions very assertively like.
That's just not really my approach.
And I think in life because of that I've had a really hard time understanding what I am allowed to communicate to people.
I've always thought i can't say that because that's gonna make them uncomfortable.
But that's not really a responsibility and this is something that, like it's helping me and that's why i make these videos is because i am teaching myself again right now the things that i've been trying to understand.
It doesn't matter if somebody is getting all upset and triggered by your boundary.
That does happen, like when you do know yourself and know a boundary that you're wanting to put we talked about that last week when you know yourself and you know what you want and you assert a boundary that is yours and your responsibility.
If that boundary affects somebody else, like they will most likely have a reaction to it.
So i think i've always been very scared of people's reactions.
It also has to do with accepting yourself right, like i think there are certain behaviors or things about me or things that i've wanted to change.
But at times, like i don't want to be stern with myself or i don't want to have like loving discipline, i don't want to look at that and i don't want to like create rules or boundaries for myself and same thing with other people.
Like i tend to just not really want to make that conflict.
And something that my therapist said recently is she said a lot of the time when people do react to your boundaries, of what makes you feel safe healthy comfortable, when they start reacting to it, it can kind of get into like gaslighting mode where people are like, oh well, it's not that big of a deal.
Like, why are you making it such a big deal?
As somebody who tends to people please, that's what i'm afraid of is people thinking that i'm making it a big deal from bringing up boundary or whatever.
She said that you just kind of have to continue to uphold that for yourself and that boundary and say no, it's not a big deal.
That is why I'm stating this boundary, so that it continues to not be a big deal and does not become a bigger deal.
This is it.
You kind of just have to keep it very simple in your communication is what I'm understanding from it.
Making sure that you are just clear on it and don't let other people muddy and manipulate what you're willing to accept.
It is one thing, like if others have a reaction and they want to pose a communicative clear, intentional conversation.
That's one thing.
But when somebody is reacting so strongly to you having a limit or a boundary, that's when it's an issue.
And I think like I've been so afraid of that.
And I'm just now starting to practice verbalizing in different scenarios what I'm okay with and what I'm not okay with.
That is a very difficult thing to do, but i am getting better at it and it comes from, like observing what does make me feel good and what doesn't make me feel good that, like we talked about in the last video, it's just honoring how i am feeling and discerning what i'm willing to accept from others and what i'm not willing to accept.
If I'm only really able to communicate with a certain family member at a distance, or we're only able to talk about certain topics, whatever it is, if we're able to maintain that relationship and that person can respect my boundaries and I can respect theirs, then I'm able to accept my relationship with them.
And I think and if not, then I'm able to accept that okay, they have an issue with this, or okay, this is how they're gonna act.
I accept who they are.
I'm not gonna put so much effort into trying to change them.
I am going to know my boundaries, state it and take my energy to other places where that boundary will be respected or people can reciprocate a respectful, communicative conversation.
Like that whole saying of let people show you who they are, or what is it like when people show you who they are, believe them?
It's kind of like that and i'm actually starting to learn what that means.
Like it's hard because it's like when people show you who they are, you don't want to believe them, you want to be like no, you can be better.
I see your potential, i see this, i see that.
But sometimes you just have to accept no, they're doing this thing, or they are not willing to give this up, or they're not willing to respect my boundary, or they are not willing to change.
And i have to accept them for the who they are and separate myself from that.
Or, you know, state the boundary, communicate about it, whatever is necessary.
It's like so much relief comes to me when i realize like, oh my god, i don't have have to be responsible for other people's behavior.
I can listen to myself, i can tune in to how i feel around.
Other people understand what i need and what makes me feel good.
Communicate that if necessary and state the boundary.
And if they're willing to accept that, then great, and if not, then i will accept them for what they are and move forward and it just it eliminates all of that like resistance that we were talking about in the beginning, like all that stress that comes about from just wanting people to change and conflict and fighting and oh and like the relief that comes from accepting yourself is a little bit of a different story.
It all ties in together.
I started to feel a lot of relief when I started to realize this part of me exists and so can this.
And I talked about this a little bit in my confidence video how we see this vision of ourselves or this version of ourselves that feels so far away.
And we think like, oh, if only I was this or if only I could do this thing.
And I think, for a long time, I thought that, in order to be my dream self and to be this better version that I had in this idea of the future, I couldn't be who I was now.
And I think I found so much relief when I realized, no, that's not the case.
I can be struggling with this thing that does not coincide with who i want to be or what i want to be, but because i have this vision and i have this hope and this goal that exists for me, and i have that goal for a reason, and this can also exist too, and i can also be going through this thing.
Both can exist at the same time and i can accept all these parts of myself.
Um, I started to feel so much relief when I realized that okay, I don't need to cut off all these parts of me.
I don't need to look away.
I don't need to have so much rejection towards these parts and aspects of me.
I can accept it as a whole.
I can see that these dark things that i'm dealing with within me or around me, in my environment, or whatever conflicts i have can also get to exist alongside all of my dreams and greatest desires and happiness, like it all exists at once.
And that's what life is right.
Like we wouldn't know happiness and joy without despair and sadness.
I've started to shift my mindset a little bit around these drastic black and whites of oh, in order to reach my dreams or my goals, I have to be in such a different place than here, and I can't have this thing with me and I can't.
I have to change this.
Of course, we're always growing and progressing and changing and it's great to have a vision and a goal, but I think so much relief and love comes from accepting ourselves for what we are now.
My best friend and i were actually just talking about this yesterday and she said something about how you can't hate yourself into loving yourself, and i think that it's so true and it's something that we don't really register, i think, so much of the time we think no, like if i beat myself up about this thing long enough, or i hate this thing about myself long enough, then i'll feel the desire to change it and to do something different, and you know what that method maybe works for some people.
Different approaches work for everybody.
But i think i don't really lean towards the i have to be so harsh with myself like look, i hate this thing, but i have the power to change it.
I don't really look at it with that harsh perspective.
I try to see it more as There's this thing that I'm observing here about myself or in my environment or just whatever's going on.
There's a conflict here.
What do I want?
I want this thing and I'm feeling that there's some conflict here.
And I try to just like gear my mind more towards, okay, what do I want?
And accept that this is part of me getting that, accepting that I am dissatisfied for this part of my life for a reason, like it's my stepping stone for growth.
It's the data that I need to know what it is that I do want.
The contrast in my life is showing me what it is that makes me feel good and makes me happy.
Like it's showing me that and i think, like once i was able to accept that negative or bad things can exist and, in fact, be a part of the joy and the end goal and the light.
Like it all works together and i don't think that they can exist without each other.
So once i was able to accept all of my feelings as a whole or the things that were so conflicting in my life.
Like we've been saying this whole time, it takes so much energy to just uphold all of that resistance all the time, like having conflicting ideas about this thing and that thing and wanting to be this way, but feeling insecure about being this way or wanting somebody to be different or treat you differently or be that thing that you need or that you feel like you need, but they're not having to accept that and having conflict with yourself and them or whatever is in your external environment.
Like that.
Resistance takes so much work And the real healing and love for yourself and the compassion for the world around you begins from acceptance and accepting.
Hey, this is the darkness within me, within these people, but the things that I do want still exist.
And this is showing me what that is.
I wouldn't be confident without my insecurities.
Do you get what I mean?
Like I wouldn't know what I had to work on within me in order to feel confident if I didn't have those insecurities or if I didn't have conflict in my life to create those insecurities.
Like it showed me the parts of myself that didn't make me feel so good, the things that I wanted to change and strengthen and work through and experience.
And then it makes life feel a little bit less scary because it's like, oh okay, I can accept the fact that negative things will happen or other people will be crazy.
I can't control other people or the things going on around me, but I can control my perspective and I can control the way that I utilize whatever conflict is in my life or whatever it's showing me.
I can do something about my relationship with this person and learn more about myself through it and how I can best have a relationship with others through my own boundaries.
If I didn't have the boundaries that I have with certain people in my life, then there would be no relationship at all, because I had to accept that there were things that I couldn't change about them, but i could communicate what i did need.
And being able to have others who respect those boundaries allows me to live a life where, like others are respecting me and i'm respecting them, i can be a better friend or daughter or student or whatever.
Whenever i am upholding the boundaries for myself and surrounding myself with people who respect that, the insecurity and the confidence can exist at the same time.
The struggle and the rewards can exist at the same time.
The love and passion and the heartbreak and disappointment can exist at the same time.
It's just about discerning what makes us feel good and knowing what we're willing to accept.
And i wanted to talk about it today because in the car i was just feeling proud of myself, Not even necessarily for asserting a boundary with somebody.
I'm still working on that.
But I felt proud of myself for knowing what I needed in a certain moment of conflict.
And I was able to identify it and lightly verbalize it.
I think I'm still getting better.
Just having the awareness of what I'm willing to accept made me feel proud of myself. that i was paying attention to that instead of paying attention to oh my gosh how can i change this person oh my gosh i'm mad at this person and i hate that they did that to me and i don't want them to like instead of getting into that whole thing i just felt proud of knowing like okay you know what that's that's this is what i needed and this is what i will continue to understand that i need and a boundary that i'll uphold for myself yeah like this one needs to be a little bit shorter be gentle with yourself in your journey of self-acceptance there are all things that we want to change about ourselves there's all things that we've done things that we could be better at or could be changing we want to continue to be better and i think anybody watching this video and the people who are part of this community with me who are just learning how to find more peace in our existence yeah like i'm just i'm proud of us for all continuing to try to learn more about ourselves and what it is that we want and what we want to change in order to grow into the person that we want to be and it's just it's a really big deal so pat yourself on the back because i think that it's hard it's really hard to accept that there are parts of ourselves that we don't like or that there are things that we do want to change, and I think a lot of the time it's easier to look at the things that we want and to say, oh, we don't have that, and to kind of just fall into this mentality of like our dreams and the things that we do want being so separate from us and so far away, but a lot more of that lives in the parts of ourselves that we don't want to look at than we think, if that makes sense.
I've just seen in this journey with acceptance.
You know what maybe I don't want this eucalyptus to be this high i've found that, like in accepting the parts of myself that i have been so eager to get rid of or that i'm so insecure or aware of all the time, in accepting those things and learning about those parts of myself and like looking at them for what they are, what they're trying to do for me, where i learned certain things, like looking more into that and accepting it for what it is and for what it's teaching me, has brought me a lot of relief recently.
Any sort of like self-reflection or introspection can be really dark and difficult, because i think it's something that we want to just push aside and not really have to do.
And if you are somebody putting in that effort to look at yourself or the relationships in your life and see how you can continue to better serve yourself and others and grow, then like i, really i commend you for that, because it's a difficult journey for sure, but it is a rewarding one.
It is all of your comments, every story that you guys share with me.
Like i am genuinely so inspired and feel like this overwhelming sense of collective effort that we are all putting into our own journeys and ourselves.
My writing is fueled by introspection and feeling and thinking and not letting the world sweep me up in faster ways of life or skipping through any of the emotions that come with this life, like for so long, and I'm sure a lot of you can relate, just based on what I do know about what you've shared through your comments.
Like a lot of the time the world wants us to be harder and to not observe these things or to feel these feelings, and i just hope you know my channel and so many places in this world that you will continue to discover and find for yourself.
There are places where you can set all of the rigidness and harshness and speed of the world down for a second and i hope that when you watch these videos of me just talking about these ideas, going through these things in my own life, that you feel as though you have like 30 minutes to an hour to kind of just relax and relate to another human being.
There's so much strength in feeling and observing your own thoughts emotions thoughts emotions, and it means that you're wholeheartedly living your life experience.
Like I said, the darkness and the light can exist together.
When we are going through difficult things.
We don't want to go through it and we don't want to look at it, but I promise you that it is a component to the things that bring us joy and ease and lightness.
And if i didn't go through so much conflict in accepting myself and others, i wouldn't be feeling this relief and this lightness right now.
There's actually a quote in um women who run with the wolves, or not, not a quote, but an idea that she talks about.
That i reread recently, where she's just talking about how we think that life.
And now we're going on a little bit of a different spiel, but it all relates and if you're with me, you're with me.
I hope you're following here because i know that i I'm going between all these abstract concepts, but she was saying that life and death are always viewed as very opposite and that we are scared of death because it means the end of life and it means no more.
And it's like this permanent cutoff when really that couldn't be farther from the truth.
And it's proved to us in our existence, in the nature of the world around us, that life and death go together.
They coincide together.
They are a team.
Things have to die and decay in order to grow again.
Death and rebirth are very close to each other, and that is something that I have been learning tons about this past year.
I've been going through a lot of rebirth.
And so I think that I really am emphasizing this for a reason, because there really has been a lot of struggle and turmoil and darkness in my life.
And I've seen that and I have experienced that.
And I wouldn't really be able to know and feel the lightness and relief and peace and like think about these things and go through these lessons without that. and so certain deaths brought me rebirths and new ways of thinking and living and growing as a person i'm really grateful i'm grateful that i have been able to transmute it into that and so it just all goes into acceptance accepting everything as a whole you and your dream self and your visions and your goals they are real and they exist and you are embodying them every step of the way especially when you are aware of the things that maybe you don't want to look at or aren't so shiny and you accept those parts of you as well and you love those things and whenever we love things and nurture things about ourselves there's a lot of like psychological teachings that I think are surrounded by this but like when you sit with and you hold an emotion or like in parts therapy, whenever they talk about all the different parts of us, like whenever we listen or we look at or we accept a part of ourselves and we kind of hold it and sit with it and nurture it, only then does it have the ability to relax or silence itself or grow into something else or leave us or change. it's not until we sit there and we hold that acceptance for all the parts of ourselves that we find relief and Yeah, that's just, it's what I've been witnessing lately.
I'm gonna try to perfect this a little bit.
Like I said, we're keeping it simple, but I'm kind of bored.
I'm bored with how simple this is.
So let me see if I can like make it a little more exciting.
Let's see what I can do here.
Thank you.
