I got comments from people telling me they wanted to be strong like me. After I folded my vanity feathers a bit, I got to thinking, wondering why people see me as strong, because I live like a tired snail, moving slowly through life. Then I thought that speed, the opposite of slowness, is not a quality in itself, but only when used consciously and wisely. You can trip over a stone if you walk fast, or you can choke on a mouthful if you eat quickly. So, speed can also be a defect. Why shouldn’t slowness be a quality, even a superpower?
I started this article from this thought. These are the 10 reasons why I am strong. I can’t lift a 10kg backpack and sometimes I can’t open a jar lid, but I’m strong in other ways. You’ll see, self-irony is one of my superpowers 😊.
1 Know your limits
“Know yourself”. That’s what Socrates said millennia ago.
Superman and Wonder Woman only exist in movies. We are human and not infallible. We can’t do it all and we can’t be perfect. But we can be strong by knowing and respecting our limits. Knowing exactly how far we can pull ourselves without hurting. Not wanting and longing to do things that are beyond our physical and mental limits. Sometimes we can test these limits and we can be surprised to do much more than we imagined. Other times, knowing that we are hurting ourselves, we can still choose to push those limits.
Don’t chase perfection, it doesn’t exist. It’s just the mind’s way of protecting itself. Repeat after me: Perfection does not exist 😊.
2 Choose consciously
Don’t get carried away or manipulated by others. Make your own choices in life, not necessarily following the beaten path. Listen to what others have to say, read, get informed, but the final decision should be yours. And if you break your limits, do it consciously, because you choose to do so, not to please others. And bear the consequences of your actions and decisions.
Did you choose to eat that slice of gluten holiday cake? You know gluten is bad for you, according to point 1 you know your limits. Eat it with pleasure, savor it, even knowing that you will feel sick afterwards. Bear the consequences. Don’t gulp it, keeping in mind the fear of feeling sick afterwards. Enjoy it in peace, knowing that you are stronger than your cravings…but sometimes you don’t want to be strong.
3 Be vulnerable
Be open to people, events and life. Be vulnerable, even if you’re offering the possibility of being hurt. Do not close yourself between the walls of fear or pain. If you stay in your castle you may not get hurt, but you won’t be happy either. You believe you live in a castle, but you actually live in a prison. If you close your heart to pain, you will also close it to happiness. A hardened heart does not feel pain, but neither does it feel joy. You will go through life learning nothing, because you will not let anyone get close to you, and you will not be able to experience life. Life is experienced together, not alone.
4 Take responsibility for your mistakes
Admit when you’re wrong, don’t be inflexible in your mistake. You don’t have to apologize to others (see point 6). First of all, admit to yourself when you make a mistake, learn from it and move on (see point 10). Don’t be rigid, but adaptable and flexible. Flexibility is the prerogative of the happy people. Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?
5 A correct ratio between discipline and indulgence
Too much discipline is bad, but too much indulgence doesn’t help either. But used correctly, both can be motivating and empowering. I call the ratio of discipline to indulgence “gentle discipline.” And I consider discipline self-respect.
Let’s go back to point 1, “know your limits”. Discipline means organizing your life within these limits. You won’t propose to get up every day at 6 am and run 10 km if you are a person past your second youth and slightly overweight, and the only movement you made was from the car to the sofa and you never run in your life, not even after the bus. But you know that you have to change something, that you are too sedentary. You may not be able to run, but you can walk. Alternate the fast pace with a slower one and increase the distance periodically. And don’t give up. Make it a daily habit. That means discipline.
Maybe some days it will be hard for you to get up from the sofa, maybe sometimes it rains or it’s cold, maybe you lie to yourself that you have other priorities. Do not give up. “Bribe yourself” with something. With a treat. With the promise of a biscuit after the walk. With a fragrant bath, with a glass of wine. With something you like. That way you will be able to maintain discipline.
Don’t torture your own being by imposing too strict a discipline, as if you were your own executioner. Stop to smell the roses sometimes 😊.
6 No guilt and no regrets
Who does it help to call yourself a fool after a failed action? Not you. You can’t succeed and you can’t learn until you fail a few times. No one is born wise. From books you can accumulate information, but understanding is learned from experiences and failures, from life. If you regret your failures, work on your self-esteem and pride.
How does it help you, after making a choice, to ruminate on the idea: what would have happened if I had chosen option 2? I’m telling you, it doesn’t help. It will only “help” you not to put all your effort and all your heart into the option already chosen, because you are not with all your Being there, in that option.
On guilt it’s a little harder. It is related to point 4, but it is more internalized. Guilt tends to hide in the darkest recesses of the subconscious. When we think we got rid of it, it pops her head out of nowhere. It usually appears in uncontrolled reactions: we lose temper about everything, we get scared or worried about any trifle. Instead of enjoying a good meal, we feel guilty that there are hungry children in countries we can barely locate on a map. We feel that we deserve nothing, that whatever we do is insignificant. Guilt is a trauma. And here I still have work to do.
7 Get out of your comfort zone
You can’t properly set your boundaries (see point 1) if you don’t get out of your house, out of your mind, out of your usual landscape. How can you know if you like something or not if you haven’t tried it? It’s called “life experience”. You know those superior snorts: If I were you, I would never do that. Those who pretend to be superior, those who frequently use “never” and “always” are those who have not gone further than their own living room and watched life on television, being convinced that the truth lies there. And they are also the ones who collapse when real life takes them off track and they are forced to experience the fact that “never” and “always” do not exist.
8 Self-irony
I am an expert on that 😊. You probably sensed the self-irony in my texts, from “I move so slowly that I was probably a koala in another life” to “in my garden I am a combination of rake, scarecrow and security guard”. It is said that self-irony is the prerogative of the intelligent people. I know, I’m modest, I’ve always said that 😊.
Self-irony is a form of defense, but it can also be a superpower. It’s like instead of attacking the enemy, you turn them into a dance partner. The “partner” is your own person, and many self-attack through words (see point 6), begging for mercy or self-destructive actions, usually addictions. But also many self-attack through good habits, but which are harmful in excess: sports, restrictive diet, draconian discipline. Isn’t it better to console ourselves with a self-ironic thought or line?
9 Take your time
 Nothing happens overnight, everything takes time to process. The neurons of our brain are connected by synapses, a kind of well-trodden paths. The brain cannot erase those paths easily, some are real boulevards, beaten by generations of ancestors. We inherited those boulevards. It takes time to break them, plow them, and grow grass over them. Then we have to tread other paths, closer to us, to our Being.
To continue the example with the holiday cake, we know that on Holidays we eat cake. We have been doing this for a long time, this is the custom from our ancestors. It’s hard not to salivate when you see and smell the Christmas cake. If you force yourself not to eat cake you will ruin your Holidays, yours and your mother’s, who worked hard to make that cake. Give yourself time to unlearn. How much time? It depends on each of us. How will you know that you are no longer walking the path of cake? When you sit on the table with it, you smell it with pleasure, you no longer salivate, you not look at it regretfully, and you no longer argue with your mother about not wanting to eat cake. For you it will be just an ornament on the Christmas table.
10 Accept and move on
Do you remember Don Quixote fighting windmills? Do you think he managed to emerge victorious from any of those battles? That’s how we are when we don’t accept our past or present things in our lives that we can’t change. We waste our time and energy fighting nonsense.
Let’s forgive. Not with superiority, not with condescension, not even with generosity. In English there is the term “to let go”. Let go of the attachment represented by unforgiveness and rumination on the past. It keeps you tied down and you can’t go on with your life. Forgive for yourself, not for the other.
I know a beautiful woman with a rising career who got divorced a few years ago. I met her recently. I expected to see her mastering her life and to hear that she had moved on. She had finally ended a marriage that was no longer working. I found her entrenched. When I asked her how she was doing, she answered: bad. I asked her why and from her convoluted story I understood that she was upset that her ex-husband was happy. She harasses him with texts and phone calls, and he responds in the same manner. I told her: look how beautiful you are, how well you are seen in the place you work, you are healthy, you have a home… why can’t you move on, take care of your life? She frowned at me: I can’t, how can I leave him alone after what he did to me?
Let go of what keeps you from moving on, what doesn’t work for you anymore, what doesn’t fulfill you. Make room for the new. Others have wronged you or you have wronged others. It’s part of life. Let go.
