People - Like Carrots

Another analogy popped into my head today when I was eating baby carrots. I started to chew off the top layer first, to get done with the bitter part, and left the inside for the end because it was the sweetest. When I wondered about this principle, it reminded me about how people usually were - bitter outside and sweet inside.
To protect ourselves from true or perceived threats, we build up a cover that tastes bitter, some more than others. But deep down, the essence of every single human being is love, the sweetness, no matter how inconspicuous it is for the outside world or even to the person him/herself.
Some of us take time and effort to taste that sweetness in ourselves and others, some of us don't, thinking that the bitter outside part is all there is. But the sweet essence is always there and if we keep that in mind, maybe our relations with other humans would be a bit more pleasant.

Smell the Air

I came home from the gym and when I entered my room, I inhaled fresh air from an opened window. I always open my window to let the essence of life in, to nourish and envigorate me. But when I'm in the room, I don't sense it much. It takes me leaving the house and coming back after a while to feel the freshness that uplifts me. I haven't thought much about the air. It's invisible and it doesn't smell anything unless it's mixed with something.
The air in my room was mixed with the smell of trees, grass, and something else. It made my evening. It was beautiful and yet so simple. Once again, I concur that the pleasant things are usually very simple. Just notice.

It Begins With You

The more I seek and find value in myself, the more I like myself, and the more I like myself, the better I feel.
I figured that the experience of life begins with you and ends with you. Through your own prism, life unfolds. To make it pleasant, you have to learn to love and accept yourself the way you are. To change your world, you have to learn to love and accept yourself the way you are. It doesn't take something or someone else first. It takes you first.
The negative feelings stem from your negativity toward youself. It's difficult to truly love anything or anyone before you love yourself first.
So here's the answer - step on a path to learning. Learning to treat yourself with respect, love, care, consideration, veneration, and sacredness. An immense power lies in it. It enters you and gives you wings. It makes you feel that you're in control of your experiences, because you are.
I see the progress with my bare eyes. I see how accepting myself, one piece at a time, brings so much joy and relief. With less and less rejection of who I am, I finally get a glimpse of my true beauty. By harnessing that vibration, I radiate joy and inspiration onto others. What can be better?

More about Self-Love

Your Own Way

At some point, hopefully, we'll come to a breaking point when we realize that we're no longer able to live our lives others want or expect us to live. So many years we spend on trying to please the loved and not-so-loved ones that we forget what we're here for. Fear of rejection, condemnation, judgment, and being misunderstood and unaccepted steers us to the wrong path - living someone else's life.
Once we're fed up, we learn that the only life worth living is an authentic life, the one that truly makes us happy. Only through that we're able to contribute ourselves into the world. But first, we need to undertand that there's no other way but to face our fears head on.
I'm torn from inside to acknowledge the fact that by choosing to live my life the way I want to will most likely create a chasm between myself and certain people whom I love the most. No longer am I willing to live life according to their expectations or make choices that would please them. From now on I will listen to my heart and try to hear what it tells me. Then follow its path. I'm not responsible for others' perceptions, nor am I responsible for their unhappiness or discontentment. I'm only responsible for my own happiness that I intend to manifest.
The only prerequisite for whatever I just said, is realizing life's true value and our ownership.

Discomfort of Joy

Last night, while falling asleep, I started to contemplate on my relationship with happiness, joy, elation, contentment. I imagined a period of time when I was elated, enthusiastic and very positive. Then I assessed my feelings and how they developed in the process of me being positive. I noticed a shocking truth - the longer I felt the elation, the more uncomfortable I became, as if it were something unnatural. I then attempted to restore the natural, heavy state that I was used to having my entire life.
Is that the reason why I unconsciously create issues for myself, so that I'd have something to worry or feel bad about? It seems like discomfort and dicontentment have become the basis of my existence and the joyous occurrences are like the wind that blows on the surface.
On one hand, I wasn't happy to learn how messed up I was; on the other, I was glad to learn about probably one of the most important blocks that prevented my true enjoyment of life.
Finally I realized that just like I created my own heavy background upon which life unfolded, I can as well create a different background, the one of sustained joy, contentment and happiness. It has to be taken in small doses though, increasing the duration of joy one minute at a time, getting used to the feeling, until we become completely comfrotable with experiencing happiness on a constant basis.

The Best or Not The Best

Here's another analogy that came to my mind before bed last night:
You're in a grocery store, in a juice aisle. You look around, trying to pick the one that you want the most. Should it be pineapple or orange? Or maybe you should buy plum or apricot juice instead? You stand there for a while, not certain which one to take. Finally, you get a mango juice that's exotic and sweet.
At home you try it and you like it. But on the back of your mind you think, "What if the plum juice were better? Or maybe pineapple? Pineapple could have been even sweeter..." While drinking the mango juice, you can't help but contemplate the "what-ifs" and miss the acute taste of mango and the true sweetness of it.
It seems like we can't fully enjoy what we have chosen because the thought of possibly having something better pains us deep inside. Until we realize that there's no such thing as "the best," we will never learn how to enjoy life. Once we see that what we have is good for now, and that Now is all we have, it turns out that it is all well, in a larger scale.

100%

It dawned on me today how much it matters when you are 100% sure what you want to do in life. It doesn't have to be for the rest of your life, although it could. Some invisible doors open and the wind, pouring in, catches you into the world of all possibilies. You're not scared of the obstacles because you look past them to where your desire is already fulfilled. It resembles a manic state of motion until you get what you want. The want to have or be something becomes a need although it's still a want, a strong and powerful want.
But how come do we still get entangled in excuses and fears? Maybe the want isn't 100%. Or maybe there are other wants that we have, which makes us share the energy between those wants. Can a 100% be achieved only by wanting one thing at a time? After all, life does work by one step at a time.
Our minds are too clouded and hearts too muted for us to hear anything authentic within ourselves. We keep wanting one thing after another, not sure, making up excuses to not pursue something. To find out what it is that our hearts respond to 100% (not 99.9%) takes work. Once that 100% is achieved, life will take care of the rest.