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My fasting and prayer worked well. I’m feeling truly blessed and even had some positive things come my way. I also feel better, probably helped to cleanse myself of all the junk that I put in me.
It had me thinking about my life – I spent a lot of time to talking to God – so led me to some self-reflection. Like holding up a mirror to myself. I felt like there was a disconnect.
People have one view of me and I have another one. They don’t really align. But the problem is that I’ve spent too much time believing or at least portraying the one others believe to be the true. And actually it’s exhausting living up to something you’re not.
For too long, I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror (not the superficial asthetics – nothing wrong there 🙂 ), but what I carried in me, or what people thought I was, yet I perpetuated it. I allowed people to judge the book by its cover. Not even letting them read the foreward.
So now that I’m a week away from my 3… birthday, Paulo Coelho‘s words can’t ring truer: ‘You may not know your path, but you must know what you don’t want in life’. I don’t want to pretend anymore. I want to be true to who I am. You may not like me, but you don’t have to. (How exactly is this my problem?)
Another thing I’m going to stop doing is explaining myself, I am who I am. We spend way too much time trying to please people, people that don’t really matter either. As we get older, we get more comfortable in our skins and less concerned with what others think.
This is another step in achieving my personal legend; re-inventing myself, or more appropriately giving everyone the real Cathy.
The last 10 odd days in Kenya and Ghana have been exhausting. But good. Africa is definitely an exciting place to be right now, so I’m no really excited about the prospect of returning.
I’ve met some really great people, inspiring people. We had conversations that got me thinking, provoked debate and made me think about things from a different angle. But the conversation that really stood out for me was the one I had with this older (clearly wiser) man in Ghana.
We were talking about what women, or specifically me, want in a man and in a relationship. And he was saying, the same thing I’ve heard before, don’t have to narrow a focus on men, but then he added, you have to know what you want out of a relationship.
And it got me thinking, us women are quick to identify what we want in a man, but not so quick to define what we want in a relationship. It’s interesting because that’s something my therapist once asked me, ‘why do you want to be married?’ and I couldn’t answer it.
I think too often in everything that we do, we don’t look at the big picture and focus on what or where we want to be at the end of it all. We get too bogged down in the details instead of taking the bird’s eye view. Our thoughts can also be influenced by media and society telling us what we should want or should be doing.
I spend a lot of time over-analysing things, but I think I need to start analysing the big plan and really spending quiet time reminding myself what is important to me, re-evaluating my values and really following through on what is important to me. To start looking at the forest instead of the wood. Maybe once I do this, I’ll even have better luck in my relationships.