Just got to unleash some heavy stuff on my mind right now.
Spoiler
So I started to think about this stuff (which I will get onto later) when I just about finished my English assessment (which is due tomorrow). And I felt myself being kind of lazy, like I just felt like not finishing it to be honest. During that time I kept reminding myself that high achiever, 99'ers, need to work hard and give everything their best shot, at all times. But I just felt kind of tired, like I just felt like not doing it. I kept comparing myself to others to be honest. Like I just kept envisioning the teachers saying,"you had a great story but you just don't have the skill to write." That became kind of painful, and part of the reason on why that put me off.
Fast forward to when I printed everything off and went to bed, I just randomly put into the search bar on YouTube on my iPad,"Zion Williamson story". For those who don't know, Zion was just recently drafted into NBA, and is superfamous for his athleticism. I felt like I was a bit burnt out and needed some inspiration. There was a mini-documentary about him, and I started to watch it. I rewatched that three times.
What I want to talk about is my ambition, and my selfishness. During my younger years, I had always wanted to win, right, I was always the kid who imagined himself winning prizes on stage, being the centre of attention, that kind of stuff. And I am still kind of that, I don't know, some of that thinking is still ingrained inside me.
And it was super painful to see it turn out the other way. One year, we were in a school assembly and the principal started to hand out awards to some of the kids in my class, ones that I thought weren't necessarily as smart as me. I broke down during that assembly, tears almost streaming down my face.
And that kind of ambition, that habit of imagining oneself succeeding can become so crippling. And that kind of thinking still dominates me. I always feel as if I am a really smart and gifted person, like I would imagine myself getting all state ranks for all my subjects, stupid shit like that.
It hurts so much when the other version plays out. Having to walk up and tell your parents for the millionth time that my report grades weren't good enough. It hurts so much. And to have high-achieving parents, both successful doctors in their fields, does not help at all.
"Look at the gap between me and my parents." That kind of thinking dominates me most of the time.
Some of what Bri MT said in her previous posts here helped me a little bit to realise that there is more to existence than marks. There is more to life than status, reputation, marks etc.
There is more to life than marks.
I need to start retraining myself to have no or minimal expectations with events. I need to stop being selfish, always holding myself in my head as the centre of attention and just fucking live in the present moment. I need to stop thinking about stuff in the future and just start living in the now, no matter how cringe that sounds.
I just need to let go of my needing to imagine / control my future, and just let it be. I just need to let go of that tiny, criticising voice in my head that yells at me every single time some miniscule thing goes wrong. I need to be more calm and just live in the present moment. To stop overthinking, and just exist,
I guess that is my problem. Overthinking.
If you are reading this far, sorry for babbling random shit, I'm just writing what comes to mind.
We all just need to take a deep breath in sometimes and let things be as they are. Just calm down and stop listening to the voice in our heads. We need to be more stoic. We need to stop acting as if there is always conflict in our lives, which there isn't. We just need to gradually learn that our life will not be interesting sometimes unless we make it. We need to stop overthinking and takes things a little serious, but mostly fun. We need to be more light hearted with ourself. We just need to breathe and just smile.
We need to convince ourself that our lives are no movies. We are human beings, and for some odd reason we are here on this planet breathing and just experiencing the world. For some reason we are here on this planet, an atom when compared to the universe, and we are here to experience, to feel emotions, gain wonder and just be. Our lives do not need to be filled with conflict, drama or stress unless we make it to be. Every experience is within our control, and we get to choose whether we perceive it as good or bad.
I need to just calm down and just experience things in the present. I need to stop taking myself seriously and just have god damn fun doing the stuff I love. I need to convince myself that this is not a bad experience, as I have made it out to be. I get to choose whether it will be a bad experience or not.
We need to stop taking ourself seriously, stop comparing ourselves and just keep going. We get to decide what our future actions will be. We get to decide whether this will be a good bad experience. We get to choose whether to be scared of our thoughts, our naive surface level thoughts or let them be just as they are. We need to start recognising our thoughts as clouds in the sky, and we need to let them pass by.
Don't know about you,but thateels much better. Guess I need to keep reminding myself of this more and more.