How many self – help books have you read? 5? 10? 19? I’ve read around 17 books in 2 years. They are all clubbed together in a box up in my attic. Why there? Because I have a small house and all the bookshelves are full with my kids’ books.
Self – help books and tools are amazing at building motivation. They are also great at creating strategies and accumulating information. Yet, most of them fail at creating change. Do you know why? Because change must come from within!
I’ve always hated how most authors try to explain things, but not everything. They keep preaching about life and how it should be and that is short and everything. Which is true, but is it enough?
I’m more of a self – knowledge guy. I believe that we must first see what needs to be changed in our own perspective. Only then can we change what others think we should change.
I must admit: I was barely aware of myself and what governs how I think and behave. I always thought that I’m lazy. I believed I was stupid, or poor. I felt unlucky, or even ugly. Nothing worked in any area of my life. I was lower than average at everything. And these thoughts kept my self-esteem lower than my power to challenge it.
Until one point in life when things started to change. I was still lazy, stupid, poor, unlucky and ugly, but my self-esteem started to grow. Why? Because I changed my environment. And that was enough to help me see things differently.
I must say, it wasn’t a choice. I just grew up and had to go to college. That was the change. But inside, the rusty negative thoughts started to get washed away. Just a little. Just enough to shake my negative core identity.
And this became a trap. My self – esteem increased so much that I became too confident. I thought that whatever is in my head, that’s the reality. My thoughts were the absolute truth and everything should be as I thought it should be.
Until the reality actually hit me. It hit me so bad that it shook me until all my thoughts were gone. And that’s when I actually realized nothing is real. What I believe to be real, it is only real for me and that’s an issue. I’m not everyone. I don’t know everything. And this became my mantra.
I started to search answers within. I started to ask myself uncomfortable questions. I started to question my own thoughts. The funny part is that this didn’t cause anxiety. It triggered freedom. Freedom from my own views. It opened my eyes, ears, skin and everything. It allowed me to be aware.
It was so good it pushed me to write. I even published a book and several guided journals with questions that can help anyone understand themselves better. And I want to do more because I’m still discovering myself.
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