How to gain clarity?

Fresas con crema with dark chocolate chunks, coconut, and mixed nuts.

As a recovering people pleaser, I used to be so worried and anxious all the time about what people would think of me. My number one obsession was to make sure everyone liked me. As I learn and live a more aligned, empowered life, I started to notice that most of the habits and patterns I adhered to were something I learned from others.

I allowed how people treated me to determine my worth as a person.

Not only did I bend over backward because I felt addicted to any type of validation, but I also let people treat me like a punching bag. I wish I could say that I am being abstract and dramatic about describing how people treated me, but physical, emotional, and mental abuse were as real as me needing to breathe while being knocked out cold from being choked with a shoelace.

I'm sure you're wondering, is this an article about gaining clarity? And yes, it is.

The one thing I learned through living this often challenging and sometimes awe-inspiring life is that we are what we choose to tolerate.

I consistently struggle with knowing what I want in life. This is still the case, and I have now gained enough wisdom to accept and understand that this is what it means to be a wholesome human being. If someone offers you a silver bullet, be curious about it. Life is messy. That's what makes it feel like an adventure. Silver bullets often provide us with temporary comforts, but we frequently ignore how much those bullets make things worse in our own lives.

It is wise to learn from other people's mistakes. But it is far better to be mindful of the solution we adopt in our own lives. If we do not constantly monitor and review our own lives for any self-sabotaging, unhelpful patterns, then it doesn't matter how good we are at applying silver bullets. Those same silver bullets may be what is keeping us stuck.

It is much easier to accept things with blind folds on, but any level of autonomy or freedom will be nonexistent. The more willing we are to tolerate ignorance in ourselves and others, the more likely we are to avoid accountability. The better we are at pragmatically choosing what we apply in our own lives, the more likely it is that we become a more fulfilled human being.