Bottom-up approach

People need encouragement in what they are doing, not in what you think good for yourself, or what you intend to subject yourself to. In the same manner treat yourself as another person. Accept yourself for what you are, not where you think you should be, and even worse, what other people think you should be doing. There is You, your Ego and the World. You will never satisfy your Ego. Well, maybe there will be fleeting moments, like when you are at the top of the mountain. But that's it. There will always be higher mountains. Or steeper ascend. Basically you should learn to be happy despite your Ego or the World at large.

Friends, family, kids is the best thing that can happen to you. They don't love you because of your freaking "potential" but because of you. Then again we come to the moment when they annoy, disparage, or betray you. This is inevitable. Because they have access to you and you both think they know you, and that gives them the right to advice you. Don't accept them. Learn to discard without confrontation. I call this becoming light and less dense. That is not yielding. You should not change or slow down the course of your doings. Just don't let the arrows stick in your flesh. Let them go through. You can't do much about the pain, it will hurt, but don't let them stay in you, don't carry them around with you - forgive and forget. Forgetting only will also do the trick.

It all comes down to the image of you, isn't it? Where's that image kept? Who's feeding it, and who sees it? You don't know what's the image of you in people's mind. It doesn't matter what they say. It is usually not much thought of you in other people's minds. We crave for attention. It's hard to make people think of you, large number of people, and in times when you are gone (vacation or afterlife - people don't make much difference). And you can't keep them accountable for anything. It looks like this is not so hard to comprehend, and you won't be so disappointed that you are not "famous". Fame is not the subject now. The image of you is. So, if we can't do much about the image other people have in their minds because of the way life goes, that leaves us with the image our Ego paints for us. Why should we care what image of ourselves we have in our own minds? It looks like this is the main drive in our existence - feeding that image. What if we leave it here and now? Won't we have much more time on our hands and much less worries? All about something that exists only in our mind. Think about it. (To be continued)