We as humans can sympathise with almost anything. If an old building gets knocked down, we are upset by its removal. If I told you a shark died tangled in a fisherman’s net in the ocean today, you’d feel a little saddened. I can tell you that my pencil’s name is Steve and that he’s lost, and your day just got a little bit darker.
Because people can connect with anything. We can sympathize with a pencil, we can forgive a shark, and we hold feelings for a building. People can find the good in just about anything… but themselves.
Why is it that? We literally spend every second of our lives with ourselves; you’d think it wouldn’t take long to get a pretty good feel for ourselves. But that’s not the case.
We find it far too easy to find faults in ourselves rather than the positives. That we’re not worth loving, that we’re not good enough, or we’re too different.
But I’m telling you now: we are all better than we think we are. We are just conditioned to not believe it from ourselves.
Many of us need others to express what makes us unique. And gratitude goes a long way towards that. But the catch is we don’t express our gratitude to others nearly enough in our life, and when we do it’s often when the time has passed.
We don’t realise how good of a friend someone is until they’ve moved away. Or how much we love a family member until their funeral.
Because regret is stronger than gratitude.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, and it shouldn’t. It means so much more to be appreciated in the moment, than after it has passed. So be unreserved in your appreciation of others, tell them that you’re grateful. We all need to be reminded from time to time that we are better than we think.
Did this strike a chord with you? If you would like to talk more, tweet or DM me or connect with me on LinkedIn.
