Notes to Self

I call back all the power and energy that people, places, and situations have been stealing from me without my consent, and I give back any power or energy that isn't mine to carry.

My struggles make me who I am, and I don’t need to compare them with anyone else whose life seems to be easy. My struggles make me stronger.

Someone may know things better than me, and they may know things I don’t; remember that when talking to someone. Don’t judge someone’s intelligence or knowledge by their appearance.

My feelings can make me dumb and irrational; don’t make an important decision in a clouded state of mind, and don’t believe what you think is true in those feelings. You need to keep reminding yourself that what you’re thinking isn’t true when your emotions aren’t calm.

I’m not that special, and other people’s struggles aren’t as easy as they seem.

Time, space, and feelings aren’t meant to be optimized all the time; they can just exist and be allowed to live without getting dissected and analyzed.

Other people’s opinions and feelings are equally valid as mine, and I’m not superior to anyone.

Write down any thought or idea you have instead of keeping it in your head.

Ask God for guidance and help; trust his plan even if you can’t see the solution. I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, but I do know one thing for sure, that is, my Lord is with me, and he will guide me.

I can never know enough and can never have enough wisdom to judge anyone.

When your path is clear, step by step, even 5–10 years from now, know it’s someone else’s path; And if you can’t see the road, that is when you know it’s your own path. So, maybe you’re not lost at all.

People don’t change unless they don’t have any other option left. People change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.

It’s always the unbearable pain which change people and makes them stronger. Rock bottom is a beautiful thing to happen, which brings a meaningful change. People transform their lives for the better after hitting rock bottom.

If you wanna be stronger, tougher, or bring about change, go through the unbearable pain or make yourself suffer.

You quit in your mind long before you quit physically. It’s always you vs. you.

Be a parent for your inner child; be a safe place for your inner child. Stop neglecting your inner self’s needs and stop abusing yourself by being the person you don’t like.

No one cares if you’re always whining or complaining about life. Your life is shitty because of you. Stop whining, crying, and living a shitty life just to get the validation your brain loves. Stop making your life shittier just to give yourself more excuses to find validation from others.

You become magnetic when you’re self-obsessed, give good vibes, and vibrate on high energy.

Desperation is a negative feeling; you never get anything by being desperate. People can sense desperation, and you’ll never get what you want by vibrating on negative energy.

You attract more misery by talking about how miserable you are.

If you’re always complaining, crying, and being ungrateful for the things you don’t have, God will give you more things to cry about.

You’re not the victim. Being a victim is the most comfortable thing to do.

People who are always seeking comfort and pleasure are the most miserable people.

Being lost and suffering just means you’re on your path to thriving. No one starts their life having figured out how to live it, and no one figures it out.

You’re not falling behind; compare yourself with yourself instead of others.

You can not control what happened in the past; you can not control what other people think or say about you, but you can control how you react to them. You can control your happiness; you don’t need to be unhappy because a certain person doesn’t care about you. You can control who you let in your life and how you let others treat you.

Let go of things you can not control, and stop trying to control them. The past doesn’t exist anymore, and other people don’t know you truly. Most of your suffering comes from trying to control the things you have no control over.

If your blessings are coming, you have to prepare yourself to accept them. Work on your health, knowledge, skills, and mind. You’re in control of your life.

Detachment is so powerful; it’s taking your power back. It’s making yourself the center of your life instead of someone or something else.

How to be happy: Let go of past situations & people; Be grateful for what you have; Know exactly what you want and say no to everything else; Cleanse your environment; What you listen to, watch, and read should align with your goals and higher self; Take action and stop thinking; Don’t be desperate; Believe that you deserve it.

You do not rise to the level of your goals; you fall to the level of your systems. Stop chasing goals and start following your system.

It’s only natural to find comfort all the time, but seeking comfort leads to misery and pain in life.

If you know what you need to do but are unable to do it, it’s probably because doing it is harder than the comfort of doing something easier or a distraction. Be more intentional, bring awareness of such patterns, and stay disciplined.

We are never alone, whether you like it or not, but you’re never alone. God is always with you.

We humans have always survived with the help of others and by helping others, and there will always be someone who cares about you even if you can’t see it.

I don’t care if I get it right, as long as I’m moving forward. Pace matters more than perfection. I need to stop obsessing over having everything organized in a perfect way, and prioritize moving forward.

It doesn’t have to be crazy at work; it doesn’t have to be perfectly organized. It doesn’t have to be perfectly figured out and ready. It doesn’t have to be optimized in the most efficient way.

Define your non-negotiables clearly and know yourself by them. Never do anything that violates them, cause you’ll only be violating yourself by doing so.

Trust in God’s plan and stop worrying. You don’t worry while sitting in the passenger seat when you know the driver, so why worry in life when you know God is driving it?

Trust God but tie your camel; You have to do everything in your power and try all your best, and then trust God with the result. God doesn’t help the person who doesn’t help themselves.

Give more charity; what you give away always finds a way back to you. Believe it even if it doesn’t seem that way.

Always be humble and fear being arrogant. Life will humble you in a harsh way if you choose to be arrogant.

Brain hate big lists or vague tasks, but it loves checking things off. Break down a vague task into multiple smaller ones and execute them one by one.

Brain have finite amount of decision-making energy; be more intentional about where you’re using it and don’t waste it on things that do not matter.

We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality; focus only on the present and the current problem. Past regret and future possibilities do not exist.

Embrace good enough as a standard of acceptance and stop chasing perfection. Be selective with excellence.

Disappointment comes from the gap between what actually happened and what was expected; consciously be aware of your expectations and replace them.

If you can’t answer “hell yeah” instantly, your answer should be “no,” straightforward and bold. Problems and struggles start when you’re not sure about saying yes, but you can’t say no either.

Build resilience by deliberately exposing yourself to discomfort. The size of your life grows with your willingness to tolerate discomfort.

If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be more than what you are now.

Mature men don’t try to impress anyone. They don’t need to brag or seek validation; they just are. You don’t need to go out of your way to prove anything to anyone.

Manage your emotions and don’t suppress them; let them stay and just feel them without dissecting or analyzing them. They exist for a reason; it becomes a problem when you don’t allow your emotions to live long enough to let them do their job. Don’t resist and don’t deny them.

Take care of yourself: clean nails, clean breath, nice dressing, and clean skin show you value yourself seriously.

Always be open to questions, and be open to being proven wrong. You are not an angel who never makes mistakes, and you’re not a prophet who’s never wrong. Accept when you’re wrong without making it a crisis, and no fool ever accepts that they are wrong; it’s only a wise person who does so.

Be selective with attention and intentional with what you give value to. Your energy flows where your attention goes. Be intentional where you give your attention.

Respect other people’s boundaries and be bold on your own. No one should be allowed to cross them; treat them as your non-negotiable.

Journal down your emotions and write them honestly; let them out without judging or resisting. The first step of emotional intelligence is naming your emotions without judgements. They are allowed to exist and shouldn’t be criticized; by doing so, you’ll only be criticizing yourself.

Sitting with an unsettling feeling is as important as doing any work on your body; you’re not wasting your time by sitting with sadness or regret when you need to.

Feeling too much is as problematic as not allowing yourself to feel anything at all. Just don’t run towards coping mechanisms, distractions, and ways to deny or escape them. There’s a healthier way to regulate them, which starts by letting them do their job first by allowing them to feel.

If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. You can have only one priority at a time and focus only on that.

There’s no race in life; it’s okay to go slow but consistently. Consistency beats talent almost every time.

Failure is only a matter in the question when you’re following someone else’s standard of success.

Choose your own definition of success, and let it be different than everyone else. Be aware of what you think you want, and what society tells you that you should have.

Your success should be what you want, and it doesn’t have to be a certain amount of wealth, fame, or status; Your success can be just living a peaceful, quiet life with a small circle of people in the countryside. Allow yourself to call it success and accept it, regardless of what everyone says.

Healing is not about improving; it’s about unburdening. You need to stop adding more, and start unloading. Gaining more knowledge or skills will not heal you; you need to let go and remove all beliefs that make you believe you’re not good enough.

You’re not broken; you don’t need to be fixed. You need to remember who you were before the world taught you that you’re not good enough.

Cause every pain that didn’t kill you only made you stronger.

Drama dies when you hang around people building something bigger than gossip.

Life gets better when you stop fantasizing about who you could be, and start taking action the way that person would.

People, relationships, knowledge, wealth, clothes, status, fame, family, partner, and friends only add value to your life, not complete it. You are already complete on your own without any of these things.

Stop giving yourself excuses to feel better about yourself when you simply don’t have the courage to be disliked.

While you’re overthinking and doubting yourself, someone is looking at you, wondering how you do it all.

A focused fool can accomplish more than a distracted genius.

You don’t become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by having undeniable proof that you are who you say you are.

People wish for other people’s lives but not for their sacrifices. We wish for the prize, not for the price.

Bring more awareness to your beliefs about being poor and rich. You only feel poor if you perceive a large gap between where you are and where you really want to be. For someone earning 10k a month, comparing themselves to someone who earns 100k a month would make them feel poor. Someone earning 100k a month would feel poor compared to the person who earns a million every month, who would be poor compared to someone who earns 10 million a month. But if compared to someone who earns 5k a month, earning 10k a month won’t feel poor but will give you reason to be grateful.

Your standards can always make you feel like a failure and disappointed no matter how much you do or accumulate, but by bringing awareness, you can be content with what you have without comparing it to any scale that decides if it’s too little or good enough. Without any standard or comparison, there’s no telling if it’s too little and no feeling of being poor.

Write down things that your loser version would do to keep losing; do not do them.

Motivation doesn’t exist; you need to be disciplined and do what needs to be done if you don’t want consequences to happen.

Rich people are more deprived of money than poor people, because they compare themselves to richer people than poor people.

You need to learn to say no to yourself about things that are bad for you before you can say no to others comfortably.

If you wake up healthy in a safe house, have enough food and clothes for the day, then you’re wealthy.

There are multiple types of wealth; true wealth and happiness are contentment, no matter what you have.

Change is not watching those self-help videos and thinking you made progress; real change is dropping those habits and patterns that keep you stuck. You can not clean your room by doing the same things that made it messy.

People who have a sense of worthiness and belonging and people who don’t have only one difference: the people who have have sense of worthiness and belonging believe that they are worthy of love and belonging. That’s it; it’s only the belief.

You have to believe you are capable of it, deserving of it.

Habits shape your identity and vice versa; most habits fail to change because the identity belief stays the same. Every action is a vote for the person you’re trying to become, and proof of your identity. Focus on identity.

Judgement is another word for unmanaged discomfort.

When someone criticizes you, it reveals more about themselves.

Maturity is not knowing the right thing; it’s doing the right thing.

Your desire to be free from suffering is what keeps you in the suffering.

Your thinking is what caused you all the pain, and you can not use your thinking to be free from pain. Using your thoughts to figure out how to end pain is like a police chief trying to find the arsonist while the arsonist is the police chief himself.