Tag Archives: #confidence

Mental Health

Great Power of Strong Feelings That Will Uplift or Dispirit You

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Telling lies is a wicked habit. Once mastering this vice, you stop to be sincere even to yourself – Olya Aman

Love 

D. used to be a cheerful boy who was rushing into childish sorrow and joy, both with the same zeal. He got strongly carried away and stoically endured failures. He got sick with many childhood illnesses in succession: broke his arm in a skating rink, fell through the frail April ice one time, and once almost died from anaphylactic shock. No one was truly worried about him or tried to protect him because the safety margin he possessed was truly inhumane. It was very likely the result of love everybody bestowed on him which was accumulated over his childhood.

Even a faint glimmering of love changes the way a person feels. The coming day seems brighter, any gloom is relieved with the warmth of sincere affection. With love in your heart you can bravely elbow your way through the thickest of the life troubles. On looking intently forward, the future seems hopeful with this rejuvenating feeling inside.

Companionship 

Kids can be cruel in their antipathy as much as they can be passionate about friendship. D. didn’t know the taste of opposition, as we all do now and then. He seemed to be an exception – a pet to every girl, a confidante to every boy, and a favorite to every adult. Plump and rosy-cheeked as a baby, he was skinny and pale when a toddler and a teen. Always cheerful but never laughing out loud, he appeared to always know how to behave and what to say to a party of elderly people or a group of children of any age.

Friendly social circle puts heart in us. As if eating the healthiest and most nourishing food, compassionate touch and heartfelt conversation with the person that cares about you, empower you physically and emotionally. The equanimity of your mind is preserved with the help of friendly people. In the nature of all things, friends are more costly than any possible luxuries in life.

Appreciation

D’s family lived in a three-story apartment building across the road from me. His balcony located on the first floor faced the front gate of our house and I used to observe him through our sun room’s picture window watering the flowers or playing with his cat. We used to exchange our own silent language and meet on a neutral territory just outside the entrance to his stairwell. Gathering the rest of our kids’ company we played picture cards or staged some play or other for grownups from the area. We drafted specific invitations as our performances were popular and we liked the idea of choosing the audience. 

D. was a source of endless ideas for costumes or the dialogue’s comical language. His sense of humor was superb, and laughter accompanied every act. I thought he would make a lead actor or a director in the theater world or even the cinema. His ability to change the timbre and depth of his voice, coming now from the upper part of vocal cords and then from his chest, fascinated me. D. used to easily memorize all parts and could improvise, always saving the scene when someone forgot their lines by mumbling the words of an unfortunate fellow in a funny sort of way, slightly opening a corner of his mouth and making the rest of his facial features unusually steady.

The wealth of recognition opens up our inner resources. If your vanity is duly gratified, a multitude of opportunities strives to be revealed to your judgment. Burning ambition is flourishing in the environment of appreciation, and it drives a person to move forward with his dreams.

Self-Belief 

We all used to think his never-ending source of energy and ideas would be like an immortal all- present sun, that only in cloudy weather could not be seen, but everybody knew still existed in our sky. When he got sick, no one paid attention to this fact and considered any misfortune in his path as a slightly darkened forecast for the day: we might not see him today, but tomorrow the sun will rise again as it always did before. And true to this expectation, he woke up the next morning and went out to the balcony with his hand bandaged or his head wrapped. We loved him at those moments more than anyone. It seemed the memory of yesterday without his joyful spirit was sunless. 

With voluntary self-assurance no hardship will hang about you for a long time. In this state you know that troubles cannot last forever and by degrees, life will get better. The belief in this axiom attracts positive vibes and favorable circumstances follow along. Self-confidence encourages prosperity.

Fear

But one thing finally broke that love-shielding wall that I’m sure protected him, and that jolly spirit perished with it. On one occasion coming home from school D. was stopped by a gypsy woman and driven by curiosity he let her take his hand. She predicted his death from a fall. Yes. So silly: no particulars of any sort, just a silly woman saying a silly thing out of spite just to scare a boy out of his wits. But his passionate nature disserved him this time and he was carried away by that nonsense. The look in his eyes changed gradually: happy sprinkles of yellow on a watery green iris gave way to gloomy brown ripples almost swallowing the rest of the palette of his eye. His countenance, full of lifeblood, had undergone the transformation into a shadow-like version of himself. His paleness was not noble anymore. Rather it was unwell, and his tiny frame gave the impression of some disposition or other.

Self-Doubt

From that time every disease he suffered from drained the life out of him drop by drop. There was a sickening flavor about him that made one think of misfortunes, bad luck, and weakness. That unfortunate prophecy stole the charisma that D. undoubtedly possessed and the admiration we all felt towards him yielded to the force of death that obsessed his mind and changed his looks drastically to the worse.

He constantly repeated that crazy woman’s words, which resulted in an alien personality he started to wear, thinking somebody else’s thoughts about his life in constant fear of a fall. He came to be one of those unfortunate people that always look back on others with dread, nervously trying to read everybody’s thoughts, expecting them to pity him and disliking them for that. He desperately needed someone else’s sympathy, approval, and love. He had all of it in abundance when he was able to give his cheerful smile in return. When a gloomy mood possessed him, any positive feedback from outside was forever lost.

The injurious effect of self-doubt is enormous. It aggravates everything about life. You simply give vent to misfortunes when you allow yourself to lack confidence. Everything takes a longer walk, you simply have no power to alleviate the sinking of your soul and spirit.

Stress

At the age of 14 D. withered as a flower pulled from its soil. It was a minor cold that killed him afterward. Many think though, that he was dead long before that illness took his final breath. Dread of everything that life is – trials and failures, meetings and partings, praise and hearsay – was a murderous weapon that made the final shot. The memory of his awe-inspiring cheerful nature that reserved everybody’s favorable attitude towards him was a red cloth that made him furious when he saw the change in people that truly was only his own nervy and stressful alteration, reflection of which he saw in others.

In a state of stress you are creeping away in life, with cautious steps making your slow advancement. Cold and cheerless days without sunlight and fragrance are your destiny if you let emotional strain oppress you. You need to be careful with things that distress you. Many things are omitted and a lot is forgotten when your mind is pressured with negative thoughts.

Conclusion

D. used to be a champion in any undertaking and even a failure served as a source of energy, adding more experience and a higher chance of being victorious next time. 

When he came to be a poor victim of a senseless lie people stopped taking him seriously but that was just the result of his lack of confidence in himself. The world with death being an integral part of it was a poisonous place for him. That prophecy doomed him to live a life of fear. That dread became his daily companion and, being a jealous nasty thing, deprived him of friends. 

When you do not fear anybody, you can handle any judgment people make about you, taking no interest in what kind of esteem they hold you in. The brave spirit of an adventurer reigns in your life and you take risks and come out winning most of the time.  

People will always crave company, understanding, and love. The one who is not able to give love will lose the resource of it that everybody congenitally possesses and hopefully accumulates through life. Love needs to be given to enlarge its dimensions and quantity. Kept inside, it grows moldy, turning green of jealousy, then gray of greed, and finally, the dark color of hate paves its way.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

Body Positivity Couldn’t Be Explained Better Than This

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Regardless of their size, every woman is an apotheosis of fashionable nobility

It was wholly unlike the ‘Permitted Style’, and she could see the people’s awe and distant wonder… – Olya Aman

Sasha is my best friend. We had, and still have, a tradition in our village school to welcome 1st graders with smiles and handshakes from 5th graders. Sasha was the one to take my hand and lead me to my class. From then on, we were seeing each other regularly in school and outside of it.

Being charming ladies in our 30s, now we have families and both live very far from our native place. Some favorable universal coincidence glued us to the same town, though, so we still keep in touch.

Regardless of Their Size, Every Woman Is an Apotheosis of Fashionable Nobility and Strives to Be in Style

The fashion industry should find a sympathetic response in our lives - treat everyone with dignity and respect. It must not suppress self-expression and creativity.

Sasha has a large, square face, with a massive projecting nose and long-lashed, pale blue eyes. When she is smiling to herself, her face shines pink and childish. She is like one of those extinct birds, the Alagoas foliage-gleaner, once found in northeast Brazil, because she wears that elaborate hairstyle of a curiously improbable shade of orange.

Sasha is undeniably slender, and ponderably light, and… proveably short. Even in school, when people wished to distinguish her from the others, they always called her the ‘miniature one’. Nothing changed these days in this respect.

Sasha used to dress as if she had no sense of proportion, and the colors were always pyrotechnical. That was not her fault. You see, she had a sneaking mania for a fashionable style, particularly when she saw a slender, tall body wearing it. But her reality was the indispensable crisis — she couldn’t find the same garments to fit her petite form. And Sasha felt empty-hearted heading to the kids’ section all over again.

Social Media Is a Majestic Influencer and You Can Manifest the True Body Image Through It

Social media kick starts trends in fashion, particularly when used to illustrate diversity and body-accepting concepts. Nowadays everything is ridiculously exhilarated, beautifully abnormal, and deliciously insane. Gradually our vision is gaining in focus, and we wear confident faces and elegant outfits.

One-day I found Sasha turning everything in her wardrobe topsy-turvy and inside out. The whole place was utterly destroyed, as if by an earthquake, but it was only her frustration burning. With half-shut eyes she was lying on the floor in the middle of that devastation in a perfect unrelaxation.

That day Sasha decided to make a try for Paradise. She decided to be happy, even if it would cost her all honesty and money. Sasha shouldered her way in social media. She crafted her own outfits, which added a rousing fashionable kick to the lives of women with romantically shaped but very tiny forms. She created her own line of “Fashion for Petite” driving change and building her own following.

Clothes Have About Them Something Irretrievably Thought-Provoking for People Around

Our thoughts take on the color of our clothing. One can look simple and charming, and that will strengthen the desire to connect with other people. And being very much aware that you look stunning can bring closer the desire to bestow a little attention to a beloved person.

Sasha regained her good spirits. She is in sympathy with her beautiful self now when she makes her own clothes. She adopted and promoted smart and elegant dressing habit. Her style sends messages to her mind and the minds of others about self-respect and body positivity.

Sasha feels that the conventional visual landscape of the beautiful person needs to be changed. I think she joined a contagious, great, and brilliant movement that broadens the very narrow rules existent for what is considered ‘beautiful’

Conclusion

Being petite myself, I used to be almost swept away by the continually unsuccessful shopping experience. We all desire to parade among our acquaintances in the outfits tailored handsomely and becoming. But we used to be constantly pained by the sight of the fashionable dresses and blouses with shoulders too wide and waists too low.

That wretched mental stupor, the fashion industry used to be in, finally seemed to lighten. Inclusive sizing becomes a good business strategy, even for many haute couture houses. Women of different shapes want to be true to the trend and be part of a modern fashionable movement.

Inclusive sizing is more than just the first subtle outcropping in the fashion industry, it is a re-creating mountain that is going to influence many things in the world. 00, petite, and plus-sizes should not be treated as problems to be solved, but as realities respected and rightfully enlisted in life and business.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

My Father Died From Cancer, and It Taught My Mother to Write

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I painstakingly pieced this story from the several treasured excerpts of her diary

You must have a divine heart to be so full of vigor when life is a misery, filled with it like a precious vase… – Olya Aman

My mother makes beauty beautiful.

She dreams in words of love and hope when her life is tragic enough to make my face distort with darkness.

Her life is a sad song for an outsider and a bright red fire for those who have the privilege to know the divine rebellion of her smile, the cheering appreciativeness of her spirit, and the great resoluteness of her mind.

My mother gifted me with her beautiful diary on my 30th birthday. I painstakingly pieced this story from the several treasured excerpts from it.

Grace Your Life with the Presence of a Diary

Life may seem vengeful. When a beloved person is forever lost the existence appears empty. A painful loss sternly represses breathing although the chest is heaving with passionate feeling. Eyes become blind to all life attractions, ears deaf to all the words of love and affection. Every living being that still keeps smiling looks so provokingly heartless and mindless.

May 1988: “I buried myself in the full of soul eyes of my dying husband. I know I need to think of my dear child and myself for her sake, but it is so hard to tear myself from his bedside. His sufferings make my heart weep. I wish I could sacrifice myself and save him. His voice rising painfully when he holds my hand and pronounces my name. I quiver with restrained grief and smile to cheer him up.”

My father was going through tormenting sufferings on his way to the end of life. His pain, the result of advanced incurable cancer, was inadequately relieved. The question of surgery was not even possible to discuss. It was too late.

May 1988: “My diary is my salvation. I often write and hold his hand in mine. I put on paper what I feel and fold it in two. I plead and pray to God and hide it in my soul.”

July 1988: “He is in constant pain but looks the very incarnation of quiet bravery and love. Even in his intolerable condition, he strives to carry away my disquietude by talking about the beauty of life after death and the pleasure I should feel on this earth even when he will leave me.”

August 1988: “Whenever he is awake from his tired slumber he asks me to write the messages to daughter so I can deliver it to her when she will grow up to understand the preciousness of every word that was voiced through pain and suffering. I like to listen to his sentiments. I love his extreme good sense, his exquisite taste, and the feeling of life. He urges our girl to be uncompromisingly bold in the defense of her opinion and life principals, to be earnest and keen in pursuing her dreams, and to win the esteem of her mother and father by vindicating her character from any unkind inclination.”

Let Place, People, and Obligations Comfort Your Spirit

The freedom of nature and tranquility of some quiet shelter gives a sense of repose and expansion to the mind. When you take your place on a bench under your favorite tree it opens the floodgates of your soul. Here in loneliness, you can pour away the tears of grief. Being with beautiful life one on one you can learn all over again to feel the rays of sunshine with your soul and to experience the freshness of breeze with your heart.

October 1988: “With an agitated, burning heart and brain, I live through every minute of my life without him. How do I dare to live when he is not among the living? The one who in intellect, in purity and elevation of soul, was immeasurably superior to anyone I know. I rush outside to cool my feelings in the balmy winter air, and to compose myself each time I feel the hot tears coming to my throat. The solitude of my garden helps me to put on a gleeful smile to cheer my child.”

December 1988: “The poison of this loss spreads through all my essence. I now recognize its harmful intentions. The serious depth of it may kill life within me. I fight it, turn my back upon it. I seek retirement for my pain in taking care of my girl. She is my salvation. I let my head to be carried away by her childish ideas. There is no better cure like a merry, simple-hearted child — ever ready to cement broken heart, to melt the ice of freezing soul, and overthrow the walls of sorrowful isolation.”

Open up Your Heart to a Friend

It is an overwhelming toil to be in constant grief. Everyone needs to recover from the effects of it and a close attachment to the living dear people is the best cure in this case. A heartfelt conversation with a friend can fill you with faith, hope, and joy. It will drive away the keen regrets and bitter dregs of lingering sorrow that still oppresses your heart.

March 1989: “My mother is my faithful friend. When I see a flash of love in her eyes, a glow of sincere care on her face — I think that one day I will cease to feel this pain. When throbbing recollection flashes upon me, and a cloud of sorrow darkens my eyes, I talk to her: in person, on the phone, or in my mind, and a moment of inward conflict gives place to quiet conduct. I start to behave with exceeding calmness so that she never had to reprove me once.”

Delightful and Fruitful Activity

Perhaps another great healing technique would be an activity, business, hobby — the mode of actions that is enjoyable to the utmost degree for you. Keeping yourself busy and enjoying every moment of it is not a job, it is a recovery process that cures your heart and heals your soul. Leading an active life prevents you from disturbing your own heart by touching upon the infectious thoughts of loss and grief too often.

November 1989: “I started my diary with more truth than wisdom. In the beginning, I was still fearing to be rooted to my loss. Often the paroxysm of pain and despair was preventing me from saying what I was intended to say. A torrent of tears stained the pages with misery, and I prayed for forgetfulness. But only memory gave life to my words. Never do I endure so long, so blissful nights as when I write. I go through every moment of happiness and pain all over again. My goal is to keep the fire of my foaming and swelling with emotions life engaging and bright, so it warms the heart of my child when I give it to her to read and remember.”

September 1990: “Smiles and tears are so alike with me. I often cry when there is nothing left but to laugh and smile when I am in bitter grief. My diary is my remedy. I feel graceful easiness and freedom about all I do these days. The expansion that this new activity gives to my mind is so refreshing.”

October 1990: “I cannot stop writing. A broad sea is rolling between my past and present. My soul is forever united to the one that is dead in body but always living in my heart. My husband is my everyday companion. I feel his soothing presence. And this feeling of our reunion is not sad anymore, but rejuvenating.”

My mother started a diary and found consolation in putting her feelings on paper. Writing those down by-the-by brought consolation. It brightened the doomed comprehension of life. The melancholy musings and painful lamentations stayed on paper.

The words of sorrow, written in her diary, purchased solace and tranquility.

Conclusion

To find an antidote to painful emotions is essential. Grief, when left alone, may carry you away against any reason and will. It breathes a tired apathy born of long sorrow and hopelessness. You need to fight for your life and happiness every day for the sake of those who are living and for those who are no longer among us.

To be a prey to distressful feelings is a sad destiny. To do our utmost to live life happily is the only installment of our universal debt. There is certain graceful ease about being busy with daily life, household chores, taking care of the kids. These activities distract from painful recollections. When you remind yourself that there are still living people that need your attention, you tend to forget to torment yourself with thoughts about death — life is calling you to be present and active.

Stay tuned…