Tag: selflove

Toward Kindness

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Christina Liao (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

 

Kindness is such a fickle thing – it’s hard to come by, but it’s easy to give. It’s important to be kind to others, especially during a global pandemic. A simple act of kindness can brighten someone’s day, maybe even week. Giving somebody a compliment or telling them how good their outfit looks can change their day from bad to good. When someone is experiencing tough times, being understanding about their situation can help them through their difficulties. It’s important to be kind to everybody and, as Harry Styles would say, treat people with kindness. 

 

One way to increase the amount of kindness that we experience in our society is by eliminating discrimination. Being cruel to someone purely because of their race or sexuality is easier than being accepting of them, but we need to be accepting in order for our society to progress. We need to be aware of people in minority groups and not be discriminatory to them. We need to treat all people of colour and members of the LGBTQIA+ society with the same amount of respect that we would any other person. People aren’t born homophobic and racist, it’s taught. And just as easy as it is taught, it can also be unlearned if people are willing to take the necessary steps. 

 

Self-respect and self-love can also lead to more kindness. You need to love yourself for who you are before you start loving others. Accepting yourself for who you are – your faults, strengths and everything in between – is the first step to loving yourself. From there, you can learn to accept others for who they are as well. What’s most important is that you need to be confident in your own body. In order to do that, you need to stop worrying about what other people think of you. Just focus on what you think of yourself. Learn to see through the faults and reach the good parts. Everyone is unique; everyone has their own parts that shine and problems that they need to focus on. Loving every part of yourself is the first step to loving and being kind to everyone else. People are mean because they project their insecurities onto others, so start loving yourself. It’s not hard if you really want to change the way you treat others.

 

Once you love yourself and know how to treat yourself, you need to know how to treat others with equal respect. To do that, you should treat the people around you how you want to be treated. Be empathetic towards the situations of other people. Be respectful to people who are experiencing tough times and please, don’t discriminate. Tell someone that their shoes look nice, or tell them that they’re doing a good job at something they’re working on. Engage with them like how you would want to be engaged. Overall, just spread more positivity than negativity. If you don’t have anything kind to say, don’t say it. 

 

Being kind shouldn’t be a chore, nor should it be something that you don’t do already. Most people just need to understand how their actions can harm others. Everyone deserves to be treated with kindness and respect, everyone should be treated equally. Treating others equally starts with treating yourself fairly. Just remember to be kind to others, especially in tough times like now. Never forget to be kind and understanding toward other people. We shouldn’t need a daily reminder to treat people with kindness, but here’s one for you today. 

 

***

 

My name is Christina and I am currently a student at Simon Fraser University in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. I love listening to music, reading, writing and, honestly, anything Marvel. In short, I’m a total nerd. I volunteer as a blog writer here at Low Entropy. 

The Mental Health Revolution Might Be Televised

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And now, back to our regularly scheduled mental health conversations: Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Christina Liao identifies a trend in television shows exploring issues like self-love and loss.

 

In today’s media, topics such as self-worth, self-love and grief are discussed in a much more prevalent way, and externalities of these discussions tend to be very positive. With the media educating people on these subjects, consumers are more educated and aware of them. CW shows such as The Vampire Diaries and The 100, or Marvel’s WandaVision, all include these discussion points throughout the course of their shows. Many of the characters showcased have inner conflicts related to these subjects, and are written in a way that makes viewers understand them on a personal level.

 

Clarke Griffin, one of the protagonists of The 100, battles self-worth in a way that really makes us see the person beneath all the armour. She would go to many lengths to protect her people, even by dooming the entirety of another population. After having been branded the title of “Commander of Death,” she consistently wonders if she is a “good” person or a “bad” one, even though it is because of her actions that everyone she loves is alive. One idea that the show often touches on is that maybe there are no bad guys. Nobody is born a bad person, but everyone has done things we regret. That by no means makes somebody a bad person, but even someone who’s inherently good has done bad deeds. Whether it’s lying to a friend or not talking to their parents more before they died, everyone has experiences that they wish they could take back. However, this does not make them terrible people, or less worthy of love. Clarke battles this throughout the show’s seven seasons after having to constantly sacrifice things to survive and save the ones that she loves.

 

A show that explores self-love through the eyes of a character is CW’s The Vampire Diaries. A character that has battles of whether he’s worthy of love is Damon Salvatore, who’s one-half of the Salvatore brothers. He says that he wants to be known as the “bad brother” so he isn’t expected to be good. Being a good person can be hard sometimes; it gets exhausting. Everyone has times where they want to be selfish. Because of this, Damon wonders if he’s worthy of love. He knows he’s selfish, but he would still do anything for the love of his life. Through Damon we understand that everybody is worthy of love, especially someone who’s ready to give up everything to save others. Just because someone thinks they’re a bad person does not mean they’re not worthy of love. In fact, if someone is aware that they’re not “good,” that realization usually indicates a goodness within. Nobody is born a bad person, everyone has light and dark inside of them.

 

In Marvel’s 2021 show WandaVision, grief and its five stages is one of the main themes. Wanda Maximoff battles grief after losing her beloved Vision in Avengers: Infinity War. Her life in WandaVision is a whirlwind of grief, and leads to her accepting her loss and becoming very powerful. Discussing topics like this sheds the light on very real emotions that people feel when they lose a loved one. Marvel has released many limited series shows in 2021, and they all talk about important topics. With the large platform that Marvel has, these stories can go a long way toward educating people about the subjects they need to understand in order to accept others who are dealing with tough times.

 

Having shows that reach a large audience discuss these topics is an improvement upon society because it brings light to important issues. It educates the people that consume said content and creates material for discussion. Only with discussion can a society become more empathetic, educated and kind. These kinds of mainstream conversations are an important step to a world that is more accepting, and therefore loving. 

What TV shows have had a positive influence on you? Let us know in the comments below or on our community site so we can all binge watch some quality content!

I Made a Mistake

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Admitting your mistakes can be a very difficult thing. It’s even harder to turn those moments into character-building opportunities. Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Tricia Keith shows us how both can be done.

In a world that seems ready to tell me that I have made an error, that I am wrong, that I am mistaken and, therefore, unlovable . . . wait a minute, what world is this? . . . It’s the one that I have been living in, after making a big mistake.

The size of this mistake is relative to the trust between me and another. I would call it a big mistake if it’s going to tarnish that trust, and it likely will. Now what do I do?

Avoid my mistake, and in fact, that person? A fairly easy job to do, from the outside, given that my connections to this person are not in-person. But my conscience is; my conscience is my inner person.

My fearful thinking tells me that if I cough up my truth, it will badly damage my relationship to this person and maybe more. My first response is to retract into myself and hide.

I expect fear to rescue me, and fear expects to be the hero in this mind game. Dig a hole. Hide out until the situation passes over and disappears, deep into an archive of emails. Yah, right, OK. Got it. But after two sleepless days with a tight chest and anxious, recursive thoughts, I realize that fear is not going to free me.

Thankfully, I have two trusted allies, and more thankfully, they received my story with non-judgmental listening; they agreed that it was a mistake, that I was in the wrong, but also that I was not unworthy of their love. That’s really the bottom line. I was not unworthy of their love.

The question then became, could I BE that for myself?

Suddenly, two lines of self-narrative began to emerge: my faulty judgment that initiated the mistake, and my growing capacity to love myself enough to be present and admit my mistake, no matter the consequences.

Without meaning to or preaching at me, my two allies (my husband and my sister) showed me that I could grow from my mistake by being honest. Where fear wanted to keep me in the dark, self-love gave me the courage to be present, in full lighting.

This situation of discovering my mistake, and that it was public, felt like a bomb going off inside me, though it is really inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. Away from the office bubble that I work within, I am encouraged by the heroes and sheroes who stand up for their truths everyday in the face of discrimination, oppression and violence. As a white, cis-gender woman, I know that I am privileged because I can assume a centered position within the scheme of structural racism and oppression.

In order to begin unlocking the interlocking chains of colonial history, I endeavor to develop my capacity to admit my mistakes. Microaggressions that I am conditioned to overlook, I need not to see with fearful eyes, but with self-love, in order to process the chain of events and not pass them on to my children.

The Low Entropy community is a group of non-judgmental, empathetic individuals who are committed to ensuring that people feel loved, no matter what kind of mistakes they’ve made. Interact with us in the comments below, on our social media channels or in-person at a Conscious Connections meeting!

Over It

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They say that breaking up is hard to do. Ava Ingram knows that it’s true. Ava got through it though, and the Low Entropy volunteer writer shares her best practices on sorting out the aftermath.

 

You’ve done your best, and given your all. You’ve had enough of the emotional roller coaster ride and gaslighting your partner was putting you through. You need to find a way out . . . then they decide to turn around and break up with you first. What’s next?

 

Give them a second chance to prove themselves, one last time . . . but when they screwed that up again . . .

 

A sense of relief.

 

They said they’d always be there for you, but in the end, you were just left trying to take care of yourself. And everything you said to your partner, they just turned around and fired back at you.

 

What’s helpful in these times when you feel like you want to punch someone, like all hope is lost?

 

Taking an “easy way out” with drinking or using drugs wasn’t for me. I chose the harder route, but I knew that I’d have to deal with it myself because, until I had somewhat processed it, I would never be able to move forward and love myself, or anyone else, again.

 

When you’re sitting in your bed all alone in the dark, thinking, “Everything’s useless,” “I can’t do anything,” and “I’m no good,” it’s a start to think, “At least I’m trying to get better.” It’s very hard to try and trick/reroute your brain when you’re in a dark place and don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone says, “It’ll get better,” but you don’t really trust that it will. Why do things seem so easy for others in your time of struggle? How do they seem to get by with nothing crappy happening to them?

 

The hardest part for me was dealing with empathy. I’m a very empathetic person, but it can come back and bite me in the butt. I felt very bad for my boyfriend after we broke up the first time. He was dealt a bad hand, as he’d had a rough childhood. I felt bad for him, his family and his pets, as they were stuck in that “welfare mentality” and didn’t want to get better. He’d once told me he wanted to get fit. And my mom explained to me that, in the same way mentally, I couldn’t “work out” his brain for him. He’d have to change for himself, and if he never did, that wasn’t on me. It was a hard pill to swallow, but it was true.

 

Medication is an aid, but there are some issues that medication can’t magically fix if you don’t confront them head-on.

 

Surrounding yourself with a good support group is always good. You might not always like your family members, but in my experience, mine have always been there for me in my time of need.  Therapy is helpful. Helping you be aware that you want to get better is the first step, but you  have to want and be able to put in the effort, even when the going gets tough. I’ve been told it’s good to “feel things through,” but at the same time, it shouldn’t give you permission to sit around and feel crappy all day, soaking in those feelings. At some point, you’re going to have to confront your fears of returning to work, and resume life as “normal.”

 

I showed up to work a few days after the breakup. It was hard keeping it together, and then I just sort of lost it all at once. That was embarrassing, and at the same time, I was like, “How am I gonna keep it together for the remainder of my shift?” Somehow, I just did. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely hard, and I lost it again after work. But somehow, with practice, it gets a little easier. I’ve heard a good way to calm anxiety is to say, “I’m ok,” but in that moment, you don’t really feel ok, so it’s really tough.

 

Watching a movie as a distraction was always helpful. But that was just it, it was only a distraction, and wasn’t dealing with the actual issue at hand. The one thing I learned was the PERMA-V model. The “P” stands for positive emotions. So this would be the time to watch something that makes you smile, or that is funny. The “A” stands for achievement. If writing/being creative is one of your gifts, find something to do that involves that. This is a good distraction.

 

Golden nuggets are another very useful thing I’ve learned. Counting your blessings/things that make you happy is a good way of focussing your brain on the good instead of the bad.

 

After you’ve cooled down a bit and had time to process the situation, putting yourself out there to potentially get judged and ruined again is very hard to do. But in the end, if you don’t try, you’ll never know what you could be missing, which is a very hard pill to swallow. And if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be in the good place I’m in now.

 

Same dating site as my ex. Kept looking. Losing hope.

 

Then some guy messages me, asking who my favourite Avenger was. It was everything that wasn’t in my last relationship, but everything I wanted. Everything seems good, and right, and not like you have to explain why you’re doing everything. You don’t feel on edge/living in survival mode at all. Good communication that goes both ways, and just enjoying each other’s company.

 

It’s hard to work on yourself in order to find this kind of happy, but in the end, it’s well worth it.

 

Who’s your favourite Avenger? Tell us all about your kind of happy in the comments below, or on one of our other social media channels!

Empowerment: From the Path of Least Resistance to the Path of Most Resilience.

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Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Ellie Gibbard walks us through her thoughts on empowerment and resilience, stopping by concepts of self-love, growth and confidence along the way.

 

  • What is empowerment?

 

Feeling empowered comes from finding the ability to be the best and healthiest version of ourselves. It comes from knowledge, confidence and resilience. To clarify what I mean by the “best” version of ourselves, best does not have to mean perfect. Perfection is an unrealistic ideal and I think striving for perfection is an exhausting and dooming practice that is too present in today’s culture. Who is to say what is perfect and what is not? To feel that we are the best version of ourselves and to feel confident in who we are – this is to feel empowered. Similarly, being the “healthiest” version of ourselves doesn’t mean to say we have to drink celery juice and work out every day. I mean healthy in the sense that we have the willingness to take care of ourselves. 

 

  • What is resilience?

 

Being resilient is having the capacity to work through adversity and often grow from it. Resilience is how we respond to difficulty and is a way for us to find strength in ourselves. It sounds nice, but being resilient is not easy and is not something that naturally occurs; we don’t just go through difficulties and automatically become resilient.

 

  • How can we become resilient?

 

I think that resilience is often associated with toughness and thought of as being able to put our feelings aside, our heads down, and just push through hard times. I would argue that being resilient is a result of self-love and having empathy for ourselves. Although it is something we can reach as individuals, resilience isn’t necessarily something we can find by reaching inside of ourselves alone. Instead, it is about being able to care about ourselves enough to seek out and navigate supportive resources. This is where self-love comes in. 

 

  • How can self-love lead to resilience?

 

Self-love and having the willingness to care for ourselves is the key to resilience. If we don’t love ourselves, how can we feel deserving of love and how can we seek out love and support? I think that there is often a stigma around self-love and what it is. People hear “self” and think “narcissism.” Just because you have love for yourself does not mean you think you are perfect in any way. Self-love comes from not resisting who you are and knowing that you are not perfect, embracing your imperfection, and accepting it as part of what makes you, you. This is the key to self-love. We have to be able to love ourselves because the way we love ourselves is the example to the world of how to love us. If we can’t treat ourselves with love, how can others? Being able to love and empathize with ourselves allows us to believe that we deserve love and empathy from others and guides us towards supportive people and environments that will foster resilience within us. 

 

  • From resilience to empowerment.

 

Finally, how can being resilient lead us to feeling empowered? Resilience empowers us because it gives us confidence in our abilities to work through and rise above adversity. Again, our abilities don’t necessarily need to mean solving things on our own; there is strength in numbers and being able to reach out for support and say “I need help” shows great strength. Having the capacity to work through and grow from challenges is resilience, and gaining confidence from the growth is empowerment. 

 

Tell us about a time when you had to be resilient – drop a comment below or inspire us at a Low Entropy meet-up!

Transformation

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by Anna Bernsteiner

 

You grow like a sunflower reaching up to the sun in mid-May. 

There is no other way, but forward. 

Slowly, unnoticeable at first. 

You pierce through the dirt.

Air, Sunshine, life. 

Up you go with a goal in mind. 

Shaking off all the darkness and doubts. 

Grow grow grow that’s all you know

 

There are times when it gets dark. 

No light in sight. 

All you want is some daylight 

And yet the sunshine always returns

Giving you strength. 

Even when all the others are far ahead. 

You shine on your own time. 

No rush. 

There is none of you that isn’t enough. 

 

And as you realize that truth

It’s now your time to bloom.

Yellow, orange, brown 

It’s like you are wearing a dashing crown. 

It seems that now 

you don’t need to reach up to the sun.

You don’t hide and run. 

You know, you are the center of your own life.

And finally, 

you bloom like a sunflower that found its light in mid-July

 

Live Aloha

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Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Nicole Riglietti takes us on a transformative voyage, escaping from despair and self-contempt to Hawaii and the curative love of the Aloha Spirit.

 

With the carefully constructed confines of society, it is amazingly easy to feel lost in the day to day, in the moments and minutes of a grim reality. Lost in the crippling anxiety, lost in pleasing everyone, lost in self-neglect. A few years back, I was lost to who I was. On an unglamourous healing journey of self-discovery, I found kindness, compassion and self-love. Drowning in my own skin, stuck in the wretched grasp of my tormented mind. I felt like a captive prisoner held hostage to past hardships. It terrorized me as fierce flames engulf a house burning from the inside out. There was nowhere left to run. I felt my heart, mind and soul fill with self-loathing, unworthiness and the inescapable illusion of being unlovable. I felt it deep within my core, a belief I carried and held on to for years. Staring at myself in the mirror, screaming, begging, pleading for me to love me – all of me. Mocking tears gushed down my cheeks, and I had enough. I couldn’t escape my painful existence, so I escaped my surroundings and all the people in it. 

 

“The Aloha Spirit” . . . her words echoed as they left her lips, bouncing off the corners of my racing mind. ‘Aloha’ was nothing but a greeting, simply ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’. How could it mean anything more? On the plane I ruminated over my self-destructive ways and inability to feel love for myself, only  interrupted briefly by the flight attendant’s safety plan. 

 

“When the oxygen masks eject, put one over yourself first before helping the child beside you.” Even in the greatest heights of tragedy, one must help themselves first, before helping another. One must love themselves first, before loving another. What a concept. At the time it was completely foreign to me. ‘Self-love’ – what does that even mean?

 

Landing in Hawaii, I felt a sacred energy buzzing throughout the majestic island of Maui. Aloha. Just one word held so much power indeed. I saw it everywhere. Black bumper stickers with bright red lettering read ‘Practice Aloha’, and these bumper stickers were posted all over, hidden in plain sight to the untrained eye. When the locals said “Aloha,” it carried great weight. I discovered Aloha meant respect, honour, kindness, compassion, love, hope, responsibility, acceptance, openness and joy. All these profound words, these attributes embody the Aloha Spirit. Given to others, and especially to one’s self first. It never occurred to me that I should be treating myself in this way. Holding enough respect for myself to take care of me. Honour my worth, my skills and talents. Have the responsibility to fill my life with that which brings me joy. Speaking to myself with gentle kindness and compassion. Accepting all of me just as I am. Showing up for myself, having the courage to fight for a love I can be proud of and feeling completely whole.

 

Like trust, love has many layers that take years to build. I’m still building these layers. After much grueling inner work, I have a foundation which grows stronger daily. I found myself accepting my sorrow and celebrating my joy, for they are two sides of the same coin, forever intertwined. As I released the resistance, I also let go of all the fear, shame and doubt. I had courage to follow my heart.

 

I went on a hunt for this bumper sticker so that I might be reminded to practice Aloha. A woman stared at me oddly at my request, as I was not a local, just some woman clearly struggling with her own self-worth, held together by her faulty insecurities. Before I could grasp the bumper sticker in my hand, she told me I had to promise to practice Aloha. This calmed some of my anxieties, yet doubt is a persistent thing, always lurking in the shadows, pouncing on the vulnerable. Especially when one had been battling the darkness within, it was difficult to trust a newfound freedom.

 

Waiting for a bus to take me to the airport. Doubt and chaos controlling my mind, questioning the hallmark advertisement of ‘Aloha’, a kind “Hello” brought me back to my surroundings. On my left there was a cute old man who wanted to talk. To my amazement he brought up the ‘Aloha Spirit’, filling me with absolute hope. It raised my vibrations. How could he know that I’ve been focused on this phrase? I felt connected to him, connected to the ebbs and flows of the universe. As a native to Maui, he had a deep understanding of what the Aloha Spirit meant. His late wife, born and raised in New Jersey, had had it. He didn’t think it possible for a person not native to Hawaii to be filled with the Aloha Spirit.  In that moment, for different reasons, we both marveled at the possibility. 

 

After being strangled for years by suffering, when I gave into the idea of self-compassion, I began to feel lighter. Self-compassion opened the doors to the ‘Aloha Spirit’ and living in Aloha led me to the unconditional love I feel for myself, where I truly feel wholeheartedly complete. Self-love has shifted my perception on life, and I am genuinely able to spread the joy within me to those around me. Though the healing journey is a long, winding road, feeling like utter destruction at times, don’t give up. Keep going. Practice self-love. Live Aloha. 

 

Everybody has a spirituality specific to them – tell us about yours in the comments or at a Low Entropy meet-up . . . who knows? You could be one of those special moments on someone’s journey to self-love.

Love Yourself Like You Love Yourself

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During this time of year, the world reverberates with proclamations of love for families, friends and partners, but Low Entropy Volunteer Writer Satkar BK reminds us that we also need to love ourselves with that same energy. 

 

Every February, I can’t help but see all the love in the air. Whether it be watching rom-coms or marriage proposal videos on YouTube, I find myself drawn to the idea of love during the most romantic month of the year. It’s easy to imagine a lot of us being attracted to the idea of love. We, humans, are social creatures by nature, and love is another way for us to be connected. Although science may say love is purely a chemical reaction to help us reproduce as a species, anyone who has ever been in love will tell you that it is so much more. Love can be the greatest feeling in the world, or one of the most terrifying, sometimes at the same time. The feeling of love has fueled incredible things throughout history, from the story of The Iliad to the invention of medical gloves. When we have someone we care for so deeply, we can seemingly accomplish anything. 

 

This leads me to the topic for today’s blog. What would happen if we loved ourselves like we love the ones around us? What if we surprised ourselves with flowers? What if we stayed up late to watch our favorite shows? What if we helped ourselves through our toughest times without any hesitation? It’s remarkable to think of the many things we could do at a drop of a hat for our parents, friends and loved ones, in contrast to how difficult it may be to give ourselves even one compliment. I could tell my partner how her smile could outshine a supernova, but I cringe when I stare too long into a mirror. I could shower my cat with all the affection she can handle, but I struggle with patting myself on the back. What I’ve discovered is the love that I feel for others is so much stronger than the love I allow for myself. 

 

The reason I and many others struggle with treating ourselves the same way we treat others is because we see ourselves for our mistakes and imperfections, and see others for the best versions of themselves. We accept that no one is perfect, but expect perfection from ourselves. This Valentine’s Day, why don’t we take the challenge to love ourselves like we love others. To see ourselves as amazing in the way that others do, and to look past the little problems that exist only to us. This is a difficult concept that I haven’t come close to mastering, but it’s one that is incredibly important. We have an infinite amount of love to give throughout our lives and it would be a shame if we could not give some of that love to ourselves. Even if it’s just a little bit, I ask every single person who reads this to take just a moment, look at all the wonderful things you’ve done in your life, look towards the wonderful things you will continue to do and say, “I love you.” 

 

Loving yourself can be challenging. We all need help in one way or another. Low Entropy is dedicated to helping you . . . yes, you! . . . appreciate how wonderful you truly are: keep an eye on some of the programs we offer and start by telling us what you love about yourself this Valentine’s Day.