Bend – Don’t Break

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially” Ernest Hemingway

I don’t know what you’ll make of that quote

To be honest, I don’t know what to make of it either 

It feels too early in the year to already be talking about broken people involved in broken situations

But then again, is it too soon?

To assume that each of us celebrated a fresh start to a new year is presumptuous at best and insensitive at worst. It lacks awareness of the fact that for many people, bringing in the new year was just another day, just a global occurrence, marking the passing of time

But there was nothing new about their new year

Different toilette, same BS

The new year didn’t take away the debt, illness, sense of feeling lost or trapped and it certainly didn’t take away your belief systems

You’re full of B.S

We all are

Our entire world operates on the level of our beliefs – about ourselves, our fellow man and what we are all capable of

A winners mentality can never produce a failure, no matter how many times that person fails, they will get back up and try again until they succeed because thats their BS

A defeatist mentality can never in the long run produce a legend, no matter how naturally gifted and able this person is, their BS will get in the way, it will trip them up at some point and only further validate their original defeatist mentality

A Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Your belief system will eventually show up in your life and prove you right, whether you like it or not. Whatever you think of yourself, whatever you believe you deserve, that is ultimately what you will get

I know a lot of us complain about our incomes, relationship status and ultimately our well being but we need look no further than our own thinking – our thinking got us here, wherever we find ourselves

And it’s all BS

But back to the title – bending and not breaking

To those of us that found that we carried everything from 2017 into 2018 and what we carried over is less than great – let that BS go

Your best thinking got you this far but unfortunately, if you remain thinking the same way, well, then this is as far as you’ll go

That’s probably why being closed minded is more harmful to the closed minded person than anybody else – they’re stuck. They’re trapped in their belief that they are superior/inferior to others, that people of a certain background/culture/religion/race are all the same

Closed minded people eventually get broken by life – why? because their thinking about this world is too rigid to not be tested and eventually be proved wrong. That’s not to say they don’t inflict a lot of damage on others on their way down, but they do go down all the same

So what will break you?

I don’t know the specifics about you and I honestly don’t care to know

If i knew more about you, it would only evoke two emotions in me

Either pride that my life is way better than yours or disappointment because yours, is way better than mine

And all of that is BS

And I have enough of my own BS to deal with to care about yours, but that said, below are some things that I think breaks us all, feel free to add some that I miss out

• Closed mindedness: a closed mind can’t take in new ideas, without new ideas, there can be no innovations and without innovations, there can be no growth
• Bitterness: just another word for really hurt people holding on to their feelings and refusing to let go. life will continue to break you
• Arrogance: pride comes before the fall, need I say more? okay fine. If you are the smartest, most talented and impressive person you know…guess what? life will go out of its way to prove you wrong. You will break
• self pity: the other side of arrogance. This is when you fail to see anything good, worthy or damn right brilliant about yourself, like you’re the only one to ever exist that possesses no fine qualities – seriously, get over your BS

So be flexible

Life will throw everything it can at you and how you respond will determine whether you bend or break

How to Bend

Accept things as they are: not how you wish they were or how you wish they wasn’t but truly accept things as they are, then act accordingly

Embrace the new path: okay so you wanted option A but that didn’t work out but option B and C are still possibilities, why not explore this further?

That’s it

That’s how you allow life to bend you but not break you

You accept whatever comes your way because deep down you know that you are more than capable of meeting any challenge head on and then you embrace the new path before you and attack it with everything you got

Nobody said life was easy and unfortunately it sometimes takes war to bring peace so…go to war

And when things get thrown your way and you feel like you’re being broken by life, recognise this:

That’s a load of BS

You can handle it

SRZ