Even those who are not fans of rap music might know one of Eminem’s most famous songs: Lose yourself. The message of the song is pretty clear: life is tough but we should not give up fighting for our goals, no matter how hard it gets. Every day, we are trying to learn this lesson by dodging bullets in the form of difficult clients, unreasonable bosses, grumpy family members… Often, however, the biggest enemy we face is ourselves.
Lose yourself
Naturally, there are situations when it makes sense to take a step back and, without the pejorative meaning of the word, give up. There are goals we cannot achieve due to a number of restraints that fall outside of our control: physical or psychological conditions, legal requirements or, quite simply, somebody standing in our way. There comes a point when we realize that what we had set out to do is not feasible in the form that we had imagined it would be. At these instances, it is completely acceptable to evaluate the situation, adjust our strategy and change course of action. We are not “failing” or “letting down” other people – we are, luckily, smart enough to realize that some things are just not meant to be.
In some cases, the objectives towards which are working are becoming malicious and are bringing a negative influence into our lives. We only have to think of an athlete that pushes themselves too hard, beyond the reasonable, and ends up injuring themselves so badly that they have to give up their entire sports career. Let us look around and see those mothers who are so determined to give everything to their children that they are harming their marriage, their work, their social life and, most importantly, themselves. We stop and pose to notice that one guy in the sales team who is willing to do whatever it takes to hit his target for the month: cancelling pre-planned trips, missing family celebrations, skipping doctor’s appointments… Being focused on our goals and fighting for them is crucial; but we cannot ignore all the signals telling us to stop or at least slow down. When we capture the reality of the situations, it is okay to let go – to lose ourselves.
Or don’t
At times, however, we are standing in the way of our own success, however we choose to define it. Often, we do not even realize that there is a problem to overcome – or we choose not to. We can call this various things and people often do so towards others: we are labelled lazy, selfish, told that we lack endurance and motivation to do better. If only things were that simple… We as humans often show certain behavioural patterns but that does not necessarily mean that these define who were are completely. Nonetheless, there is an issue to be overcome, a battle to be fought: with ourselves.
I know this battle perfectly well. For example, I have always struggled with making exercise a routine activity in my life. That means that every time I do work out is a personal victory for me. Now, I could list all the perfectly logical and valid reasons to why I have not made a habit of it: I lack time, I get sick easily, I often feel tired, I dislike the kind of exercise found in gyms, I do not actually need it… The list goes on. To be honest, most of these are nothing but excuses. Still, I find it hard to get myself together and do something about it – and I am not alone with this. In some cases, psychological reluctance can even get to a point that the body produces physical symptoms. Our body realizes the cognitive dissonance and gives us a reason why we can or cannot do something, to put our mind at ease without having guilty conscience.
This is, however, not the way to go. We can lose these battles against ourselves hundreds if not thousands of times without being aware of the negative consequences. Hopefully though, we do wake up one day realizing that we need to overcome ourselves, our own harmful patterns and make changes to them. We have the freedom to lie to anybody in this world but the worst we can do is to lie to ourselves instead of putting in the hard work to make a difference. We need to force ourselves to face reality and stop self-sabotaging – because the only person who loses out on this is us. So we all face a choice: in the moment of truth when we get to make a choice between comforting ourselves with excuses or stepping up to make a change, what do we do? What happens with that moment? Would you capture it or just let it slip?
Living abroad as a millennial 