No be you go tell me wetin I go use my newsletter do

The more permission you give everyone else to do these things, the more permission you give yourself.

Hii! I hope you have been good? I have been okay myself. Since the weekend started, I had watched a couple of videos and listened to a handful of podcasts, mostly because I genuinely enjoy doing these things and partly because I was lowkey to get something to write on. But I won’t be writing about the videos I watched or the podcasts, so you can already tell how that quest went.

Seeing as I can barely recall enough from the podcasts and videos (either that or I’m not exactly in the mood to) to write a newsletter, I decided to try something else —compile a list of quotes I have particularly taken a liking to. I remember trying this once and getting great reviews (to my surprise). So yeah, let’s do this again. Plus, the urge to say “No be you go tell me wetin I go use my newsletter do” hehe I’m joking, please.

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“Look, cats, I don’t believe anyone is truly evil”, the billionaire said to his students. “Well, maybe a few. But mostly, the more I live, the more I know that every one of us has experienced various degrees of trauma in their lives. And as I shared earlier, only people in pain do painful things to others. Those who are suffering create suffering. And individuals whose behaviour is confusing are generally very confused themselves. They’re just really hurting. And something has happened to them that has caused them to feel threatened. And so the goodness at their core is contracted and close. To call them horrible people is a superficial judgement. It’s a lot deeper than that quick perception.

This quote (more like an excerpt) from one of my favourite books —the 5am Club —would be a perfect way IMO to get the ball rolling. I particularly love this quote, apart from the obvious reason that it forces you to see things, or people, from another perspective other than the usual ‘hate’ perspective, it also allows you to give them the permission to have context. The whole point is to be aware enough to know (and maybe avoid?) people who project their own trauma onto you, and in the same vein, to be also self-aware enough not to project our wounds or trauma onto other people.

If we don’t give someone else the permission to have context, we are blocking ourselves from having the context of our own selves.

If you are not giving someone a chance to explain, express, be curious, make mistakes, then you are basically blocking yourself from doing the same thing.

The more permission you give everyone else to do these things, the more permission you give yourself.

I got this while listening to Jay Shetty’s podcast and it immediately struck a chord with me. As someone who (unconsciously) sets incredibly high standards for other people, it is only logical that this is because I set those standards for myself too. So, this quote reminds me that giving other people the permission to have flaws (reducing the almost-impossible-to-reach standard I had initially set) means giving myself the permission to do the same.

“I believe in anger. Anger’s like fire, it can burn out all the dross and leave some positive things. But what I don’t believe in is bitterness. Forgiveness is imperative because you don’t want to carry that weight around, who needs to? And it will throw you down. It doesn’t help you to live life. I don’t make myself vulnerable if I can help it.”

I like to think there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions, just what we make out of them. Here, Maya Angelou, a poet and an author, shares her thought on how to find value in anger.

“To accept life in its disjointed pieces is an adult experience of freedom, but still these pieces must lodge and embed themselves somewhere, hopefully in a place that allows them grow and endure”

A quote by Richard Sennett, a sociologist, on coming to terms with ‘adulthood’, and all I can say is, adulthood na scam.

An old man ‘smiling in pain’. Image from Google

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I wish you enough strength to get through this week, and the next, and till whenever I write to you again, and beyond.

Yosola.