365 days project 2. Day 48. Perfect-ation

   Being a parent is very hard. The hardest job you ever take on. I don't have to be a parent to realize that. Working with them daily for the past 4 years helped me know them very well by now. And this is what I saw:

  Generally, parents want the best for their kids. Many of them want their children to do what they couldn't do, have what they couldn't have and all in all, have a better life than they had growing up. Everything sounds very good in theory but practice is very difficult. 

   As a parent, when you want your child to have a better life than yours, you will have the tendency to force him to do things he might not want to because you already played this game called life and you know the stages. If you do so, not only you are forcing him to go in a certain direction and you forget to be mindful of what he wants, but you will also have sky high expectations of him. And when you want him to be perfect, he will fail. He will fall and he will break and he will break you. Because flowers might be perfect but people will never get there. 

   So, as long as parents have perfection expectations of their kids and they treat them like their favorite toys and not human beings with their own will, needs and desires, everybody's life will be harder. Not to mention, kids might grow up and become something their parents wanted but not what they wanted. Who's going to suffer more? The parent or the child? What about both?

   Parents want the best for their kids. But they tend to forget their children have their own personality, their own desires and that they are not identical copies of them. This is the trickiest challenge parents have to overcome. If they do that, their kids won't be perfect, but they will surely be happy :) And when you're happy, who cares you're not perfect? :)

Note to self: Read this again when you become a parent yourself!

Perfectly imperfect

Dear diary,

   Everything that happened around me lately helped me realize how imperfect we all are, how afraid we are to not meet expectations, worried about an uncertain grown up future, angry knowing we don't own everything we want, sad thinking everybody judges us. We're truly our own biggest enemies. We are the ones who stop ourselves from reaching daily happiness by allowing all the negative emotions make room in our mind. We're living in a constant fear, we love and grow dependent of the ones we love, forgetting that we have to love ourselves first in order to have a basic happy life. 

   Today I didn't wear any makeup while going to work and I still smiled. I inhaled the fresh air, watched the birds chirping, the sun rays reaching me through fresh green trees, colorful people walking to work and I smiled again saying "You know what? I'm beautiful just the way I am. And today I love myself." It was such an important start of a good day. I focused on watching happy people pass me by, I imagined their happy little lives and I told myself again the mantra of a wise friend I adopted last night: "I'm not happy all the day, but I'm happy every day." And so I shall. I will accept that I am perfect in my imperfection and I will allow myself to have good days and bad days, cooking experiments gone wild and tears now and then. Because it's all natural. But I will focus on the negative side less and less... and when the world seems too hard to bear, I'll call a friend and bear it together. Cos two is always better than one.

Sunny and proud,

D.

The lessons

   Dear diary,

   I learned that life takes you by surprise. No matter how much you try to prepare yourself for what's coming.

   I learned that you never completely know yourself and that you have to be willing to play the beautiful unfolding game life is so you could get to know yourself a little more every day.

   I learned that we take so many things for granted and it's so hard not to once we're used to having them around.

   I learned that it's all an illusion. The mirror of Erised. And it takes a whole while till you figure that out.

   I learned that now is more important than yesterday or tomorrow, that I want to live it all before I pass away. 

   I learned that life gives us gifts of all sorts and shapes and we should always take them. Because they don't come back.

   I learned I needed 25 years to be a woman and I'm still a kid inside. I love that part of myself and I enjoy it every day.

   I learned we're complex beings, beautiful ones, full of amazing features we should use more often. We need to be true to ourselves first and then to the others.

   I learned that it's hard to have no expectations but you can train yourself not to. That life is a game where you have to accept that sometimes you win and other times you lose and know that the game always goes on no matter what... with or without you.

   I learned that life's short, so we should do what we feel like and regret nothing.

Still learning,

D.

Day 309. Exceeding expectations

   Many times we leave home thinking that we know what lies ahead of us that day. We plan it so we expect it to go according to the plan. But how wrong we are for thinking like that! Life is all about surprises that exceed our expectations, roads that we didn't take into consideration, something different than expected and yet more beautiful and amazing than what we had planned:)

   I felt all those today. My boyfriend and I went for a long walk and a photo shoot on a hill near our city. As usual, I had thought about where I want to go and the kind of photos I want to take. But I was more than surprised when life read my thoughts and somehow made us face a  huge wheat field. A dream that I didn't think of accomplishing today:) I loved every bit of it even if at first I was upset to be far away from the goal I set at home. A blessing in disguise. That's what this was. Such a beautiful one:) 

   So, today I learned that life does exceed our expectations and all we gotta do is be open minded to change. Set goals, alright, but be prepared to have the ride of your life until you get where we want. At least I know that's how today felt:)

Day 279. Great expectations

   It was one of those mornings when you wake up more tired than you went to sleep. I wanted to just curl in my bed all day, sleep and watch something, read my book or sing. But instead I had to go to work. 

   At some point today I realized that every day of our life is based on expectations. Not the "looking forward to" feeling. No. We expect something to happen. We plan it that way. And if it doesn't turn out the way we want it, we become frustrated thinking that they are all the ones to be blamed when, instead, our thoughts are the wrong variable in the equation. I realized that if I just stepped back and let myself disengage from the expectations that aren't achieved or better yet, from any kind of expectations and I just take life as it comes minute by minute, everything seems brighter around me. I actually tried it and not only that I wasn't sad anymore, I could actually focus on something else. Something much more important. And in the end this is what saves us. Being able to shift our attention from things that are uncertain to things we know for sure. 

   Another big issue comes to surface when we expect something to happen but an exterior factor turns everything down. What do we do then? Do we become frustrated again or do we use all our resources to change our plans? It's up to us. Our whole life is up to us. It's exactly like they say it: Life isn't complicated. We complicate it giving it all sorts of wrong interpretations and over analyzing it. So let's be "expectless" and take it as it comes. Minute by minute:)

Day 139. Theory vs Practice

   Today I remembered how good everything seems in theory and how different it feels in practice.

   I helped a teacher with a project regarding some psychological cases. It was rather easy finding the diagnosis and the solutions but, now, compared to the years when I was a mere student, everything really looks different than I thought it would. 

   Working as a psychologist is nothing like we picture it in university. I bet it's the same for every job you prepare for and then face later on in life. It doesn't mean I don't like my job, God forbid, it's just that... I had unrealistic expectations, ok? I thought I will make it or break it and frankly, it's really not the case. In the kindergarten the psychologist is more of a teacher's help, a support that strives to protect the well being of the kids. You can't talk to the kids about their irrational beliefs or have them understand the adult talks they prepare you for in university and there are so many factors involved in every case that you can't be sure you DO have a strong beneficial influence in that kid's future:) Oh well, I guess facing reality can have both good and bad consequences: our pink glasses are stolen from us and we have to face the real world by ourselves, make serious decisions that influence our whole future but still get to be happy if we make the right ones.

   Dear students, just know that your job won't be as you expect it to be but that it's still gonna be AWESOME if you make it that way:) Finding reasons to love your job means finding sense and significance in your life and that, my friends, is what we all need in order to have a healthy life:)

Day 43. Long days

... are not necessarily tiring:) You can hear life stories, learn new things from children who see life differently and then seal the day with a kiss that reminds you how much you love. I want more days like this one:)

   Tip of the day: Sometimes life exceedes your expectations:)