What you care is all that matters...

Life goes on, things just happen and when they do you have the dilemma in your hands. Do you care what other people think about you, your family, your looks, your work, your personal style, your profession, your life?

We are all individuals and we all have different take on this subject, of course. It's not up to me to tell you how anyone should behave and/or act in any given situation. Essentially, in order to survive and hopefully to enjoy and appreciate life we need to develop our own set of values when we face the inevitable, people having opinions about ourselves, our family, our looks, our work, our style, our profession, our life.

My take on this subject is obviously is based on my own experiences and by no means is the silver bullet. I merely hope to awake your curiosity, remind you to think about the subject and make you aware of the fact you and only you hold the key to your own answers. I found our the hard way that I, many years ago, payed attention and was affected the fact that others had opinions about me and the way I behaved.

I started digging at the library, yes a physical library where you can borrow books, and later on internet and have now an understanding my own belief system and how I can cope with it.

I understood that, I had to be the first person to convince and appreciate myself. I started very simply making notes, daily basis, things I considered as achievements during the day. I also looked at who I was. Some of my attributes were decided by coincidence, attributes like gender, age, country of origin, hair colour, nationality, name and so on, you get the picture. To put in another way, I happened to be born in year of 1966, in Kelkit, north eastern Türkiye as the first born child of turkish parents and was given the name Ergin. I had nothing to do with any of these, apart from the fact that I was the "best swimmer" of many many sperms. :-)

Where and how I was brought up of course affected my personality and my belief system. When I look back to my life, in my early teens I was aware of this notion, I couldn't articulate it well but I was aware. Now I take pride in the fact that I'm turkish and have later in life chose to be a love immigrant, moved to another country, Sweden, for love of my life.

Long story short, first step was to appreciate my self and build on that. I knew that if I was going to be any help to my family, friends and loved ones, I had to love my self. I had to change a few, well quiet many actually, of my own beliefs and paradigms. Some were simple and easy, others were complicated and painful. Take my word for it, it takes time and it helps to document, making notes.

Next step came rather naturally to me, by chance in later years. I have always liked to read about Rumi, a 13th-centry poet, jurist, theologian and Sufi mystic. One day, when my flight was delayed from Istanbul, I found his books and tapes in a store and later started reading and meditating. I nowadays do this when I am out running and the mystical music help me to visualize.

These two steps I mentioned above helped me ground myself and gave me the energy and strength start communicating to people around me and eventually the world who I was, who I wanted to be and how I wanted to get there. I felt confident, proud and in peace with myself.

I now track my achievements by sending letters to myself every 6 months (at least). I get the idea from a management training from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I also started practising the art of prioritization, which I learned from a dear friends of mine, meant actively choosing things I should not be doing, which basically meant saying "No". My son, my guru, Håkan, gave me valuable lessons on this topic and he still do. I'm privileged to have access to my guru daily basis. :-)

Obviously this topic is very dear to me and I probably can write more. I think I'll stop very soon by saying, "what you care is all that matters". It takes some alterations in your belief system and paradigms, the progress can take a while and sometimes it even can be painful. Your are hereby warned!!!

I wish you can find your answers at the library, at the internet and I hope you've got some pointers of my experiences. If you don't that's okey too.

Believe in yourself and be yourself. We human beings can cope with more than we think when it comes to it. Wishing you all the best!