Strength Is Setting Yourself Free

How much weight drags on your shoulders? How many worries take up space in your mind? In life, the only things with any value are the essentials: self-love, love for others, and feelings that are offered respectfully and altruistically. Everything else is a burden that makes us prisoners in a life that is too short for daily suffering…

We know that it’s not easy. That we often repeat to ourselves, “leave everything and do what you really want.” But how can you do such a thing? Doing something like this would be little more than a dramatic act where we detach ourselves from too many things, even people.

Like everything in life, it’s necessary to maintain healthy balance. Every one of us has basic essentials that we can’t live without: our families, our children, our jobs that pay for our houses and our food. We can’t break away from everything and push the reset button at any given moment if we feel too overloaded. However, within these basic pillars there are things that we can change, and even free ourselves from.

You have to let go of putting others before yourself all the time. You have to value your emotions and good memories over your worries  and pressures. And if within your world there there’s someone who is harmful and poisonous to  your life, then you should break ties with them.

For our health, for our personal balance, today we reflect on true strength.

When we become prisoners of unhappiness

If we look up “strength” in the dictionary, we’ll find various definitions that make us think. First, we have the concept of “strength and vigor.”

We’ll also find the image of a “fortified compound, like a castle or a fortress.” But at the same time, we’ll also read that it is a “cardinal virtue that consists of overcoming fear and fleeing from recklessness.” This is where we should stop and think.

Often, when we meet someone and ask them “how’s it going?” they tell us, for example, that they have a boss that doesn’t treat them very well, that they barely have time for their children, that their partner has become demanding and selfish, and that they can barely look themselves in the mirror.

Concerned, we can’t say much more than “be careful,” reading many more things on their face than they said with words. And indeed, we also see them as strong people because they face each day courageously, giving everything they have for other people. However, there will likely come a time when they end up falling.

And maybe the fall won’t be physical, but it will be emotional: dissatisfaction, feeling stuck, without opportunity for personal growth. They’re people who give their all for others, who love sincerely, but who don’t receive anything in return. Life drags them down without allowing them a breath of simple happiness.

Going back to the dictionary definition of strength as a virtue that consists of overcoming fear and fleeing from recklessness, we can add to it and say that people aren’t strong just because they escape or overcome their fears.

Being strong is also making yourself a priority and knowing how to own your life, letting go of what causes you harm or prevents you from advancing with integrity and balance.

How to be strong in your daily life

Being strong is waking up every morning to something meaningful, something that gives you hope every morning from the moment you step out of bed and onto the floor.

Even if it may not seem so, the world is full of lifeless people who wander around us without purpose, hope, or anything to do. Giving ourselves hope is vital because it offers us strength and wholeness.

Strength is not synonymous with power, which involves controlling or dominating others. Being strong is enjoying our freedom and avoiding toxic attachments that harm us and prevent us from growing.

Being strong is also saying no to the people who always put themselves before everyone else, to those who only see their own universe without perceiving the suffering of others or the emotional emptiness behind their attitude.

You’ll be strong if you dare to free yourself from that which keeps you from being happy, whether it be people, things, situations, or even thoughts. Because it’s not always things outside ourselves that cause us harm; sometimes, our own attitude can cause us to put up walls.

Break away from everything that holds you back, from everything that suffocates you and hurts your heart. You are the protagonist of your fleeting life. So love those who deserve it with strength, and cultivate strength that gives wings to your dreams and roots to your values.

Images courtesy of Lucy Campbell, Amanda Cass