Some people, when they take a look at my lifestyle, say I shy away from responsibility. I've put off having kids, I don't think much about the future except in terms of the projects I'm working on and my ability to realize them. I don't think much about when I'm old. If I don't like a job, I won't stick it out for very long, and if I don't like where I live, I'll move. I haven't thought about buying a house and I'm not incredibly worried about not having much money in the bank right now. As far as relationships go, I value friendship deeply but if we there is too much drama, I will probably not be contacting you often, unless we both feel we are fixing it, and this includes family. This all may change, I'd love to have a house and a family, but I'm not fresh out of school either, just to put it in context for you.
working up the ladder? image link
Am I irresponsible? Or am I just being true to myself?
I wasn't always like this. I used to have a lot of fear about how I was going to buy that house and get married one day. I was always penny pinching and trying to save up as much as I could, dealing with whatever the boss threw at me and whatever drama friends and family dragged me into and basically getting shat on a lot. I was knee deep in the rat race and always felt pressure to look for better opportunities because things didn't seem to be going anywhere. Still I trudged on every day like everyone else.
What changed?
What my parents called shirking from responsibility, I call loving myself.
You have to define your limits. If you don't you will always be victim to the whims of others. You will try to improve your situation and you will never succeed. You may manage to make more money but at the cost of becoming a slave to your job. You may have that "perfect house" and that "perfect partner" but you will be a slave to your mortgage or your relationship. Even with all the money in the world, you won't be happy and you will still run into similar problems. You will try to be a good person, and on the surface you may be just that....but inside you will slowly turn rotten and eventually become everything you hate. You can only hold in so many shits in order to make it to work in time before you start hating the world.
I'm not judging you, please don't get that impression! It's not easy to listen to your heart, I still struggle with it. We also all have different situations, some of which make it much more difficult to believe in the possibilities that will open to us when we are true to ourselves. Being true to yourself also requires persistence and time. You may have kids to support or you may be knee deep in debt. If you aren't ready to tell your boss to suck it, that's ok. One step at a time. Start with the things that come easiest to you and you will see your situation improve dramatically.
Loving yourself is not about justifying your shortcomings, but about being the best version of yourself at all costs, even when you feel circumstances don't permit it. If you see yourself as happy, you need to make the decision to be happy no matter how much your circumstances encourage you not to be, and change the circumstances with any means you have available. Loving yourself isn't about indulging in addictions and guilty pleasures. It's about giving yourself the respect you deserve under all circumstances, putting yourself first, not because you only care about yourself, but because you know with certainty that you will be able to give more to others when you give enough to yourself.
If you see yourself as an island, separate or different from everyone else, there is no loving yourself, there is only self indulgence. This kind of world view only allows for selfishness and competition without any true regard for others. If you act like a good person it's for the benefit of others seeing you as a good person. But when you see yourself as an extension of the world around you, a part of the whole, when you can feel that we are the same and just reflections of one another, and truly care about others, being good to yourself is a means of being good to others. You will be able to distinguish between that kind of self indulgence and self love by how you feel afterwards and how circumstances change. When you do something out of self-love, it fills you with more energy and inspiration to fulfill whatever purpose you set for yourself and to help others too. When you truly love yourself, loving others becomes second nature and without drama
My ownstruggle with self love
It recently came to my attention that I wasn't loving myself as much as I thought I had been. That would come as a shock to those around me because comparatively....it seems I already do what I want when I want to. I have a deep desire to make those around me happy and I realized that was causing me to feel the pressure of social norms. I dislike some of the common behaviors of others and because I wanted to avoid seeing it, I wasn't doing many things I wanted to do. I realized, I often have a hard time leaving when people are having a good time, even when I'm tired and not feeling it. I avoid places I want to go just because I'm worried about running into people who don't make me feel great. I try too hard to adapt to the culture around me and sometimes it saps up my energy. I dislike conflict and so sometimes I stay quiet when I shouldn't. A lot of my own struggles come from the dissonance caused by...basically the fear of causing more problems for myself, by overthinking.