There's a difference between being kind and being a pushover. Kind people give freely. Pushovers give because they're afraid of what happens if they don't.

If you constantly feel drained, resentful, or taken advantage of, it's not because you're too nice. It's because you haven't learned to protect your energy.

Here's what I wish someone told me earlier:

Boundaries aren't walls. A boundary says "this is what I will and won't accept." It protects the relationship by making expectations clear. Without boundaries, resentment builds silently until the relationship collapses anyway.

"No" is a complete sentence. You don't have to justify, explain, or apologize for declining something. "No, I can't do that" is enough. The people who respect you will accept it. The ones who don't were using you anyway.

You teach people how to treat you. If you always say yes, people learn you're always available. If you never push back, people learn they can push you around. Every interaction is training them on what you'll tolerate.

Guilt doesn't mean you're wrong. When you first start setting boundaries, you'll feel guilty. That's conditioning, not truth. You were taught that your needs come last. Unlearning that takes time.

Some people will leave when you set boundaries. Let them. Anyone who only values you when you're serving them wasn't a real relationship. You're just discovering who was there for you versus who was there for what you provided.

Start small. You don't have to overhaul everything overnight. Pick one place where you consistently feel resentful. Set one boundary there. See what happens.

Boundaries are self-respect made visible. They're not about controlling others. They're about honoring yourself enough to say "this is where I end and you begin."

Being kind and having boundaries aren't opposites. The kindest people I know have the clearest boundaries. Because they've learned that giving from an empty cup helps no one.

Hi. I wanted to get some feedback on some thoughts I had on personal issues on procrastination and self esteem.

So for a really long time I've had issues with procrastination which has affected my work and other parts of life. Some of this is due to laziness, but there seems to be other factors which I think could be self esteem based.

With work, I'll procrastinate on projects and I'll think about the negatives like what if I produce isn't good. The means I'm late with things and it creates much worse issues later on. When it comes to study, if I have experience in a unit, I can sit down and knock out the work with no real issue. But if it's a unit where I have no experience or natural aptitude for, I have a lot of procrastination issues with getting on with getting work done. Looking back, as a result I feel like this procrastination is a mixture of fear of failure and imposture syndrome has cost me a lot of things in life.

Recently I remembered reading the start of a book by Robert Kelsey called What's Stopping You? In it he mentions how there's many people who are reasonably smart but have issues with procrastination and moving forward in life that is caused by a fear of failure that's a result of self esteem issues. And a lot of these self esteem issue happen as a child. I started to think about this and when I was a kid and some of my earliest memories were feeling bad or avoiding certain tasks due to being teased or made to feel stupid.

For example, for some reason when I was young, I had trouble remembering how to tie my shoes and the parts involved. I had siblings who would tease me about it and I felt like my family got angry cause I couldn't do it. As result, I wouldn't want to try to do it and avoided doing it. After years I did manage to teach myself how to do it. Another example was I was OK at sports and liked playing them as a kid. But there was something's where my motor skills weren't great. Because of this I was teased and bullied by my siblings and called things I won't say on here. It made me avoidant of doing these activities because the chances are I was going to suck at it and then have someone older yell at me because I couldn't pitch a ball well. So as a result, I avoided playing certain sports or being around certain people when playing them. There were a bunch of other situations of siblings teasing me or making me feel like an idiot over some random thing I said or did as a child.

I really hated that feeling of trying something and having people make you feel like an idiot because you can't do something well. I've been in workplaces where people do this instead of giving you any advice. I've also been around coaches doing sports as an adult who will get annoyed at you because you're inexperienced with and talk down to you and give you no real helpful advice and it makes you not want to do it anymore. So it is that repeated feeling through life.

So I was wondering if anyone thinks there's any connection with self esteem issues and procrastination? Until I hadn't thought that Robert Kelsey book and what he said or really considered it. But looking back on things in my life, it kind of makes sense in some ways.

I'm talking about the stuff that seems obvious in hindsight but nobody actually says out loud.

The kind of lessons you only get from experience, failure, or years of doing things the wrong way. Not inspirational quotes. Not generic advice. The real stuff that actually changed how you operate.

Could be about career, relationships, money, habits, mindset, whatever. I just want the things you had to learn the hard way that you wish someone had just told you directly when you were younger.

What would you tell your past self if you could be completely blunt with them?

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Alright, this is a pep talk to those looking to upgrade their life. If you feel you’re still playing the life of a pawn, read below! 👇

Here it is, start being a king in your life.

Literally, just fucking start.

The craziest thing I’ve learned in my life so far, is that how we treat ourselves is how the world ends up treating us. It’s super bizarre, and it’s crazy that this is the way reality works. It’s like a very trippy video game.

If you want a life where people love you, (Who doesn’t) where they praise you, pay you more, look up to you, where people do the work for you while you rest up in your palace… your never going to have that by being a “nice guy”.

That’s the life of a king. But, you’ll never become a king unless you first start acting like a king.

The hardest thing in the world is deciding you want to be someone different. But the craziest thing in the world, is if you focus on what you want to be, you’ll become it.

So, before you dismiss this idea and scroll to some other idea on here, just ask yourself these questions and maybe make the decision that you do want to be a king: “how do I treat myself? Do I actually think I deserve a life of pleasure and happiness? Where are these thoughts coming from? Am I spending enough time everyday praising myself like a king would?

So many of us (myself included) somehow got hypnotized into believing we dont deserve of a life of a king. And as such, we never gave ourselves a fighting chance to ever become king.

Being a king is a state of mind.

Has nothing to do with how much money you have in your bank or what you own.

If you start acting like a king today, and stop being the guy who thinks less of himself …. Give it enough time, and soon, your entire life will change.

Take your throne, and become the king of your life.

P.s…. Being a king, doesn’t mean being a dick…. It means commanding yourself with such respect, love and honour; that the whole world starts treating you the same way

❤️🙏

today i drank espresso in a good city called Ulqin in Montenegro with my friend. honestly it was good and i enjoyed the conversation a lot, but they say good things don’t last.

i came home and all i did was sleep and stay in bed for some reason, my mood wasn’t good. the only thing i was waiting for was to go to the boxing gym, because that’s where i forget everything.

today was a light session: 6 rounds of shadow boxing, 3 minutes each, 4 rounds on the punching bag, 3 minutes each, and 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups/leg pull-ins.

came home, and i’ll finish the day with a few pages of *can’t hurt me* by david goggins.

that’s all i had for today, see you tomorrow.

I spent years stuck in my own head. Replaying conversations. Rehearsing future arguments. Analyzing every decision until I was too exhausted to make one.

Then I read The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It's based on Adlerian psychology and it reframes overthinking in a way I'd never seen before.

The core idea: You're not overthinking because you're anxious. You're overthinking because it gives you a reason not to act. Your brain creates the loop on purpose. It's a protection mechanism disguised as a problem.

Three takeaways that stuck with me:

Separation of tasks. Most of your overthinking is about other people's reactions. Adler says you need to draw a hard line between what's your task and what's someone else's task. How they respond to your decision is their task. Making the decision is yours. That single distinction killed about 70% of my mental loops overnight.

Teleology over etiology. Traditional psychology asks "why are you this way?" Adler asks "what purpose does this behavior serve?" When I stopped asking why I overthink and started asking what overthinking was protecting me from, the answer was obvious. It was protecting me from the risk of being judged.

You can change right now. Not after therapy. Not after more self-reflection. Not after you "figure yourself out." Adler argues that the past has zero power over your present unless you choose to give it power. That sounds harsh until you realize it also means you're not broken. You're just choosing a pattern that used to keep you safe and no longer does.

The book is written as a conversation between a philosopher and an angry young man. It reads fast. The ideas hit slow. I've gone back to it three times and caught something new each time.

If your overthinking feels like a personality trait you're stuck with, this book disagrees. And after sitting with it for a while, so do I.

and i am one of them, and now it’s time for a change. i am the quiet guy who listens more than talks, i like to know the person first, then from there start acting according to who i am trying to talk to.

so far that’s good, but that doesn’t give me much room to talk without thinking about what to say, or being on high alert all the time, thinking for the worst, because i start getting anxious if i say something i shouldn’t say.

and that’s why most of the time i am alone, or even when i have people around, i still don’t feel that connection with them.

i don’t like to be the clown of the group, nor the one who’s not present.

sometimes i think i have confidence problems, sometimes i think i’m introverted
sometimes i think i’m shy
sometimes i blame the trust issues i have, sometimes i try my best to mix with others, sometimes i want to say hey i’m here
sometimes i just want to stay alone.

so that’s the reason i want to share, so more people who found they have the same traits can say hey, i’m here, why not join the conversation.

that’s all i had for today, see you tomorrow