Mirror selfie from Iceland 🪞

How often do we hear that people take advantage of kindness?

That’s been my reality for most of my life- I’ve always been someone who couldn’t say no, in almost anything. As a result, most of the people in my life were the kind who took as much as they could 😅

It’s only thanks to deep inner work, meditation, and a long journey of processing my life experience that I’m finally beginning to understand what it means to care for myself first and I’ve gradually let go of those who only knew how to take.

Now I’ve encountered a new challenge: these thoughts started creeping in “Is this person being genuine with me, or do they want something?” “Are they doing this out of kindness, or because it benefits them?”

And this happens constantly now.

But I see it as a new phase of learning- a step toward understanding myself and others better.

In the past, I used to think: the world is already too harsh and difficult, so I’ll try to bring at least a little more happiness to the people around me.

But now I realize that not everyone actually wants that happiness.

Some people seem committed to maintaining their permanent “unhappy identity” because that’s how they get attention and support from others… and as long as people keep enabling that, they won’t change.

So now I try to be more mindful about who I give my energy to who I spend hours listening to, who I shower with gifts and surprises to lift their spirits.

And you know what?

For the first time in my life, I’m surrounded by people who care about me even more than I care about them 😅

It’s such a new feeling, and honestly, I still have moments of discomfort like, “Oh no, you didn’t have to spend money or time on me!”

But when I spend money on others, even if I can’t really afford it, I always feel it’s worth it to bring them joy 🙈 I used to believe that I was the one who could sacrifice, not others 😅🙈

There’s always this thought in the back of my mind: I’ll figure it out, I’ll make it work, I’ll earn more somehow I’m IMMORTAL, UNBREAKABLE, I always find a way 😅😅😅

So I keep giving, worrying deeply about everyone else’s well-being- rarely stopping to think about my own.

You know… it’s such a strange and fascinating process when you start observing your life, your choices, even your thoughts as if from the outside.

It gives you the chance to rethink everything— every emotional reaction, every idea, every mood.

And the deeper you go into that process of re-evaluating how you’ve been living, the more magical the changes become. The people, the events, the transformations- they start to feel like pure magic.

If only people realized that we truly can change everything in our lives..

But first, we have to ask ourselves one powerful question: Are we absolutely sure the world is really the way we think it is?

I can’t remember which book it was from, but I once read a quote that became one of my favorites. It went something like this:

“Humanity lacks the imagination to grasp how reality is truly structured.”