As an older sibling to two younger sisters, I am very obviously in the business of spouting off entitled nonsense as if I am centuries wiser than they shall ever be. I'm probably fathomless leagues of dumber (not hard to guess, is it), but it's code, you know?
I have five and ten years on my sisters, respectively. It's a lot of time in which I gathered together not a lot of answers and lackluster advice and am now trying to help them move forward in life however I can. They're my family - I hate them sometimes, and I've never loved anyone more. But as my siblings, they've taught me a lot more than I've taught them, and recently, they came up with something to which I had to give quite a lot of thought.
I myself have to believe the things that I try to teach to them.
This idea doesn't just relate to siblings - it relates to every part of my life. It's just one of those things to which I never really gave much thought. I didn't want to believe it, I don't think. I wanted to get away with what I was doing in my own head and push away any attempts to reconcile it to what was going on around me.
I have a lot of unhealthy habits. Some of them are in a more surface-level, basic repertoire like spending countless viable hours on the couch binging Netflix, and some of them are more personal, like the ways I treat myself. I've been an older sibling for a long time, and for a lot of that time in this nonsense-spouting business, I haven't allowed my brain to filter what I was saying and send any of it back into my own head so that I can mill it over.
The fact of the matter is, I have no idea who could be observing my actions at any moment. I have no idea who I might be able to influence with the time I have to give. I realize more and more now how much of what I say could really be seen as a bunch of hot air, considering my actions. I want to project and display having the right lifestyle. Who doesn't? But I will never have the right lifestyle nor will I be able to help anyone else towards the same if I can't find it in myself to practice what I preach, even when no one else is looking.
It's not a matter of putting on a show. It's not a matter of pretending, of making it seem as though I believe something so I can continue to believe the opposite. The change I want can be found easily in the very little stuff. Say I tell my sisters to love themselves for who they are, then I turn around and fail an assignment. I'm faced with the option of forgoing something I desperately want my loved ones to believe and practice just so I can tear myself to pieces over something small, or I can take the idea of loving myself to heart so that the people around me will do the same.
The more I practice the things that I want those I love to believe for themselves, the more I can believe it for me. The more I can put healthy habits and a better lifestyle into place, the more I can continue to grow as a person alongside the people who are doing the same.
Important things can be hard to believe sometimes. Mentally especially. But supporting others by offering any and every help I can, including an example in myself, is the best I can do for the ones I love. And the ones I love deserve my very best.