I am hard on myself. This is how I was raised and I was taught how to push through difficult circumstances. It's something that I have never liked though. Being hard on ourselves just doesn't turn off, and we make life seem difficult to others as well. The reason, I suppose, was that I was brought up to expect things to always be tough, and when something was easy it dismantled the masculine representation of what I was supposed to grow to be as an adult. Simply put, I wasn't going to be raised to be a sissy.

From this, it has put up barriers between me and establishing healthy bonds with other people that are outside of my comfort zone. As I have grown, it has become evident to me that this is what my soul craves. Yet somehow, my mind and body reject a lot of parameters that seem creative and intuitive to escape "being hard"; which happens to be my comfort zone.

My gut instincts are simple. Ask and trust a lot! But I have to go through barriers before I can actually do this. When I do, though, it is so natural and easy and I go back to being hard on myself for not doing that in the first place! This being hard on ourselves is a sand trap.

I look to children as my highest advisors. Their natural innocence and curiosity have no notion of hesitation and they are born without a filter. For their survival, they depend on this type of living in order to learn how to talk, walk, eat, and care (or not care).

Somehow, I am going to have to learn to grow backwards as I age. To take back the type of curiosity that I once thrived on as a child, before I learned that I was guilty of anything. I am coming to find that I will not be able to live without it if I want to be happy.