This Year, Please Stop Fighting Battles You Cant Win
Please stop fighting battles you cannot win.
Please stop trying to shop your way into self-esteem. Please stop trying to convince people to love you when they have no intent to. Please stop worrying about problems you can’t solve. Please stop arguing with people who have no intent of hearing you.
In life, there are battles that we can win and battles that we can’t. If this were a game and you knew the only outcome was an inevitable loss, you would never participate. So why do you continue to play these mind games with yourself in which the only possible outcome is a reduction of your quality of life?
When you worry about a problem that isn’t yours to solve, you are fighting a battle that you cannot win. You’re trying to overthink your way into controlling someone else’s behavior. You’re misattributing their choices to a judgment about who you are. Worse, you think that everyone else around you needs to be okay for you to feel stable. These are all choices that rob you of your autonomy and power. There is no conclusion to this other than that you becoming progressively more manic and controlling, and reducing yourself slowly to the worst possible version of who you could be.
When you try to buy your way into self-esteem, you are fighting a battle you cannot win. You keep trying to pin the problem onto something else — you think you’re one more apartment upgrade, one more great Instagram picture, one more outfit or one more beauty procedure away from really being comfortable with yourself. You’re placing your sense of self on something outside of you, something always just beyond your reach. Until you are willing to stay still and show up and feel worthy simply by offering your presence, nothing around you is going to make you feel better, it’s only going to drive you farther away from yourself.
When you try to convince someone to love you, you are fighting a battle you cannot win. Love is a free flowing thing. If someone does not give it effortlessly, it is not worth pursuing. If you have gotten to the point where you are so desperate for the presence of someone who has shown you that they do not care, eventually you have to ask yourself what they are doing for you that you cannot do for yourself. Are they making you feel safe, giving you direction, making you feel wanted? Whatever it is, you have to start meeting that need in a way that’s actually sustainable. Love you have to beg for is not love, it is attachment.
When you try to argue with people who have no intent of hearing you, you are fighting a battle you cannot win. No, of course you don’t want to give up on anyone, but eventually you have to realize that all of the stress and energy you pour into trying to convince someone to think a way that they refuse to — even if it would be better for them long-term — is just your own energy wasted. If someone isn’t willing to change, they aren’t going to change, and nothing you say or do will amend that.
Eventually, you have to decide that you care enough about yourself to stop fighting battles that are unfair to you.
Eventually, you have to decide that you’re not going to keep investing your time and energy into thoughts and people that are never going to give you anything back. Eventually, you have to stop yourself mid-spiral and admit defeat. When you realize that there is no way for you to win a battle that isn’t yours to fight, you don’t lose — you’re freed.
Read more: https://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2020/01/this-year-please-stop-fighting-battles-you-cant-win