It’s all about ME ...

It’s all about ME ...

For many years I had been feeling unfulfilled with life. I was able-bodied but feeling handicapped, married but feeling alone, working hard and earning a good salary but feeling broke and exhausted, and really feeling lost in a well structured and developed city because life was just not happening the way I wanted it to. I no longer wanted to live in Sydney!

Every single moment that passed, I sat day dreaming about a better life elsewhere. I dreamt mostly about going back to Africa where my 'real friends' and family lived; where labour was cheap so I could afford a cook, cleaner and gardener. With these things taken care of, life would be stress free! I would be able to afford myself more time on the things I wanted.

Despite being blessed with a good support system, all of this didn't seem much because I was not where I wanted to be in life. And at night I lay my head down on my pillow with a heavy chest and I wept bitterly in the night where no one could see my tears or hear my cries! Then I would awaken each day angrier at the world, and myself!  I thought that if I had made different decisions in my life, maybe just maybe, things would have been different and I would have been closer to realising my dreams than I now was. Maybe then, I would have been happier!

These thoughts consumed my mind daily then would be followed by an intense emotion of guilt because I thought I was being ungrateful! I was. Picture your life as a movie and you watching yourself on a TV screen. Isn't it the saddest thing to watch yourself go through life waiting for it to begin and thinking that if things happened a certain way then that would separate the feeling of merely existing from living a life with purpose? And yet, life is what happened to us when we were too busy waiting for it to happen.

It wasn’t until I read "The happiest of people did not have everything that they wanted: They just made the best of what they had" that my mindset began to shift. I desperately wanted to be happy because being unhappy was slowly 'wearing' me away! And because regardless of where I was on earth it was possible to be happy! But in order for me to be happy, I realised that I needed to be grateful for what I already had. Easier said than done, huh

But what drove me was remembering each time that while I was unhappy about not being able to afford a new-season designer pair of shoes, there was a person in the world without feet who was probably grateful for not having any feet because he wouldn't have to be moved from his loved ones to go and fight in a war torn country!

So every morning when I felt miserable and helpless for the things that I could not change, instead of worrying or complaining about what was not working in my life (why this person had done this to me, why I was always last in line, why life was so hard, why, why, why?) I made the conscious decision to be grateful. As soon as my feet touched the ground in the morning I began to say 'thank you' for all the things I was grateful for. Thank you for the things that I had. Thank you for having been blessed with all that I needed. Thank you that I HAD ENOUGH!

On my bus ride to work in the city I would say 'thank you' rather than ask God for the things I wanted. I would say, "Thank you for a new day. Thank you for the air in my lungs. Thank you for my two hands. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!"

Even when I was experiencing such a terrible day at work and wanted to quit my job, I would say, "Thank you for the job that paid bills. Thank you for my salary that puts food on the table, a roof over my head and clothes on my body!" The more sincere I was, the more I realised I had a lot to be grateful for, and the less time I had to be unthankful for everything because my blessings were too numerous to mention! The less I worried about the things I did not have because I had enough, the happier I felt. The happier life felt, the better I felt. When I began to feel really good and grateful about everything in my life, the better things that happened. Suddenly I was having the best time of my life!

But all of that did not come easy. Sometimes, my low emotions superseded my high emotions. It was unpleasant moving around with a heavy chest but wearing a smile when with friends and family. However perseverance kept me going! When I seemed to fall back on worry and regret, I reminded myself of the person with no feet and quickly shifted my focus to that of gratitude.

Through my struggle, I reminded myself again and again that life was really what I chose to make of it. If I chose to be miserable then I would, without doubt, attract misery! But when I shifted my mindset and chose to be happy no matter what happened to me, there was a positive spin to every situation regardless of if it were good or bad. I constantly reminded myself how blessed I was.

As humans we have the ability to shift our minds, emotions or feelings. Is it the things that we tell ourselves that we come to believe or the imprint they make on our hearts that shift us? If so, imagine the power or energy we possess and how much MORE we can become?

In my novel, 'Perception - Every young woman's battle to overcome her past', I talked about the words of Devine Miller who said that no matter how dreadful the course of her life had been, she would re live the same life and re endure the things that she had because in the end, she had a pocket full of past to share with her little ones; displaying gratitude on a higher level which all of us can attain, if we only shift our minds.

Kapesa Singogo Smith-Chatterjee

MCOM, BSc, HDA, A+, MCP, TSIA
BE SMART,
STAY BEAUTIFUL
AND NEVER STOP BELIEVING IN THE ALMIGHTY...