Chantel Netimah: Don’t Judge Yourself too Harshly… You’re Human

Let me start by saying it doesn’t take a certain type of person to experience relationship issues, or struggle at work or with family or their body or whatever. The honest truth is, we all have struggles at some point in our lives. We are humans.

I’ve heard people say things like, ‘I can’t believe that I’m the kind of person who would get cheated on’ Errmm okay? Is there like a certain kind of person who gets cheated on? Who is that?

Or you hear things like ‘but I’m an educated woman. I was top of my class’ ‘I am well respected in my community’ ‘people look up to me’ How did I get myself into this’
Please is it education/good grades/being a boss or the likes, that exempts one from a crappy relationship/situation in life? So who’s meant bad breaks in life? People who don’t have an education or no significant achievement?

‘I’m a good person, how could something this bad happen to me’ Are you implying that only bad people should get bad breaks. Really? Okay!

Just so you know, life happens to the best of us. If there is something that life does, regardless of money, education, background or even appearance, it puts us through our paces. All of the things we go through are there to remind us that not only are we human but to get over ourselves instead of being led by our egos.

Having humility, empathy and compassion, for both ourselves and towards others is very vital. When we self-identify on our personality or other attributes, or we self-define our pain, at this point, we are simply blocking the lessons in the experience because we keep hounding ourselves on the head with our ‘mistakes’

We tend to let our ego keep doing the talking and we become disconnected from who are really are. We forget that we’re human and we also forget that those who we compare ourselves to or seeing an aspect of us as making us more valuable or less prone to certain things, are also human too. The next thing you know a narrative is taking place in our head where we ‘should’ have done this and that because we’re supposed to be ‘super human’

If 2016 didn’t teach me anything at all, I’ve definitely learnt not to make assumptions about people based on what I see because people’s real struggles do not show on their face.

We need to stop being so hard on ourselves. Actually, women need to stop being so hard on themselves and also judging other women. It’s already hard enough as it is out there without us having to write each other off. Like we don’t have our own skeletons.

We need to stop competing with each other, there’s enough to go around. We also need to stop assuming that there must be something wrong with a woman because she’s single or can’t make a relationship work with an unavailable partner. We must stop assuming that ‘good looking’ and ‘beautiful people’ have it easy… because, they don’t.

There are plenty of so-called ‘good looking’ and ‘beautiful people’ out there who struggle and battle with depression and loneliness, with people around them not taking the time to pay attention or to ask questions. They assume that they have the looks, so what problems could they possibly have?

We equally also need to stop judging people based on what we deem as a lesser appearance. Simply because they look nothing like us.

Men need to stop assuming that a guy is weak because he got cheated on or that there’s something wrong with him if he doesn’t want to run out there and sow his wild oats. Guys you don’t have to lie about a woman because your friends laugh at you that she left you for a ‘hotter’ looking man. It’s never that deep. It is ok to be sensitive; it’s ok to be hurt. Actually, it’s okay to have emotions and express them; but it’s never okay to lie, because of your ego.

In fact, men and women need to stop basing their self-esteem on how they deal with situations or what people would think. It’s really not fair to judge ourselves simply because we ask for help, or for feeling lonely or depressed.
We are human. We must stop dehumanising ourselves and others

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