"Don't think less of yourself, think of yourself less."
C.S. Lewis
"The moment you stop thinking about yourself all the time, a whole new world opens up to you."
Chris Hadfield
I often have people tell me that they have a hard time understanding how I used to be the way I was when I am the way I am now, and they ask what changed. I used to have a hard time answering this question because a lot of the more concrete things like quitting drugs, becoming responsible, going to school, etc., all seemed to be more the results than the actual thing that changed.
I've been asked this question so often over the years that I've given it a lot more thought than I would have otherwise, and the biggest change is that I stopped thinking about myself so much.
When I was young, I lived with a relentless and obsessive focus on myself. I spent all my time thinking about how I was feeling, what I wanted, what I thought about things, what I thought about other people, and what I thought other people thought about me.
Because I always thought about myself, I had no room to consider how these things might affect other people, so I was a bad friend, a bad brother, a bad boyfriend, and a bad son.
I don't like admitting that, but it's true, so there we go.
What we pay attention to matters because it starts to take over our whole world. What we focus on grows and starts to seem bigger than it is. When we do that with ourselves, all of our wants, needs, desires, and problems start to seem a lot bigger than they actually are.
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