1. Know your value and stick to it.
There is “being nice”, and then there is the fact that, sometimes “being nice” makes you NOT nice to people around you. This is the case, often, at work, at school, with family.
(this is particularly the case in matters of love, or rather amor and eros, sometimes it’s nice to not be so nice… but this is a digression for another day.)
2. Know your character flaws, with self-knowledge comes a sort of insight that is highly useful.
3. Being blind to what is right in front of you is stupidity of the greatest height.
Not valuing your self and labor, in other words, not knowing when to “Say No” to excessive requests made of you, by one who is using you, puts you in a situation in which your efforts become non sustainable.
This puts you in a situation in which you end up shortchanging everyone around you because you are operating from a deficit.
Example. You agree to do a job for X, knowing that the job is worth (X + 10) however due to loyalty, or the desire to please, you go along with this, WHILE you owe labor to many others puts you in a pickle in which you expend the effort that job (X + 10) would take, while being compensated for just X, or
[(X + 10) – 10]
While having to fulfill other obligations requiring similar expenditures of labor and time, results in a sort of “vampire effect” where you have to cannibalise energy and resources from other sources in order to maintain an equilibrium.
You in effect “rob from peter and mary to pay paul”.
A deficit occurs, view it as a leak, unless it is plugged up the situation grows non sustainable, BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO COMPENSATE FOR THAT MISSING (- 10). Somehow, somewhere.
In my life, this has involved working absurd hours, which results in sleep deprivation, which further lessens my ability to give labor and attention to those I promised this to, this situation is unsustainable and results in mental fatigue, physical fatigue, and poor health.
Really poor health….
After being quite ill for almost 3 weeks, so ill that for almost 2 weeks I couldn’t even muster the strength to go into work, I realized something that I already knew but that I just didn’t want to face…
And I have no one but myself to blame 🙂 That is the magic of it all, when you KNOWINGLY allow yourself to be used, because you think that you are getting something in return…
Or out of the perception of a perceived debt owed to someone…
Guess what, you are being used in a way that is unsustainable, eventually you will crash and burn and make a HORRIBLE cock-up of everything else that you are doing…
This results in strained friendships.
Strained business and/or employment.
And a sort of
Friends don’t use friends.
Friends shouldn’t shortchange friends.
If stress from the course of your life makes you physically ill, you probably should stop it..
So true. I worked 10 days straight – 12 hours a day – and made an error of judgement. And no thanks for my labours – which were very valuable.
It’s a shame when this happens. You work hard, and not a word of thanks.
I heard: Jesus Christ was not appreciated in His time. Why do you expect to be? And you know what happened to Him.
I’ve got to give that one to you, good point