A person can spend so long working on themselves that they forget that sometimes they simply need to live.
To fix nothing, to stop examining every mistake and to stop searching for another flaw that must be removed before they allow themselves peace.
We have grown accustomed to speaking of progress as though a human being were a machine that needed constant improvement.
Get up earlier. Work more. Think better. Be more disciplined. Do not complain. Do not stop. Do not waste time.
Little by little, life stops being life and becomes a construction site.
We are always tearing something down, repairing it and building onto it.
We are never finished. Never good enough.
Every success lasts for a few moments, and then we are already looking for the next step because we have learned that our worth depends on continuing to advance.
We no longer know how to be proud of ourselves. We only know how to find another reason why we are still not good enough.
Even rest becomes an obligation.
We rest so that we can be more productive tomorrow. We read to become smarter. We train to look better. We travel so that we have something to show.
Everything must have a purpose. Everything except us.
Perhaps you do not need more discipline. Perhaps you need a little gentleness toward the person who has already travelled roads no one knows about.
Perhaps being tired does not make you lazy. Perhaps needing a break does not make you weak.
Perhaps you do not have to turn every part of yourself into an advantage, a result or proof of your worth.
You did not come into this world to spend your whole life fixing yourself. You are not a fault to be repaired.
You are not an unfinished product that will deserve love, peace and respect only one day.
Work on yourself. Grow. Change. But be careful that, in the endless search for a better version of yourself, you do not begin to despise the one who brought you this far.
Because perhaps the greatest progress does not begin when you ask even more of yourself.
Perhaps it begins when you admit for the first time that, despite everything you have yet to become, you already deserve to live without the constant feeling that you are not enough.
Do not lose yourself trying to earn the right to be yourself.
From the manuscript of the book “Don’t Lose Yourself While Building a Life”
Reshid Dervishi