We cannot play victim in the morning and move mountains in the afternoon

on managing the small cycles of life

No matter how much we try to take agency over life, it often seems to want to beat us into submission. As if it’s designed that way.

We keep falling and getting back up — but when do we just walk steadily toward what we want, uninterrupted?

Because it doesn’t seem like this for everyone.

Why do some people approach life with such audacity?
What do they know that we don’t?

I can’t answer all of these questions. But I can share what has been working for me lately.

And this is not another piece about a morning routine — because honestly, mine is constantly fluctuating. But it’s fluctuating in one particular way.

I’ve started noticing how the emotional tone I set in the evening affects my sleep, which then affects my morning, which shapes the entire day ahead. It dictates my capacity.

Emotional posture precedes action.
It colors it.

Even if I’ve had a “bad” day and feel ashamed or unbalanced, I can still choose my perspective on it.

My inner critic used to find ways to ambush me while I was falling asleep — at my most vulnerable.

That voice would echo in my dreams, then wake me up with a slap of guilt and a kick of shame.

I would continue making decisions to avoid failing rather than to win.

That may seem like a small difference — but the devil is in the details.

Your internal position completely changes how you aim.

And you don’t need to rewrite your entire life story in order to adjust that position.

Dignity, honor, and self-respect don’t need firm ground.
They don’t need proof.
They should be a given.

A gift — from you to you.

When we play victim, we end up a victim.

When we dramatize the victim story, we give it more power.

When we set limits in our point of view, we inevitably hit those limits somewhere down the line.

Being tired is valid.
Feeling unwanted is valid.

But who made the rules?

We may not be able to rewrite the past — but we can write a generous review of it.

You have always done your best with the information you had at the time.

Why not cut yourself some slack and decide that you get to make your own rules?

Get yourself off your own back.
Are you too harsh on yourself?

You deserve compassion, steadiness, and stability.
If the world hasn’t given them to you, you can still let them take space in your psyche.

Create them through self-forgiveness — or rather, by realizing there is nothing to forgive.

You did the best you could.
What is there to feel guilty about in that?

This world may not have been designed for sensitive people like us — but we are the antidote to its harsher ways. And we need to own that with the self-respect it deserves.

I know you extend this compassion and understanding to others.

Just not enough to yourself.

And that is the real tragedy.

That someone convinced you that you don’t deserve your own friendship and support.

That you need to guilt-trip yourself into moving forward.

This is what many people who seem to have it easy understand.

This agency we can reclaim is very quiet.

It doesn’t need to be shouted from rooftops or posted about.

It only needs one audience — the most important one of all.

Yourself.

And you don’t need to move a mountain to regain that self-respect.

You only need to change how you look at it.