bikini karma.

the other day while i was driving to get lunch i was thinking about my recently re-found resolution of being a nicer person when the driver in front of me was behaving like a complete ass and i started yelling “you fucking asshole”. the irony of this timing wasn’t lost on me and i thought thanks for irony to give us inspiration for blog posts.

so i started writing and then i stopped. it wasn’t a post i wanted to write and definitely not one i wanted to share. it felt way too personal. i don’t mind personal, you know that, and i guess i share things that other people would never share in a million years so each has a personal comfort zone of sharing. last year i challenged myself to be a nice person for one week and i wrote about it here. after searching my own blog (as i do these days since i seem to repeat my stories) i realized i did the exact same thing again a mere two month later. this time the challenge was to be a nice person for two weeks, do yoga, write a story, and learn french every day. so i can officially say my memory sucks in addition to my ability to be nice or to speak french.

whether i failed or not, sharing it back then was fine. it felt like sharing an unsuccessful diet attempt. you are just mildly embarrassed while you write, munch on kfc, and tell yourself that you actually don’t need a diet, you are okay just the way you are. 

sharing now that i am trying again feels different. it feels like sharing a picture of me in a bikini under fluorescent light after said kfc lunch – really, really uncomfortable.

but uncomfortable or not i have decided to do it anyhow and share the bikini picture: 

(men who read this - you do realize there is no real bikini picture, right?)

after each yoga class i conclude with the words “pure thoughts, pure words, pure hearts”, but i don’t practise any of it in the outside world. the truth about me is that i don’t think i am a very nice person. i sure have many endearing qualities but nice in the true sense of the word is not one of them. i like to be right and yes, often at the expense of being kind. i am easily annoyed by other people and what i perceive as their shortcomings. sometimes i seek things out that i know will annoy me. a friend of mine started to call me annoyka when he realized that about me. and guess what? at the time i didn’t even mind it much, i thought it was kind of cool. sometimes you have to express annoyance and surely that is much better than to be an everlasting cheerleader, a high- fiver to all? i am the most impatient. i call myself tolerant, yet i am very judgmental. i judge people who constantly smile and hug others or the ones that go to church or those who use words like champers.

i know all of this about me deep down, but admitting it to myself or to anybody is really hard.

so after a year of feeling a bit out of sorts and discontent, i started to actively search for something new this year. i wasn’t quite sure whether i needed a new job, a new home or a new hair cut so you can imagine that the search wasn’t going very well. eventually it dawned on me that while i was waiting for the epiphany of what the new should be, i could use my time wisely and look on the inside. i realized there was more to the saying be the change you want to see in the world than it being a phrase for yoga studios. i decided i should try to change and become a better version of me. not in the way of a thinner me or a more beautiful me or a me, that really enjoys foreign movies, or a standing-still-in-forehead-to-knee-pose-for-a-full-minute me. no, just a me that is a bit nicer, a bit more compassionate, a bit more forgiving, a bit more paying it forward.

i decided it needed to become a lifestyle change rather than a fad diet this being nice business and so it is a work in progress. at times i am better at it than at others. i think that is quite normal and as the first order of being nicer includes being nicer to myself, i don’t beat myself up about it anymore. last week i found the perfect inspiration to get back into it though when i read a post 10 ways to get what you want in life. one of the points summed my why up best:

be nice to people.

“your karma is a continuum, part of the process that is happening to you now, not something far away in future life.” – osho

this is my favourite one, and it's important to add that you should be nice to everyone whether you think they can do something for you or not. you’ll feel more connected to yourself and your passion when you start to extend your generosity toward people who can’t offer you anything other than a smile in return.

with that i realized that altruistic reasons to better yourself are all well and good, but at the end of the day who really cares if i am being a bitch? do you care? you shouldn’t. does it affect you? maybe, but it really shouldn’t. i’m being a bitch, not you. i have to live with myself, not you.

 

so here you have my bikini picture - i’m working on not being a bitch so karma doesn’t have a reason to be one either. what is yours?