The greatest disappointment is you disappointing you

​We can get there for a lot of reasons - to this place where we live trying not to disappoint anyone. Maybe we have different reasons, but the exhaustion is the same. The exhaustion of juggling everyone else's satisfaction in an attempt to live our most satisfying life.

You wake up one day and you wonder - everyone seems pretty satisfied with me. Why is it then that I feel so dissatisfied with myself?

There is something that gets lost along the way while you're taking inventory of what satisfies the people around you. What gets lost is the inventory of things that make you satisfied with yourself. We can get so wrapped up in not disappointing others that disappointing ourselves becomes an unspoken and reasonable sacrifice to make along the way.

Until you realize you've sacrificed you.

Sometimes it's not even you that is not disappointing others. It's a you that you create and send out to please others while you sit with yourself wishing you were better at liking you.

In fact, I think that's how we come to know ourselves best. When we're in the middle of these moments of doing things we'd never do if the person we didn't want to disappoint was me.

Life changes when you take stock of what is important to you. Life changes when you abandon the obligation to not disappointing others to pursue those things that are important to you.

To pursue not living disappointed with yourself.

It's Monday. You may disappoint some people this week. But at the end of the week the most important question is not going to be "how many people did I disappoint this week?"

The most important question is going to be, "am I disappointed in me?"

Starting your week figuring out how to say 'no' to that question is a great way to start the week.