#ProTip – And you really need to listen to this one. This is for all of you struggling for something. Whether it is your family, your friends, your tribe, your community, your world or your own life, whatever you are struggling for, this is for you.
It’s okay to cry.
Those late nights, after everyone else has gone to sleep, when you are alone on the couch and you break down and weep. It’s okay. It does not make you weak. It does not make you foolish. It does not make you small.
It makes you strong;
it makes you wise;
it makes you huge when you get back up the next day and go at it again.
It is okay to cry. There is no shame in that. Everybody does it. Listen carefully. Everybody. Does. It. Yeah, I do it, too.
You see all those people who look so successful, who are out there “killing it.” I guarantee you that every single one of them cries. I know because they tell me.
#Storytime I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, someone who is known as an emerging leader, who has big, amazing ideas and is working hard to make those ideas happen, and if they do happen, they will change the world. We were swapping struggle stories and at a pause in the conversation, I looked him straight in the eye and I said,
“It’s okay to cry.”
He looked a little shocked, there was a long pause and he took a deep breath and kind of smiled a little and I could see him visibly relax.
When you realize that being beat up by a struggle is not a bad thing, it changes your whole mindset. It gives you the ability to take the beating without adding to it. Stop blaming yourself for being a weakling because you cry. Give yourself the freedom to express the pain of the struggle and you give yourself the freedom to recover from that pain. If you shame yourself for the pain, then you are just forcing yourself to have another struggle, one against your own prejudice.
Society tells us that we need to be strong. But strong is not not crying, strong is when you get back up. You know this. You KNOW this. You know you know this, but still you beat yourself up. Stop it. It’s okay to cry. Everything and everyone else is beating you up, stop helping them. via Facebook