The Harmony of Disharmony

The Beginning:

In this blog post, I want to share my journey to finding harmony. My story begins deep inside my inner self. I’ve spent the better part of my life living with extreme emotional anxiety. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have any anxiety.

It doesn’t take a lot to get me all worked up in a frenzy. I have screamed my voice out. I have cried an ocean of tears. These extreme emotions have even hurt the people in life that love me the most.

It is an issue that has involved me asking myself some difficult questions. How much damage have I done? How good of a person am I? Am I worthy of being loved? At times, the answers to these questions have been pure self-deprecation.

In my moments of extreme emotional anguish, I have done things that I regret; said things that I wish I could take back. But I can't do that. The damage has already been done.

Sometimes my mind has even gone to darker thoughts of hurting myself. Thankfully, I have never followed through with doing anything to myself. And you shouldn’t either.

Throughout my life, I have slowly but surely learned to love myself more. Loving myself is hard sometimes, but I have come to realize that there is beauty in the emotions of humans; there is harmony in disharmony.

Finding The Beauty in Disharmony:

But how is that possible? How could these 2 polar opposite words have any correlation? After all, harmony comes from the Latin word “harmonia” meaning to have an agreement or union.

The truth is that to have union in life; you have to be content with the messy parts of life. Not everything in life is always going to be perfect. And that is ok. When you’re a perfectionist, like so many people are, it’s easy to want to harmonize and search for order and balance. That kind of toxic mindset demands a rigorous amount of hard work. If something is not right, it can be easy to fall into the mindset of getting stressed and investing a lot of energy to get everything back to balance, as if it was even possible in the first place.

It is important to remember that harmony, true harmony, means being content with a little bit of disorder. Not everything in life is going to go the way I want it to. Yes, there will be people in life who will upset me and push my boundaries.

That's all just fine; because I control how I react. I control my emotions; they do not control me. I choose to be content with myself. I choose to love myself. And you can too. All you have to do is look deep down inside yourself and you will see that there is a lot of beauty to discover. It's been a long journey to finding harmony. And it's not over yet.

Forgiveness:

Even in the darkest of moments, there can be light. Sometimes it will be just a glimmer of light, but as long as it’s shining, that’s all that matters. When life is crappy, it can be hard to think positively. But to find harmony, one must be capable of finding peace in the messiness that life is.

Something I always do when I’m upset is to let my unpleasant emotions go through their natural flow.

Most importantly, I try to understand why I am feeling this way. Is it justified? Or am I not being rational? Was this problem a result of something that could have been avoided had I taken a different approach? After I am done asking those questions, it is time to move on and correct what is wrong. After the wrong has been corrected, I forgive myself for any harm that might have happened. True insanity is trying again and again expecting a different result. What’s insanity is beating myself up for all of my life's woes and misfortunes. If the world can still find it in its heart to forgive me, I can too.

What's most important though is that I do not ever bash myself for feeling what I felt. I will always allow myself to feel my negative emotions without feeling guilty about it. It's important to understand why I am feeling the way I feel. However, it is even more important for me to be patient with myself and let my emotions guide me as to why I am feeling this way.

How To See The Light In The Dark:

Love is the most powerful force of optimism in the world. It has the power to pull even the most lost person out of the abyss of darkness. There is the act of love, but there is also a personality factor that comes into play. When I'm stressed, everything can feel so much harder. My anxiety becomes harder to manage and can lead to me going through an aggressive mood swing if I don’t keep myself in check.

It's in these moments that I need to love myself the most. Because I know that I have good qualities as well. Qualities that have attracted good people into my life that love me.

One of my favorite qualities of myself is how great I am at supporting other people. Jealousy is quite possibly one of the worst traits a person can have. I mean it when I say that I don’t have a jealous bone in my body. I will always do my best to be the loudest cheerleader in the room for anyone.

Another one of my favorite qualities is my thoughtfulness. I will never let my true feelings about someone go quiet. Anyone who knows me knows that I will always be honest with how I feel about them. And I encourage that same kind of thoughtfulness to the people reading this. Never be afraid to tell someone how you feel; because you never know when your last day alive will be. When that last day does come, please do not have any regrets.

I have no regrets. None at all. I have such an amazing life with so much to be grateful for. One of the biggest things that I am grateful for is love. The love that I have received from myself, my friends, and my family has woken me up and helped answer one crucial question: How good of a person am I? Well if I have two parental figures in my life who have seen the absolute worst of me and still find it in their hearts to tell me how proud they are of the man I am becoming, I can’t be all that bad. If my friends can look at me and see a bright young man filled with passion and a lust for telling stories. How bad can I be? If I can look back at life with a beautiful smile. How bad can I be? The answer is quite simple: not bad, not bad at all.

About The Author

Manuel F. Garcia (Manny for short) was born in Venezuela. South America. All his life, Manny has been bilingual speaking both Spanish and English fluently. Currently, Manny is a college student studying Journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is most well-known for his coverage of Baseball and Tennis for the school's sportscast called the Rebel Report. Here at the Love Yourself Foundation, he is our regular content creator on Instagram. If you want to keep up with him, you can follow him on Instagram @mannyslaugh.