Krapsakas

What is extreme and do we need it in our lives?

I’ve mentioned here and there how no extreme is good.

No extreme temperatures – only hot, only cold.
No extreme diets – undereating or overeating. Specifically, only excessive consumption of any food.
Excessive giving of yourself to someone else, whether in time or physically.
Excessive focus on a religion or belief.
And the list could be written almost endlessly here.

Extremes are not good, but we need to feel and experience them from time to time so we can understand what suits us and what doesn’t.

If you only eat bread, which is carbohydrates in general. Then your body will lack vitamins.

If you only eat meat, you will get iron, but you will lack other nutrients.

If you only believe in the Universe, angels, etc., and dedicate yourself 100% to your spiritual and energetic healing, you forget to live and enjoy a normal, simple life.
The present. The life where you gain different experiences and collect memories.

If you’re head over heels in love and your new motto is to breathe in tune with your partner and do only what’s important to them, then you’re losing yourself.

If you are stuck in your bad memories or (childhood) traumas, you will not notice that today, here and now you are no longer there in the past.
Yes! There is one exception here – if you are still in a trauma environment or a trauma-like environment, then it is extremely difficult or even impossible to focus on the present. In this case, please find the first opportunity to permanently leave the trauma-creating environment.

It’s a strange paradox that living in extremes is not good for us, but at the same time, we must gain knowledge.

A sense of where our boundaries lie, what is okay for us and what is not.

This is actually very similar to the development of a toddler, where a child feels and perceives boundaries through experience.

Let me give you a more specific example:

You are a small child. Let’s say you are 5 years old and you have finally gotten rid of your training wheels.
You enjoy riding a bicycle.
At some point, you start to like speed. You crank the pedals of your bicycle as fast as your legs can move. Just faster and faster. Freedom! The wind on your face and your hair flying. A smile. A smile so big and sincere that your mouth is to your ears. Adrenaline! Anything is possible and there are no limits!

-BoOoOoM-

The next moment you find yourself lying on the ground next to your bike.
You have fallen and been hurt and you feel very scared.
The culprit is a tree stump that you did not see on the way in your great excitement and enjoyment of freedom.

Are you going to stop riding your bike now?

Or you’ll cry your tears out. You’ll be mad at your bike for a while, and maybe at yourself for not noticing that branch.
But you wipe your knees and hands clean. You wipe away your tears. You get up, pick up your bike, and keep riding.
This time, paying a little more attention to the road.

Do you get the point of my example?

Riding a bike at higher speeds and savoring the feeling of freedom is not bad. It can go to extremes if you do it recklessly. But having experienced the extreme, you are more aware of the consequences and how it affects you.

Sometimes we need to experience extremes over and over again.
Until we get sick of it and don’t want to hear or see anything about it anymore.

Only then do we realize that it is extreme for us.
And it is also okay to experience extremes over a longer period of time.
There is no set time here, when extremes should become clear to us.

My last major extreme was taking responsibility for other people’s feelings and pleasing people.
At the same time suppressing my own feelings and needs.

As a little child, I was a big giggelmug, running around, curious about the world, and asking a lot of questions about why something works and why it is necessary.
It was too much for my parents and they couldn’t cope with it. Above all, they had trouble loving themselves and allowing themselves to be loved.
To somehow “manage” me, they began to mentally push me into a very specific box over the years. How I should behave and what should be my personality.
These beliefs and the obligation to behave the way they were instilled in me as a child stayed with me even after I moved out of home.
This drove me to extremes overall more than 20 years.

Until at some point it became so incredibly unpleasant to me that I simply couldn’t behave like this anymore.

Today I’m at the other extreme – where I love myself so much that I want to tell everyone about it. Haha.

Why is this so funny and weird to me at the same time?

Because I know that the general rule is that if a person talks loudly about how cool and nice they are, then they are not.

No Alpha beats their chest with their fist and says loudly: “I am an Alpha!”. This is done by a person who does not believe in themselves and is far from a real Alpha.

A real Alpha IS an Alpha. With their actions. With their behavior. They don’t need to proclaim it loudly to everyone. Others see and feel it anyway.

If I crow like a rooster to everyone (a reference to Estonian culture and sayings) and announce that I love myself, do I not really love myself?
Yes, l love myself.

It’s just that what in my eyes today is “Oh my God! I’m so cold and arrogant!” or “How can I love myself so selflessly!?” is another person’s ordinary day/ life.
For them, it’s like buying bread at the grocery store after a day at work.
When you buy bread, you don’t think, “Wow! This is something special!” You just buy bread.

But if you’ve been in an extreme where loving yourself is taboo and discouraged. Where you get a lot of mental abuse in return for standing up for yourself.. then loving yourself, affirming yourself, and standing up for yourself in this way feels like a huge extreme and a feeling of “Okou, did I just say that out loud?”. Which is not really an extreme, it’s just an acceptance of a new environment.

So, who says what is extreme at the end of the day?

Thank you for listening to my TED talk 🙏🏼☺️.

The image is taken from Pinterest. Unfortunately, I don’t know who the author of the image is, as there was no reference.*

If you feel that this is okay for you, I would love to hear in the comments what have been extreme experiences for you or what you think about this topic? 😊

Toodaloo,
Krapsakas Agnes