Dear Self,I'm proud of you! You've managed to have a 100% track record of survival, and you (hopefully) will continue for some time, yet, and be okay!
Yes you can. We discussed this already in another post.
So, let's do this.
~ me
If you've been following along, I've been inspired by Christine Morgan's book, "Motivational Mondays". (I have not been contracted to "promote" this book, by the way. I'm only doing this as a personal challenge, but I don't want to cheat Christine in her creation.) This is the 5th week in my journey, and so I continue:
"We don't know who we are
until we see what we can do."
~ Martha Grimes
So, what can I do to demonstrate to myself, who I am? As she asks, "What can I do this week to inspire myself?" Quite honestly, the PB Facebook Community Page does a lot of that kind of thing, for me, as does this blog project. By working on the Project daily, I am practically forced to find positive and hopefully inspiring things, posts, images...what have you, to share with those who are members of the community. I've had positive feedback, so I presume it does do something good for others, too.
I am a person who is generally positive, by nature. Some have called me a "survivor", for various reasons - I'm still here, right? I mean, I've enough issues going on, and I've definitely hit "the bottom" more than a few times, each time finding that it gets a little lower. But I'm still here, and I'm still trying to find hope and light, somewhere...wherever I can find it, and in any quality or quantity available. So I guess that works. Being able to reach out and find others reaching back, produces a very rich and satisfying, sustaining energy for me, as well.
In other ways...since that was the easy answer...what can I do? How can I show myself something more...something better, richer, deeper...and how can I show myself that I am a person of value? That's really the question, I guess. So many of us grow up with our lives teaching us to believe that we aren't of value. We learn that there is nothing we can do that will prove our worth, and then when we're grown up, we have learned it so well, it seems that no matter what we do, nor how we try, we will never see ourselves as anything worth loving, worth accepting, and worth whatever good things this life could try to hand us. We then project that message, and it is reflected back to us because that is what we attract: people who treat us as we project ourselves to be. Kinda sad, hmm? But it's true for too many people in this world.
I don't remember the first time I learned the concept of a mantra. In fact, it was years before I even learned the word. I remember being taught that I could teach myself to believe something, if I repeated it enough to myself, aloud. It sounds impossible, but it's actually rather true. For some reason, the mind accepts things that are said out loud, more than those we just think or feel, or even read. Saying it to ourselves cements the lesson, and thereby over time, changes our perception of the world.
Yeah, I know...but it's true. I've done it. I pretty much had to, actually. When I was a girl, I had far, too many negative messages shoved at me, and by the time I was a middle teen, I believed them all. So when I learned how to do this practice of repeating messages out loud, to myself, it was more a matter of survival, than a simple experiment!
These days, often my mantra goes something like this (and pardon the crassness of the one phrase): "I was who I was, and I am who I am; I did the best I could with what I had back then, and I'm doing the best I can with what I have now. If all I've got is crap, well, crap makes a mess."
There are things in my life, for which I've had to work on forgiving myself. I know I'm not the only person out there with this challenge; in fact, I've had people tell me that there are things they simply cannot forgive themselves for doing. But that mantra has been something that has helped me begin the process of healing from those things that have caused me to hurt due to my own choices or being. I have chosen to heal, and to grow to love myself, and I have found this to be a powerful tool in that process.
Honestly, many (if not most) of those things actually were not my doing; I cannot help being born with "bad wiring", so to speak; I cannot help that I was brought up to believe what I have believed; I cannot help that choices I have had to make were a direct result of some of those things! But I can choose to learn from them; I can choose to practice self-love and forgiveness; I can try to creatively find ways to make choices with which I can be more satisfied!
Perhaps it's time that I engage myself a bit more carefully and more focused, so that I can work towards greater inspiration and self-acceptance. Maybe my saying this "out loud" here, can help inspire you to try this for yourself. It might just be, that such things could be the beginning of greater things ahead.
Indeed; better days ahead, my friends.
I am a person who is generally positive, by nature. Some have called me a "survivor", for various reasons - I'm still here, right? I mean, I've enough issues going on, and I've definitely hit "the bottom" more than a few times, each time finding that it gets a little lower. But I'm still here, and I'm still trying to find hope and light, somewhere...wherever I can find it, and in any quality or quantity available. So I guess that works. Being able to reach out and find others reaching back, produces a very rich and satisfying, sustaining energy for me, as well.
In other ways...since that was the easy answer...what can I do? How can I show myself something more...something better, richer, deeper...and how can I show myself that I am a person of value? That's really the question, I guess. So many of us grow up with our lives teaching us to believe that we aren't of value. We learn that there is nothing we can do that will prove our worth, and then when we're grown up, we have learned it so well, it seems that no matter what we do, nor how we try, we will never see ourselves as anything worth loving, worth accepting, and worth whatever good things this life could try to hand us. We then project that message, and it is reflected back to us because that is what we attract: people who treat us as we project ourselves to be. Kinda sad, hmm? But it's true for too many people in this world.
I don't remember the first time I learned the concept of a mantra. In fact, it was years before I even learned the word. I remember being taught that I could teach myself to believe something, if I repeated it enough to myself, aloud. It sounds impossible, but it's actually rather true. For some reason, the mind accepts things that are said out loud, more than those we just think or feel, or even read. Saying it to ourselves cements the lesson, and thereby over time, changes our perception of the world.
Yeah, I know...but it's true. I've done it. I pretty much had to, actually. When I was a girl, I had far, too many negative messages shoved at me, and by the time I was a middle teen, I believed them all. So when I learned how to do this practice of repeating messages out loud, to myself, it was more a matter of survival, than a simple experiment!
These days, often my mantra goes something like this (and pardon the crassness of the one phrase): "I was who I was, and I am who I am; I did the best I could with what I had back then, and I'm doing the best I can with what I have now. If all I've got is crap, well, crap makes a mess."
There are things in my life, for which I've had to work on forgiving myself. I know I'm not the only person out there with this challenge; in fact, I've had people tell me that there are things they simply cannot forgive themselves for doing. But that mantra has been something that has helped me begin the process of healing from those things that have caused me to hurt due to my own choices or being. I have chosen to heal, and to grow to love myself, and I have found this to be a powerful tool in that process.
Honestly, many (if not most) of those things actually were not my doing; I cannot help being born with "bad wiring", so to speak; I cannot help that I was brought up to believe what I have believed; I cannot help that choices I have had to make were a direct result of some of those things! But I can choose to learn from them; I can choose to practice self-love and forgiveness; I can try to creatively find ways to make choices with which I can be more satisfied!
Perhaps it's time that I engage myself a bit more carefully and more focused, so that I can work towards greater inspiration and self-acceptance. Maybe my saying this "out loud" here, can help inspire you to try this for yourself. It might just be, that such things could be the beginning of greater things ahead.
Indeed; better days ahead, my friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment