In Your Head, In Your Head They Are Fighting

I know I already posted something today but I just can't help myself. I've been reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I've been reading it a little bit at a time for a long while and wasn't really that into it until lately. The last few nights I've been reading it before bed and though it has been thought provoking and insightful in parts it wasn't really profound like I had expected from how some people have talked about it. That is until this last chapter I read. It's a chapter about Love, subtitled How to Really Love Yourself. I look at this title and think, "Ya right! This dude is going to actually teach me the secret to how to properly love myself. This is going to be another love yourself because God loves you bit that I've heard so many times." For some reason knowing God loves me just the way I am doesn't make me feel better about myself. I mean he loves EVERYONE even if they are totally (from a human perspective) not worth loving.

Donald Miller you surprised me! I was surprised by a few things. One was that he spoke about a kind of self esteem struggle that I think of as rare in men. I know men can have poor self image and problems with loving themselves but I never think about it being as sever or debilitating for them. I really related to his inability to accept a compliment, though I have been working on this and have seen great improvement. In fact now that I think about it I haven't argued with someone complimenting me in a while. He suggested that, at least for him, accepting compliments didn't feel like being humble and we are supposed to be humble. This struck a cord with me but it wasn't the most liberating thing I read.

He spoke about listening to the screaming negative voices in his head telling him he was disgusting when a sentiment occurred to him. I'm just going to quote the passage from the book. "I am certain it was the voice of God because it was accompanied by such a strong epiphany like a movement in a symphony or something. The sentiment was simple: Love your neighbor as yourself." Then skipping down a bit. "He was saying I would never talk to my neighbor the way I talked to myself, and that somehow I had come to believe it was wrong to kick other people around but it was okay to do it to myself." This really struck me. Maybe some of you are thinking that a statement like this is obvious. I think I have a vague recollection of someone saying something similar to this to me before but for someone who has had situations or other people that have hurt us and made us believe we are less valuable than others it can be easier to think of ourselves as worth less than our neighbors. So that makes it okay for us to speak to ourselves in a way we would never speak to others. It's not okay!

I have taken some big steps in fixing my self esteem lately. I am feeling far more confident and much more okay with the person I am. I think one of the things that has facilitated that change was a thought I had a while ago. Someone might have said this to me a long time ago too, I'm not sure, but if they did it's taken a while to really permeate into my mind and attitude. It's the idea that not accepting the compliments, or love that someone gives me is an insult to their credibility. By arguing with someone that says something kind I am telling them their opinion in not valid. By not accepting love from someone it is in a way saying they are stupid and have poor taste. I don't really think these people are stupid so why do I treat them like they are?

I know there are a few people out there that have mentioned to me that they have some of these same struggles. I know there are far to many people out there that don't think nearly highly enough of themselves. What I am going to say to you now is to stop! Stop dismissing the opinions of others like they are stupid and stop thinking it's not wrong say hateful and harsh things to yourself! Stop hating yourself because that is actually really insulting to the people that love you!

I think I actually heard your negative self talk after that last statement. Was that you that said "But nobody does love me."? You know that's not true! There are PLENTY of people that love you dearly so do something loving for them and try and accept it. You may think this is easier said than done but it has to start somewhere. Think about what you're saying to yourself. Every time you catch yourself saying something negative really think about it and realize that it's wrong. Slowly you'll notice your opinion of yourself will change.

Mine is.

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