I have a serious question for you.
If you had a friend that talked to you like you talk to you, would you still be friends?
I've talked and written in the past about the importance of talking to yourself over listening to yourself. It's imperative that you take an active role in directing the thoughts that run your through your head. My friend and colleague, Marissa Stevens (Nae Freyling) wrote a post about that quote here regarding her journey with cancer and life.
Which brings me back to my questions for you.
Q. What do you say to yourself when you do something silly like drop a container of laundry soap? Is it, "I'm such an idiot!" or some other disparaging remark?
Q. What do you say to yourself when opportunity for success and therefore failure presents itself?
Q. What do you way to yourself when you dream?
Q. What do you say to yourself when someone pays you a compliment? Do you mentally catalogue all of your shortcomings?
Q. What do you say to yourself when someone offers you criticism? Do you flat out reject as hate or do you pile on top of it moving well beyond the original thought of the person ?
Your answers matter because your life will be driven by your thoughts. Like a hidden steering wheel, our brain controls much of how our body responds to the world around us.
This is not a post about some Pollyanna like false talk. It is not a post about some sort of false pie in the sky hope.
It is a post about being honest about your worth. It is a post about believing you have worth simply because you exist. You bring something to the world that no on else brings it.
You're not an idiot because something bad happened like you lost $100 that you can't afford to lose. You're not shameful because someone molested or raped you as a child. You didn't deserve to be raped because you were drunk at a party. Your worth isn't diminished because your father didn't know how to adequately love you. You're not worthless because your mom took every chance she could to remind you that you were an accident that wasn't planned.
I do not believe you are an accident. I do believe you have worth.
And at least part of my mission to convince you of the same thing. Our world seems caught between unfettered narcissism and overwhelming self loathing.
Troubles come for us all, but they do not have to define any of us.
Which brings me back to my first question. Would you be friends with someone who talked to you like you talk to yourself?
If they answer to that is no, why do you talk to yourself that way?
What would happen if you started to talking to yourself in a different way? What would happen if you started talking to yourself in an honest and encouraging way?
Why not run an experiment and find out?