Stop Running From Yourself!

Who you gonna change in this world? Your mother? Your brother? Your lover? Your coworker? Well, forget those people. Try changing yourself. And by changing yourself, I don’t mean getting a new hairdo or moving to a new city. I mean going inside and changing the real inner-you.

I love clothes and over the years I’ve bought lots of them, hoping that they would somehow make me OK and acceptable to myself and the world around me. I especially love shirts and I’m always hoping I’m going to find just the right shirt that makes me look handsome and slender. You know, that one short that’s going to tell the whole world that I’m good enough. Unfortunately, there’s no shirt that can do that. There’s not even a “perfect” birthday suit that can do that if we aren’t OK with what’s underneath our skin.

Recently I met a man who told me he’s always changing jobs, even if it means picking up and moving to new cities. He lamented that he could just never seem to find the right job or workplace. I knew immediately what was going on inside of him. It wasn’t about the jobs or the cities he moved to across the country. It was about him. It was about the fact that he wasn’t comfortable inside himself and that he was running from himself. Every job provided the opportunity for a new escape from himself. The only problem was that sooner or later he had to realize that he couldn’t go to that new job or that new city without taking himself—and all of his inner-turmoil about himself-- along. Eventually, it all catches up with us and bites us in the butt again and again.

We can’t escape the discomfort we feel with ourselves by running away to new jobs or new cities; nor can we cover up the discomfort we feel about ourselves with new clothes. Sooner or later we have to realize that the problem isn’t outside of us. It isn’t with things or other people. It’s inside of us. It’s about us. And no outside things or places can cure our inner-problems with ourselves.

In what ways are you running from your inner-self? What our the outer-cures you turn to time and again in the futile attempt to cure your inner self-loathing? If you look carefully you will see a pattern of behavior you have developed to ease your inner-anxieties about yourself. It’s a pattern you turn to often, even though it has never worked for you. It has never completely solved the problem. It might provide temporary respite from you anxiety and fears about yourself, but time and again it has left you in the lurch.

Figure out your destructive patterns of behavior and throw them on the junk heap. It’s time to turn inside and discover why you are so uncomfortable with you, then admit to it, give it to a Higher Power and ask that Power to transform those things that cause you discomfort with yourself. Maybe “those things” need transforming or maybe you do so that you can come to accept “those things” as being OK and good enough. Either way, the answer is NOT outside of you. It’s inside. Find it and find your true happiness. No one else has to change. Only you do.