Kiss the Frog in the Mirror Goodbye!

You know, Kermit the Frog was right. It’s tough being green-- at least for those of us who look in the mirror every morning and see the reflection of a frog looking back at us. Green is nice for grass, but somehow it doesn’t make for a good complexion. But then, neither does acne, or age spots, or other undesirable blemishes that we choose not to accept. So we stand in front of the mirror each morning, day after day, rejecting ourselves and croaking “If only I looked like Brad Pitt” or “If only I looked like Natalie Portman.”

Worse yet, we want someone to come to our aid and rescue us from our dreaded froggy-ness. We wait impatiently for a Prince Valiant or a Maid Marian to come and kiss-away our greenness as they love us into being radiant beautiful people. Yes, we wait for the great impossibility. And it is impossible. No one can rescue us and no one can give us what we have refused to give to ourselves.

We may have allowed others to tell us that we were homely, or fat or unacceptable in some way, but they didn’t place a curse on us. They didn’t make us green. We chose to place a curse on ourselves. We chose to be frogs because we believed what they told us. And we can just as easily choose to believe better things about ourselves.

Children look into mirrors and are fascinated with seeing their reflections. Children love what they see. There is no real sense of handsome or ugly to them. What we forget is that all of us once loved our reflections in mirrors, before we chose to be frogs, and we can love our reflections again. We can rescue ourselves.

We are the only persons who can break the curse of our self-imposed froggy-ness. We have to look in the mirror and choose to love ourselves, warts and all. This isn’t easy for the average “frog.” We’ve spent a lot of time condemning ourselves and we’ve come to be somewhat comfortable being green. So it will take time to learn to love what we see—the real us. We will have to learn to see past the “ugly” screen we have imposed over our true beauty.

I encourage people to start by looking in the mirror each morning and singing “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” or “I’m Too Sexy for My Shirt” to themselves. It may seem awkward at first, but, at the very least, you will be able to laugh at yourself. And God knows we all need to stop taking ourselves so seriously. After you finish with your song and dance, you need to look in the mirror and say “I love and accept you just the way you are.” And you need to maintain this mentality. The more you affirm yourself, the more you will find yourself breezing through your day. You will become much more comfortable in your own skin because you will feel a lot less green.

Break your self-imposed curse. Look in the mirror and see the prince or princess that you are. Give Kermit back his greenness. Love yourself into allowing your soul to shine!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

Image
Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
Read more

If The Eyes Had No Tears, The Soul Would Have No Rainbow

Image
I'm sitting in a Panera Bread in Los Angeles, eating my cinnamon scone and preparing to cut my trip here short. I'll have to return home tomorrow and then fly to Omaha, Nebraska for a funeral. A young father in his 30s died there last Friday, leaving behind a wife and three small children. There are always questions in these types of situations: Why? Why someone so young? Why someone who had a wife and kids? The "why" questions can be endless, and there's never a quantifiable answer.  I don't believe in "it was just his time" or that God called him home. There's too much cruelty to these pat answers and they make God seem like a beast. What purpose could there be behind such imagined acts of God? I see no redeeming purpose to seizing a young man from his young family. I do believe that life happens. When someone dies and there is no acceptable answer to "why," I believe it's simply the human condition. It's the way...
Read more

The Bride of Gingy

Last night I was watching Scared Shrekless . The first “horror” story in this Halloween movie is called “The Bride of Gingy.” And Gingy’s bride is nothing short of an overly-clingy codependent nightmare. If you are familiar with the Shrek movies, you know that Gingy is the gingerbread man. In “The Bride of Gingy,” Gingy goes to see the village baker because he is lonely and wants a sweetheart of his own. So the village baker agrees to make a gingerbread girl for Gingy. As the baker begins to mix-in the proper amount of sugar, according to his recipe, Gingy insists that the baker include 10 times more sugar than the recipe calls for using. He wants his bride to be truly sweet. Within a short time, Gingy meets his dream girl, Sugar. Suddenly we see them skipping hand in hand through flower-filled fields while the song “Happy Together” by The Turtles plays in the background. But “happily ever after” is not how this story ends. Next we see Gingy and Sugar together in his gin...
Read more

Where There Is Kindness, There Is Goodness

Image
Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...
Read more