Soulshine

“Look, I’m not the one with the problem. It’s the world that seems to have a problem with me. People take one look at me and go ‘a big stupid ugly ogre.’ They judge me before they even know me. That’s why I’m better off alone,” says Shrek. To which Donkey replies “When we met, I didn’t think you were a big stupid ugly ogre.” Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy, Shrek It’s true that people often judge us before they know us. But it’s equally true that we often judge ourselves before we even really know us. Codependents rarely know the person who exists inside of them. Oh, we think we know who we really are because we’ve believed the negative things about ourselves that we’ve heard playing through our heads since childhood. Parents and others told us we were “big stupid ugly ogre(s)” and we believed it. We simply accepted what we were told at face-value without ever challenging it and we’ve lived what we have believed about ourselves to this very day. We are often lik...

"O God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. Amen." Macrina Wiederkehr I had lunch at an Asian restaurant the other day and my Fortune Cookie had this to say to me: “Be yourself and you’ll feel at home anywhere.” Obviously this statement holds great truth, so what keeps so many of us from being ourselves? The answer is actually simple: We don’t feel lovable. There are way too many of us who never have felt lovable. According to Robert Holden, in his new book Loveability , “the basic fear ‘I am not lovable’ is what causes you to be afraid of everything.” This makes sense to me. I’ve been possessed by two interwoven basic fears since I was a small child. Those interwoven fears are “I am not good enough, therefore I am not lovable.” In my course of work, I discover everyday that almost everyone I encounter is haunted by these same two interwoven fears. And these two basic fears then spread fear and worry to every other a...