Soulshine

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt It’s certainly true that no one has ever made me feel inferior, aside from myself. We often make the mistake of blaming others for “making” us feel a certain way when there is no truth to this concept. No one “makes” me feel a certain way. I “choose” to feel a certain way. If someone says something and I feel diminished in some way it’s probably because they’ve unknowingly touched on an area inside of me where I ruthlessly criticize myself. More often than not, there’s no intent on behalf of the other person to be mean. It’s more about how I feel about myself. We can’t go through life telling ourselves repeatedly “I’m not good enough,” or “I’m such an idiot” or “I’m so ugly” or “I’m so incompetent” and not feel the repercussions of it at any given moment. This self-inflicted mental cruelty makes us hyper-vulnerable. We’re constantly on guard and at any moment we can purposely take anything a...

“The mirror wasn’t judging me, I was judging me. In front of the mirror, I came face to face with my judgments about myself… Who is the ‘I’ that judges that ‘I am not good enough,’ that fears that ‘I am unlovable’ and that whispers ‘I hate myself? It’s not your unconditional self.” Robert Holden , Loveability How comfortable are you standing in front of a mirror and looking intently at yourself? If you’re like me, you don’t look anymore intently than you have to. I look at myself just long enough to make sure my hair is in place and that my clothes aren’t “making me look fat.” I put “making me look fat” in quotations because those aren’t my words. They belong to someone else. They belong to someone who years and years ago told me I was fat and that I needed to make sure that my clothes didn’t enhance the fact. In other words, when I look in the mirror every day, I don’t see me. I see the judgments that have been placed on me by other people. And, unfortunately, thes...

Lord, You know I have spent many years running from myself. Since childhood I have been uncomfortable with me. I spend time alone-- and I am truly alone because I have yet to befriend myself in any loving way.   I need to know how to be intimate with myself in honest, loving and fulfilling ways. Please help me, Lord, to sit with and become comfortable with myself.   Help me to understand the many ways in which I have chosen to alienate me from myself. And help me to heal all of the wounded spaces inside of me that are so tired of being mistreated by me.   Help me to root through the lies that I have believed about myself so that I may discover the true beauty of who I am, which has been buried under those lies.   Then help me to replace my self-criticism with words of kindness, gentleness and loving encouragement. Help me also to treat myself in loving ways that nurture me and bring my true beauty to the surface for all people-- and especially me-- to see. ...