Be Selfish.
If we’ve messed up anything as a society, a species, or a people, it’s our attitude towards the idea of our selves. We hold up the ideal of the giver, the sacrifice, the inherent nobility of sharing, which are all true, yet we have gone too far in at least one aspect; namely that of giving away your opinion of yourself to the opinions and beliefs of others.
Which is something that you can never do, if you wish to find and then spread peace.
How many times have you been worried about someone else’s opinion of you? If you’re honest, it probably occurs way more frequently than you want to admit.
I can tell you that as someone who spent many, many years being severely overweight, I spent far too much of my time and emotional energy focusing on what others thought of me, rather than how I could serve them.
And I allowed their imagined thoughts to color my opinion of myself.
Which is exhausting, yet most of us do this to one extent or another. Maybe it’s just about what you are wearing to go to the store, or the car you drive, the house you live in, or the clothes that you wear.
For reason, we’ve outsourced our opinions without doing a job interview on the people who we are hiring to be the overseers of our self opinion.
Which is a recipe for sadness, as well as exhaustion, regret and isolation.
There’s a wonderful African proverb I heard one time that has stuck with me. It goes something like this: “If there’s no enemy within, then the enemy outside can do us no harm”. Isn’t that powerful!
The greatest enemies to our happiness and our self esteem actually lie deep within our own hearts, buried under a mountain of time, trauma and tears.
I’m here to tell you that it’s time to get selfish about your self esteem, your self opinion. It’s time to stop listening to the voices inside your head that judge you, and leave you victim to the judgments of those who have not earned the right to play a part in your psyche.
It’s time to start accepting yourself, and finding peace within, so that you can withstand the storms without. In short, it’s time to get selfish about the things you believe about yourself.
Now please understand, I’m not advocating narcissism here, quite the opposite. The narcissist is unable to examine themselves with any measure of objectivity.
Nor am I advocating psycopathy, where you sever all connections with the emotions and opinions of others.
What I am suggesting is that you take a journey inward into your soul, and become familiar with the truths that you don’t want see, but also the truths that you block out for fear of feeling good about yourself.
Let’s give you a different viewpoint on yourself, and see if we can change how you feel about yourself.
Because when you feel better about yourself, you’ll feel better about the world.
— Dr.Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings