Do you talk to yourself?
Y’all, the things I’ve learned over the last two and a half years… I could literally fill a book. Maybe three or four. If I could wrap my head around how to get it all together, I probably would, but that’s another thing for another day. Today’s thing is a question. For you. Also the title of this little hot-mess-beaut-of-a-post. Here it is:
DO YOU TALK TO YOURSELF?
Whether you realize it or not, the answer is yes. You might not speak aloud, you might not think you answer your own questions, you might not purposely do it, but I guarantee that you talk to yourself. Even if it’s in the back of your mind when you’re driving or putting on your makeup or scrolling through Facebook, you speak to yourself. The more important question then becomes: What do you say?
Let me take you back to a funny SNL sketch. I’m just going to post this gif. Your memory (at least those old enough to remember this) will do the rest.
Look familiar? hehe Man, I think at one point or another, we all made fun of this character, but you know what? He had a pretty legit thing going on. He said healthy, HELPFUL things about himself, to himself. How many of us do that? Some do, I’m sure. Some have already learned what it took me forEVER to realize. Some may do it because they are incapable of seeing their own flaws, but that’s a whole other thang. How many of us can BE flawed and still be okay with who we are? The answer, ideally, should be ALL OF US. But I’d bet money that’s not the actual answer.
I have my theories on why this is an issue. Male and female, young and old, no matter your race, religion, or location on a map, this is something that affects humans like a plague. If left unchecked, it can become extremely harmful to these sometimes fragile minds and bodies. It can manifest as anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, IBS, and a laundry list of other issues I won’t name. I blame everything from airbrushed magazine covers to surgically enhanced role models to social media. In short, we are surrounded by ideals that aren’t even REAL. We see beauty on television, but forget that there is makeup and lighting and sometimes plastic surgery and expensive cosmetics involved in creating that illusion. We see the highlight reel of other peoples’ lives on social media and think our reality is somehow less. We forget that the mom with the perfect family had to work for an hour to get that seemingly casual family photo. We forget that the minutes and hours and days before and after the absolute normalcy of that picture was consumed by the same kind of chaos that we wake up to most days. The sad and dysfunctional part is that these are the sticks abasing which we measure our lives and our looks and our worth. And for most people, at least once in a while, it makes us feel like we come up lacking. Our lives or looks or worth don’t quite measure up to what we see out there.
The truth is that is categorically untrue.
Every person you see on television or in movies or on Instagram or Facebook or at the mall or on the street has flaws and worries and troubles. Just like you. Just like me. Just like ALL of us. It’s part of the human condition. We are not perfect. Our lives are not perfect. Our spouses, kids, families, friends, and jobs are not perfect. Expecting any of them to be is like begging to be disappointed. The thing is, I’m not sure that we are always entirely aware of doing it, of measuring ourselves and our lives against what we see. Or maybe y’all are. Maybe this is just something I’ve experienced. Maybe I’m the outlier (wouldn’t be the first time LOL). Even if you think this isn’t an issue for you, wouldn’t it be worth it to take a quick inventory of your thought life just to be sure? It would. It truly would. Why? Because it could be making you miserable when you should be happy. It could be making you sick when you should be healthy. It could be making you cry when you should be laughing instead.
Here is a good, solid slap of truth for you. You are awesome. You are both wonderful and wonderfully flawed. And the cool thing is so is everyone else. But they’re not you. Only YOU can make you feel okay with who you are. Only you can fully embrace the fact that you have specific talents and gifts and strengths that are a unique combination to you, and that you are an individual that no one else in the history of the world will ever be. That alone is a miracle, and one worth celebrating. It’s worth a few minutes of checking yourself to make sure you’re not down on your butt because it won’t fit into the jeans your husband’s ex-girlfriend posted a pic of on Facebook. It’s worth a few minutes of checking yourself to make sure you’re not down on your kids because they don’t get along as beautifully as the neighbor’s kids did on vacation, as witnessed by the various family photos posted to Instagram. Online, people tend to post about the very best of their lives and themselves. They don’t post the ten crappy selfies they took before the one of gold that became their profile picture. They don’t post about the fourth is today. And those are just goofy examples (I like to include “poop” in a blog post every now and again LOL).
The bottom line, I was guilty of this, of comparing my life, my worth, my very existence to what I saw around me and online. Still am sometimes, but now I’m more aware of it. God created me to be the best me I can be and to run my race with all the gifts and talents and flaws and faculties that He gave ME, not someone else. Watching someone else run their race and feeling bad about mine isn’t doing ANYBODY any favors. And looking in the mirror and listing (whether silently or aloud, consciously or not) all the things I don’t like about myself won’t change them. In fact, it will just make me feel like crap and ruin what could’ve and SHOULD’VE been a great day.
Okay, so what’s the remedy, you ask? In my opinion, it’s simple (although not always simple to practice). Love yourself. Love your life. Love where you’re at right now. That doesn’t mean we can’t strive to achieve or strive to change in good and healthy ways, but those should be goals that we set for ourselves based on who we are, not what someone else has or has become.
I don’t think being IN LOVE with oneself is healthy, but I think loving oneself IS. How can we love and appreciate any other flawed, less than perfect people if we can’t even love and appreciate that one we spend the most time with? The one we know best? How can we encourage someone else, exhort someone else, lift up someone else when we can’t get all the ways we fall short off our minds? In my opinion, the best thing we can do for ourselves AND others is to love ourselves. Try your hardest. Do your best. Make the most of what you have. But at the end of the day, go easy on yourself. Be patient. Be kind. Be forgiving. Be okay with it all, whatever the outcome, whatever the flaw. Be okay with YOU. Laugh when you fall no matter who is watching. Lift your chin when you fail no matter who is watching. Your ability to be okay with life and all its many, many surprises will preach a message to those around you. They’ll start to see the ways you shine, whether you’re wearing makeup or not, whether your hair is a mess or not. What a much more joyous, fulfilled life we can all have if we can look in the mirror or park in front of our house or walk into our place of business every day and say (silently or aloud) that while it might not be perfect, it’s mine and I’m gonna crush it! I’m gonna wear this big butt or this nose I don’t love or this thing that I tried and failed to do, with a smile. We only get one life, one body, one today. I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t want to waste mine trying to be something or someone I’m not or beating myself up for being like everyone else—(im)perfectly FLAWED.
I’m gonna post this again just because it probably makes a lot more sense now. Thanks for the reminder, Stuart:)
I hope y’all love you as much as I do:)
