When is there ever going to be a time in our life when we actually feel good about who we are? So often we are caught up with such negative judgements about ourselves. Even if we get wonderful feedback about who we are or how we are doing at a task, we deny our own success. No, we are not good enough, we could have done better and now we have validated our true feelings, the world sees us as losers! We take the criticism in such stride almost as if we were waiting for it from the start. “i could have done better” is the battle cry that comes out of us and we definitely are not looking for success at this time. Giving ourselves value is not a conscious thought, perhaps just a faint whisper in the back of our mind.
Isn’t it easier to never give ourselves positive feedback because if we do not believe in ourselves, we cannot disappoint anyone else including ourselves. Expecting so little from ourselves keeps us away from real failure because we are not really trying to start with. As soon as something comes our way that is difficult, we automatically put ourselves down and our energy and motivation in that moment disappears. Once again, we failed. How old is this message that we give ourselves? Do we even remember it not being there or has it always been a part of our thinking?
So often the messages that we give ourselves today, are actually our perceptions of messages we got as children from the adults around us. A child’s perception of reality can be so different than what it actually is. We are so turned onto the tone in which we hear the message, and we so often mistake it for failure when it actually isn’t. But what if it was meant to put us down and what if it was meant to make us feel bad. We have no defenses that can help us in the moment and therefore we can only believe what we perceive to be the truth. It will take us a lifetime to undo some of the damage that that in actuality that is what all of us have to do. We have to work out those messages that never leave us. We must begin to see that this is our life work, to correct those messages that always made us feel inferior.