3 Things To Start
Three Things To Stop:
2 Corinthians 5:17 – Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone; the new has come.
1. Stop letting other people dictate how You feel about You.
Can happen – consciously – you’re very aware/hurt, etc. by what someone says about you – like my high school Home Economics teacher who said, “Barbra is an example of the way NOT to do this.”
Or unconsciously –which is actually more powerful – When my mother revealed her history of sexual abuse, she also helped me realize why my father held off being affectionate with me. He had promised his new bride, “you will never have to worry about that when we have children.” I recognized that unconsciously, I became “performance minded” and a “people pleaser.”
Results of either/both: always looking for others to help you feel good or OK about YOU. You’re not self confident.
What is confidence, then? Confidence is not – “They will like me,” aka Sally Field, but rather…
Confidence is: “I’ll be fine if they don’t.”
Psychological term – External vs. internal validation
Everybody has their own insecurities about something.
Look in the mirror – what do you notice? Usually what’s “wrong” – what you don’t like about yourself. And then you think everyone ELSE is looking at you. Ann Landers said it this way many years ago: :
At age 20, we worry about what other people think of us.
At age 40, we don’t care what they think of us.
At age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.
You know what I’ve discovered? Even if people look at you, within 1-3 seconds, people go back to what they were doing. Why?
Everyone’s busy with their own problems.
In my book, “Yes! I Said No! - How To Set Healthy Boundaries and Increase Your Self Esteem,” I talk about developing thick, armor-plated skin and share my own example of this:in Chapter 10- (story of 2 people talking in hallway)
I discovered this truth:
“Our worries aren’t supported by reality.”
People don’t judge you non-stop. And even if they did, why do we assume they’d think negatively about us? It might be good!
How to STOP? As I say in my book, 2 rules will help:
1. If you can’t let the worry go within 24 hours, do something about it.
2. Choose to assume people don’t think of you all the time and if even if they did, their thoughts would be nothing but positive.
If you STOP the worry and replace it with a POSITIVE ASSUMPTION, (don’t leave a vacuum) – new neural pathways in your brain develop, taking you down a different track.
The Second STOP
(2) Stop Looking For What’s Wrong
Imagine you’re living in caveman days. The men are out hunting and the women are left to tend the fire, watch after the kids and also keep an eye out for any hungry animals lurking around, just waiting for a chance to grab a chunk of meat roasting or maybe even to drag away a small child. You have to be watching for danger all the time! And women, with their brains wired to do several things at once, rise to the occasion!
Fast forward to today, add 24-hour news programs focusing on the ills of society, and social media posts which quickly spread the word about others’ success by which we negatively compare ourselves and it’s no wonder we look for what’s wrong! We assume if we can fix what’s wrong, we’ll be happy.
Wrong! We can’t fix anyone (that includes our husbands and kids) and we wind up feeling disappointed and discouraged. Marriage studies have revealed an interesting 90:10 ratio in marriages. 90% of the time we like our partner, 90% of the time we appreciate our lives, but what about that 10%? That’s the hubby who doesn’t get the “honey-do” list done when you think he should, who never learns there’s a “right” way (your way, of course) to load the dishwasher, or other very important “stuff.”
I believe that same ratio exists in our world in general, because we’ve been taught to think this way. From the time we’re students who are told that yes, that B is ok but couldn’t you have done a little more and gotten an A? If we get feedback, even if most of it’s good, what do we gravitate toward? The one negative comment.
Are we doomed to keep looking for what’s wrong? What’s not enough? What’s not yet done? We even complain to God that things are not happening as soon as we think they should!
I have to remember something I posted the other day: “Most things worth having usually take longer than we thought they would, and are more difficult than we think we can endure.”
Vow today that you will follow Paul’s advice: “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” (Philippians 4:7)
3. Stop being afraid – to face the past, to have a dream, to ask for what you want.