Post by Susan Peabody on Feb 24, 2009 13:50:38 GMT -8
To counteract my inner critic now that I was an adult, I began affirming myself (consciously thinking nice things about myself). I told myself that I was a worthy person despite my shortcomings. I also made a list of my attributes and began focusing on them. In effect, I was trying to brainwash myself. It worked a little, but there was still more work to be done.
I have always felt that intimacy comes from revealing ourselves to a nonjudgmental person. The combination of acceptance and knowing is a powerful one. It naturally follows, then, that to love myself more I not only had to accept myself, I had know myself better.
I began trying to get to know myself better by making a list of all the things that I liked and disliked. I also read a book about personality types and found out which one I was. Then I looked at my values—my code of ethics. As the weeks passed, I spent time alone with myself. I talked to myself. I reread the inventory I had made of the things I wanted to change about myself. I explored my feelings when they came up. I began dreaming about my future. I remember asking myself, somewhat facetiously, “Susan, what do you want to be when you grow up?” (I wanted to be a writer, by the way.) In general, I stopped focusing on other people and spent more time focusing on myself. In so doing, I developed a friendship with myself that I continue to enjoy today. And it is easier to esteem myself now that I know who I am.
Like the consistent, understanding person I've been sort of looking all over for has been here right along....inside me....me as my own cheerleader for myself. And I'm feeling more full on that...and on God. It's happening in stages. First I've been getting an intellectual understanding of it...and now I'm letting go and absorbing the actual experience of that change taking place.
