Is my face too round? Does this dress bring out curves in all the wrong
places? Am I too extroverted? What is he thinking about me? Is she
just pretending to like me? Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I
thin enough? What if I get rejected?
Do these questions sound familiar? Maybe the questions you ask
yourself aren't identical to these, but if you are honest with yourself,
you've probably experienced a similar internal monologue. If you're
like me, you have no filter and forget to think before you speak
sometimes.... and therefore these questions, which would be better off
remaining as internal, spill into the external.
I've posed all of these questions, and so many more, to my friends
recently. It's not that I have a severe lack of confidence, really.
But I think we've all been faced with messages that chip away at our
self-worth. This feeling of inadequacy is not intrinsic, and it is not
an actual reflection of our shortcomings. It is learned. We've
learned it from people who don't appreciate us or deserve us. We've
learned it from magazine ads. We've learned it from society. We've
learned it.
It's time to Unlearn It.
A good friend of mine coined the
term "Unlearn it!". This is his answer to all of my "Am I good enough?" questions.
Translation: Maybe you've been told/taught/made to believe that the
answer is negative. But that doesn't mean that it's the correct
answer.
Unlearning it is easier said than done, especially for someone like
me, who is going through the greatest betrayal and rejection of my
life. The easy way out is to say "He left me. He doesn't like me. I'm
not good enough for him. I'm not worthy of love." The first statement
is true. The second is somewhat true. The third is untrue. The forth
is absolutely ridiculous. It's EASY to take a circumstantial fact and
spin it into so much more than what it really is. It's DIFFICULT to
derive a sense of confidence and self-worth from a situation of being
rejected. But I believe that in this case, the difficult choice is the
correct one. And it really is a choice.
Whatever the
self-depreciating questions are that you are asking yourself, it's time
to unlearn it. Know that you are valuable, beautiful, and worthy of
love.
In the mean time, I'll keep working on this, too. Sometimes it's easier than others, but it's always important.
