Stand in the Place Where You Are
This time of year there’s generally a lot of advice being offered about how to stick with your New Year’s resolutions and how to make changes. I’ve joined in and blogged about this topic in the past few weeks too.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with noticing something about your habits or your life that you’d like to improve upon. In fact, as humans, we tend to constantly be pulled to expand and grow. If we resist this urge, stagnation can result.
At the same time, there is a downside to the impulse for improvement and change. That downside is the underlying assumption that we need to change and improve upon ourselves because something about us is not enough, lacking or is even unhealthy and bad.
These beliefs– that can seem unavoidable– short-circuit our efforts to change. After all, it’s tough to experience sustainable and positive growth when, deep down inside, we believe that we’re not okay and that we’ve got to fix ourselves.
I suggest that you continue to follow up with the resolutions and intentions for self-improvement you’ve set. And, I propose that you also make a deliberate effort to stand where you are with pride and confidence.
This can be a tough one, can’t it?
When I look back on the choices I’ve made in my life so far, I can readily list off quite a few of my current habits and past decisions that I cringe a bit (or a lot) to admit to.
Some of these are flat-out regrets, others are decisions that I can see were not ideal and yet others are things I sometimes get defensive about when others bring them up.
What it comes down to is this… every single one of my past decisions has culminated in the unique place where I stand right here and right now. I am the person I am today because of ALL of my choices.
Unless I am prepared to rob myself of any shred of self-worth (which I’m not), doesn’t it make sense to acknowledge that those choices– for better or worse– were essential in bringing me to where I am today?
So, isn’t it time for me and for you to stand in that place of who we each are with a sense of confidence and pride?
A few words about pride…
As a side-note, I think that the whole notion of pride gets a bad rap. There tends to be an association of “pride” with things like conceit, arrogance and being egotistical. It’s true, those possibilities do exist when it comes to pride.
However, there is also an association of pride with having a healthy self-esteem and a belief in the worth of who you are and what you are all about. You can feel proud of yourself and also show respect, admiration and compassion for others.
Actually, the more confident you are about yourself, the less threatening others usually seem to be. There is no need to put anyone else down when you feel genuinely proud of yourself.
When there is no pride, you often have a person who has a difficult time making decisions, allows him or herself to be manipulated, is ineffective and who readily abandons what is important to him or her in the face of even the slightest challenge.
Pride, like anything else, can be taken to an extreme that is not beneficial for anybody. But, I assert that in order to live life to its fullest potential, pride is one requirement.
Deliberately cultivate pride in who and where you are.
I encourage each and every one of us to make space in our self-perceptions to cultivate pride. If feeling proud of yourself is a foreign concept, this might take some practice.
First of all, give yourself permission to feel proud and confident. Challenge the negative associations you might tend to make about pride.
Next, be on the lookout for anything about yourself that you can feel good about. Again, this is not feeling good at the expense of another person– that’s not genuine pride.
This is an invitation for you to look back at your past and honor the way that it has brought you to the place where you are right now. While there could be things about your present self that you’d like to change, there are probably quite a few things (if you acknowledge them) that feel worthy and of merit.
Start small if you have to and build from there.
Envision yourself standing tall where you are and as you are even as you move in the direction you want to go.
