Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Be The One Person You Are

In Hope for Today, page 326, November 21st reading, it says;

"I learn to become at peace with myself. I wake up and go to sleep with myself every night. I spend 24 hours a day with that one person [myself], so it is important that I'm at least tolerable if not downright enjoyable company."

What this means to me is this;

You are your most important person. You have extreme influence on who you are and what you can do. You can be the person you are - by recognizing how vital you are to yourself. So stop looking outside yourself for someone else to come to your rescue. See yourself as you truly are.

The passage goes on to say this;

"I can't be that person when I'm controlled by guilt, fear and resentment and negligibly aware of my gifts and talents."

I left off the word "overly" before the word "controlled" in the quote above. I don't think it's necessary.

If we have these "emotions" residing under the surface of our being - right beneath the skin - we project these emotions out onto the world when we interact with others, in certain situations and with ourselves. We give these emotions "more power" and they begin to control us more and more in our lives.

Sometimes we compensate by feigning confidence - which can come across as arrogance.

I think the word and the action of forgiveness can be the best action we can perform. And the forgiveness begins with ourselves. Love yourself is a strange and foreign concept to me. I see myself as hugging myself with arms wrapped around me when I think about this - which is sooooo very strange - that I must admit that I feel uncomfortable. But I think that this is exactly what we - I - must do.

Forgive. Forgive is a kind and loving word that - emotionally - if we truly forgive ourselves and others too - we melt away the negative, destroyer emotions, highlighted above.

Forgive. Especially yourself. And forgive yourself for every stupid, wicked thing you have ever done and for every thought you have ever had. This is where peace begins and where you can begin to become the one person you truly are.

My best to you and myself ;-) this fine day.

3 comments:

Syd said...

It is a hard lesson to learn but paramount to recovery--that I have to love myself and take care of myself. I can't possibly love another until I've learned to love myself. Thanks for the reminder.

Anonymous said...

Joe,

Great post, and Syd is right on the money.

There is huge POWER in forgiveness.

I can't move forward until I release myself or that person of the issue at hand.

Once I do, I regain that power, thus my tank is never empty.

Peace this Tuesday.

KevinB

Anonymous said...

Joe, the part about feigning confidence and having it come off as arrogant struck me.

I work (or worked) in an industry where swagger is worth a lot. Shameless bragging, plagiarism and drippy self-lathering are the norm. I felt that no one I worked with was honest. When I asked "how's it going?" I would get an essay on how FANtastic everything is. Worse, I found myself nauseated by my own behavior. The things I did to get ahead included all of the above. Then I got canned. I failed!

But now I'm in recovery. And part of loving myself is not to slap any label on losing my job. It's not "a failure," it's not "my fault," I wasn't "screwed over," etc. I did my best when I was there, the situation has changed and I'm doing the best now under different circumstances and using what I've learned. That's it.