What's Wrong With Me?

So many of us feel that the above question should read – What’s right with me? Feeling this way about ourselves so often starts when we are small children and for each of us it’s a different story, a different event that marked the start of the changes of how we viewed ourselves. Yet when all those stories are looked at, the similarities are frightening.  For many it was a parent or sibling who would tell us we were stupid, ugly, overweight. Our siblings were smarter, little Johnny down the road got better grades. Comparisons would be drawn between ourselves and others by thoughtless, but often well-meaning older family members, teachers, or family friends.  From childhood, for the majority of us, our self esteem gets whittled away. So often it is done by people who really love you and who had absolutely no idea that their words were hurtful.  Then puberty hits and we are the ones with the acne, breasts that are too big or too small, and for guys it’s voices that still squeak whilst others around you have developed a husky, manly baritone! And so the erosion of our self worth continues.  Even when all those adolescent hurdles have been reached and we are now a fully blossomed adult, guess what, we carry those burdens with us.  For some reason, the self deprecating cycle that we have fallen into continues and although no one else may be comparing us to others, society now does it.  Buy this soap and you too can look like the gorgeous woman on the wrapper.  Clothing manufacturer’s have sizes that seem to fit only the models and for the rest of us, its an on-going battle to find something that’s the right length, width, colour, whatever. As we stand struggling in and out of garments in change-rooms filled with distorted mirrors, despair sets in and away we go again, I’m too tall, short, fat, thin. My heads too big, my feet too small, arms too flabby, knees too wobbly yada yada yada!! What never fails to amaze me is how we can listen to all this nonsense from ourselves and not get heartily sick of it.   The fact is, we don’t have to keep listening to it.  We can move on from our childhood hurts and we can come to love ourselves.  Stick with me and I’ll show you how you can live a life of inner freedom and contentment – it’s your choice!