but I am finding bits and pieces scattered all over. I plan on collecting them all though and putting it back together!
How is self worth defined? As I sit here in bed typing this I have a huge build up of anxiety. My hands are shaking and my heart is racing. Why? Because I have no clue how people will react to this blog. This is my feeling every time I write a blog. I wonder if people really care what I have to say. I wonder if people are reading this and laughing at my ridiculously bad grammar and spelling. When I post a picture of myself I wonder if people laugh at the way I look in that picture or judge my fashion choices.
Like everyone, I have flaws. However, I feel like I have more flaws than most. I'm not sure how to make myself feel better about them. Everyday is a challenge for me. My self esteem is lacking. Why is it lacking though? What happened? What made me feel like less of a human being? What makes any of us feel this way?
The simple answer is that we do this to ourselves. We conjure up this horrible stuff in our minds about ourselves. We pick out every single flaw we can find, and we focus all of our self worth on that flaw. As time goes by we find more flaws to add to the list.
When the Abercrombie guy said those nasty things a few months ago, I took a lot of flack because I proclaimed that I wasn't offended by his words and didn't care what he said. That caused an outrage on my Facebook fan page. I never said I supported the words or that he was right. I just decided that I wasn't going to be angry over those words.
Getting angry over Jeffries quotes is a waste of time. Why do we care so much about what one company says? Why do we care how they want to market their line of clothing? One answer I got was "It makes young people feel bad about themselves." This is the problem. We LET people make us feel bad. Less worthy. Less attractive. Less interesting. LESS, LESS, LESS!!! We need to stop letting them do that to us.
Yes, I know that the words said by people who run a major corporation targeting young people can be burned into a child's brain making them feel bad. I think it's sick. I also think the media fans the fire. Most people in America would have no clue what he said had a reporter not published it. Kids would not feel bad about themselves had someone just ignored his ignorance. Everyone had to make a huge deal about it though, leaving impressionable children to see these nasty words. However, instead of parents explaining to their children to ignore this kind of crap, and telling them that they are better than the Abercrombie dude, we spread the hate via every social networking site. This keeps the situation FRONT and CENTER. It guarantees that our young impressionable kids have to read those words over, and over, and over again. It reminds bullies that they have something to bully the person not wearing A&F about.
We do this to ourselves. We make someone's words so important in our mind that we blame them for giving us low self esteem when they state an opinion. The don't give us low self esteem. We do it to ourselves and use people like Mike Jeffries to put the blame on.
Why do we try and blame someone else? So that HOPEFULLY they will feel just as bad about themselves as they made us feel about ourselves. It's a vicious cycle. We are spreading the hate. We are effectively helping our children and ourselves head down a path of worthlessness. Is it on purpose? Not usually. Will if be easy to retrain our brain and teach ourselves how to be happy with who we are REGARDLESS of what people say? Not at all. We should try though. We are giving people so much power over our feelings these days. We need to quit caring about what these so called "influential" people think and say about us. We need to take our power back. We need to find something, even if it's one thing, that we can be proud of about ourselves and focus on that. Then we need to pick one thing about another person and remind them that are worth something to the world.
We have got to STOP bringing people down to make ourselves feel better! We need to TAKE control of our self worth. We need to own it! We need to embrace it! We need to stop caring if someone else thinks we weigh too much, have a giant nose, have lopsided boobies, or chunky legs. We are who we are and the only way to be happy is to accept the good with the bad.
I have this icky bump on my nose. Every kid in town points at it and asks what it is. For a long time I wanted to curl up and die. Now I laugh and tell kids that the bump appeared from telling my mommy and daddy fibs when I was a little girl. I warn them to be good and truthful all the time!
I have naturally curly hair. I refuse to wear it curly in public. I think it looks horrid. HOWEVER, I have learned to be grateful for those curls because those curls mean that when I style it straight I have a little extra oomph in my hair.
I have a stupid flat butt. FLAT!!!! I hate it!!! There are no perfectly fitting jeans for me! If they fit my butt, they are too tight in the waste. If the fit my waste, the are too big in the butt and they are so saggy that it looks like I crapped in my pants. On a bright note, I have super skinny chicken legs to go with my flat but so I have learned to embrace "Skinny Jeans". Now my fear is that they will go out of style.
I hate my hands. My fingers are short and fat and my skin is always dry. It's miserable. It's embarrassing. It's my body though. There is nothing I can do except, accept the flaws of my hands and try to enhance them in a way that makes me happy. Whether it's cute rings, or getting my nails done.
I could seriously dog myself for hours. I have back fat, facial hair, pimples, fat knees, my feet are ugly, I have a mom pouch in my belly, my boobs are saggy and small, I have bat wings that could fly me to Europe and back, I'm finding more and more gray hair, oh and I also have wrinkles. I'm 31 for crying out loud!!!!!
I found all of these flaws because I focused on them. I hate them because I told myself too. I told myself to because I thought that other people would think badly of me. I think that way because I let other people get in my head.
I DID THIS. I HURT MYSELF. I LOWERED MY SELF WORTH.
No one else did it too me. I LET them. I LET them inside my head, my mind, my heart, and my soul. I let them get in there and terrorize me. I handed the power over. I have done it for so long that I am now trying to actively teach my children to avoid doing it.
The irony in this post? I am currently terrified to hit the "Publish" button at the top in fear that someone will judge me and make me feel bad about myself for having these views. I am going to hit publish anyway because I refuse to let any attacks on me, my thoughts, and my feelings be ridiculed! I'm working on being proud of myself and hitting publish on this post is my first step. There is going to be no shame in my game, yo!
First I am going to pass the giant bowl of self worth on to you!
SO....
Write something about yourself that you have been terrified to post because you were scared you would be judged and then take the bowl and pass it on to another worthy person!
PEACE OUT!
30 day blogger challenge, day 12: Complete!!!!!
