A dear, dear, friend, who has walked my journey hand in hand with me, shared this with me today. I couldn’t summarize where I have finally arrived at any better than this:
Today’s quotation:
Because one believes in oneself,
one doesn’t try to convince others.
Because one is content with oneself,
one doesn’t need others’ approval.
Because one accepts oneself,
the whole world accepts him or her.
The Tao Te Ching
Today’s Meditation:
Sometimes it seems to be a lonely walk when we believe in ourselves. When we’re not looking for the approval and agreement of others, it often seems that much of our interaction with them is taken away. After all, how much of our normal conversations is based on trying to convince others that we’re right, or to convince them that they should approve of us because of something we think, a perspective that we share, or something that we’ve done?
But it only seems to be a lonely path. The truth is that once we find that belief in and contentedness with ourselves, the path is no longer lonely because we recognize that we don’t need the approval of others to make a good life for ourselves. And while we probably will intimidate some people who wish that they, too, believed in themselves, those people are relatively few.
You’ve been given some great gifts, and you deserve belief in yourself and who you are. You don’t need to convince others that you deserve this belief, but it would be really nice if you were to convince yourself and truly feel that belief. Being content with yourself doesn’t mean giving up growing and developing yourself and staying right where you are, but it does give you more confidence and allows you to do what you do from a much stronger place, thus making success much more likely in anything that you undertake.
It can be a lonely road, but when you do accept yourself and trust yourself so much that you no longer need to seek the acceptance and trust of others, guess what? That will come of itself. Usually when we seek acceptance and trust, we try a bit too hard and turn people off. When we stop trying so hard, though, we can stop turning people off and let them take us as we are, rather than as what we want them to see.
Questions to consider:
Do you believe in yourself? Are you content with yourself?
Why do we so often need the approval of others?
What would it take for you to accept yourself for exactly what you are?
For further thought:
I was always looking outside myself for strength
and confidence, but it comes from within.
It is there all the time.
Anna Freud
And so, as another day goes by, “I do what I do from a much stronger place”, and, with some help, I have written.
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