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The Thing

I am not sure how many people rationally analyze things but I am driven to do so. My world must make sense. I was reading a post today and it reminded me of a post I was asked to write for a different board, the post was called The Thing. It is really a simple concept, we all have this thing, the thing can be both visible or invisible. We are very aware of our thing and the thing drives our self esteem.

What people miss is that very few people have the same thing.

So say your thing is you think your nose is too big and you meet another woman who hates her smile. You are looking at her perfect nose and she wishes she had your smile. Neither of you are looking at the other one's thing! Get it? Both of you think the other is perfect.

I have very good self esteem and I am willing to share my secret to self esteem. It is not that people with good self esteem are perfect or think they are perfect it is that we realized and accepted that we are flawed, just like everyone else.

So those of you who can acknowledge they have great self esteem, what is your secret?

Oh I do still have buttons that can be pushed sending me back to third grade, doesn't happen very often mind you. :)

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Rachel, spot on!

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You call it 'The Thing'.

I call it 'The Power Of My Own Convictions'.

But the end result is the same.

:)

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My "secret," if you will, is realizing that very few people will make my Thing their Thing. Everyone has their own lives to lead. If they have the time, energy, and desire to focus any attention on my hang-ups, they're not people whose opinions I would value anyway.

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Here's the irony: The source of my rather stellar good self esteem is my quasi-abusive husband.

I've spent YEARS standing up for myself. Sometimes daily. Sometimes at the top of my lungs. Sometimes with just a raised eyebrow and shaken head.

The one really good thing that has come out of this really bad marriage is in two parts:

1) I DO stand up for myself, and don't equivocate about it. I have my flaws and my character defects, but I am one rockin human being who may do things differently than other people, but they are my way to do things and I have that right, and furthermore I am within my rights to *enjoy* the way that I do things.

2) I'm pretty durn cool. It doesn't matter if anyone else agrees with me. *I* LIKE myself. In fact, I rather revel in myself. I get this one shot here on earth, and I'm going to enjoy it. No matter how sad, or despairing I get. No matter how alone I feel. No matter if someone is actively telling me how awful I am. I will always pull up out of it. I can stand on my own. I can like myself. I can cry, and hurt, and rail. But at the end of the day; I'm rather proud of myself and my accomplishments, regardless of what others think of me.

This is ALL due to my husband, and having to stand up for myself hundreds of times. Each and every single time he degrades, debases, insults, and ignores me... Nope. It doesn't fly. And I'm not going to stop.

I used to stand up for anyone BUT me. I used to see myself through the eyes of others. I used to care what other people thought of me. I was beautiful if someone found me beautiful. I was happy if I made others happy. I felt alive when people were energized, or laughing, or 'taken' with me. I no longer do. Other people are nice, and all. It DOES feel good when other people I like, like me right back. (Heck, that month in Children's, I'd forgotten people used to find me funny... but I had everyone 'going' all the time whenever I was around nurses, other parents, other kids. It was kind of shocking. Oh yeah. Some people think I'm hilarious.) But I don't NEED other people. It doesn't matter what they think. Because I'm really great with MYSELF.

That's the gift my abusive husband has given me. Really rockin self esteem. Standing up for myself thousands of times over the past 5 to 6 years (we've been together 10, it's just been the last half).

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my thing is my weight. i'm heavy. i look back at pictures of myself and think, back then, i looked good, why did i think i was fat? Now, I actually am heavy, but a couple years ago, I lost a whole bunch of weight and hated it! I only got down to 159, so, not an unhealthy weight at all. My family said I looked sick and I had a giant head. I lost all my curves. I used to rock my big ole hips and my big ole 42DDs with pride. To top it off, it ruined my self esteem. At a size 12, I got a lot of attention from guys that didn't talk to me at size 16. It made me actually doubt myself even more. Anytime a man was nice to me I would think - you're only talking to me because I lost weight, so, if I gain it back, you'll be gone. So, my thing is my weight. I've learned to accept the fact that while I need to strive to be healthy, I don't actaull want to be thin. I like my body and so does my husband. I know if I lost weight, he'd probably complain!

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My self esteem comes from a very similiar thought process as yours - no one is perfect. No one is "better" than me and I in turn am not a "better person" than anyone else. Everyone has their strengths (beauty, brains, athletic, personable, artistic etc) and everyone has weaknesses. Even those who seem to have everything perfect - DON'T.

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I am still working on my self esteem, but I have become so much more confident over the years. As a kid, I would hide myself, I would literally hide behind my curtain of hair at my desk, and I was basically shunned by the kids in the neighborhood and at school because I guess I was a bit geeky. My mom still hangs onto all that, and will still get riled up over how mean the kids were and how it damaged my self esteem for years.... well, I guess it did, but I have pushed through it. Here are some of the things that help me:
1- Like you posted previously, remembering that nobody sees me as harshly as I do
2- Understanding there is a direct correlation between how I take care of myself and how I feel about myself. For instance, the days I exercise and eat healthy food, I feel beautiful and confident. I bet I really do not look thinner those days, but I feel it. Therefore, I do my best to take care of myself because not only does it benefit my health in the long run, but it gives me an immediate confidence boost.
3- I have been friends with some extremely narcissistic and vain people, people who spend hours upon hours putting on their makeup and hair, people who are afraid to leave the house because they are worried that people will notice that they have aged or have gained weight or don't look perfect, people who refuse to be in photographs because they are so self-conscious of how they look, people who miss out on a lot of fun because they "don't look good wet" or whatever. I DO NOT want to ever ever EVER be one of these people. They are not fun, they are not interesting, and when people obsess over appearances like that, then I think "Geez, are they evaluating me on my appearance too?" This is probably the biggest thing that helps me avoid being so self-analytical and just get out there and be the best I can be, as cheesy as that sounds.

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So... what's your secret? ;)

I think my thing is, I've accepted my flaws, made them my own, changed what I can, accepted what I can not. It's that simple.

Like I went to school with this girl who had a gap between her 2 front teeth. She hated it! I thought it was the cutest, most unqiue thing EVER! Not saying I wanted that (because I love myself), she just needed to rock it instead of being embarrassed about it. Tooth gap = super cute.

Like I'm superrr white. I glow in the dark. I'm see through. But you know what? It sets me apart. All the other girls my age tan religiously... I think they look like oompa loompas, and when they get older, they're going to look like leather! So I rock my whiteness. I'm proud of it. I laugh at people who make fun of it.

Is this kind of what you're talking about? That's what I took from it, but maybe I'm not understanding fully... OH OKAY! Rock on :)

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My "secret," if you will, is realizing that very few people will make my Thing their Thing. Everyone has their own lives to lead. If they have the time, energy, and desire to focus any attention on my hang-ups, they're not people whose opinions I would value anyway.

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You call it 'The Thing'.

I call it 'The Power Of My Own Convictions'.

But the end result is the same.

:)

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I think I have pretty healthy self esteem. Sure there are "things" about me that I'm not crazy about...but it's what makes me "me"!

I guess I think about it logically that what is fretting and obsessing going to change, really?

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