Greetings,
Dr.
Roger Thiel here,
Adding a few thoughts for Wednesday Insights,
And especially about those times when we might get down on ourselves.
You ever had that experience?
Getting down on yourself,
It can be a deep pit that's hard to climb out of.
Love this story about this Episcopal priest.
He'd always been down on himself,
Highly doubting of himself,
Self-critical.
He really suffered with that.
Finally,
After many,
Many years of service,
He was promoted to Cardinal.
And with that,
He was given this lavish estate.
I mean,
It was like a mansion that the Cardinal would get to live in.
He was there,
And he and his wife were reveling in it.
And he said to his wife,
Honey,
Did you ever,
In your wildest dreams,
Think you'd be experiencing something like this with me?
And she said,
My dear husband,
You have never been in any of my wildest dreams.
You know,
There's something about self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy that calls in more of it.
But what are we going to do to lift ourselves up?
It's very important not just to continue to descend into those states.
We can intervene on them.
And maybe this will help you if you're in that very space.
One of the first things I try to remember is that I am not my outcomes.
I'm responsible for my outcomes,
And I can learn from my outcomes.
But my outcomes don't stigmatize me.
I am not my outcomes.
I have a deeper identity than that.
And it's easy to take our outcomes personally and then to identify with them.
And that starts the downward spiral.
So you may not be happy with an outcome that has occurred in your life in some way,
Past,
Present.
And yet what you get to do is remember,
I am who I am.
And I can learn from that outcome.
And in so doing,
I can love myself even more and go into a greater degree of excellence based on that.
So that's the first thing I'd invite you to do,
Is let yourself off the hook for your outcomes in terms of who you are.
Get all the lessons you can,
But give yourself some slack.
I mean,
If you had a child and they messed up in some way,
Would you just continually berate them,
Berate them,
Berate them?
No,
You wouldn't.
But we do that to ourselves.
With the child,
You'd say,
Here's what you get to learn about this.
And in the very same breath,
You'd say,
And I always love you.
I'm always here for you.
We could have that relationship with ourselves as well.
Also,
Healing of low self-esteem also begins when we stop thinking that things have to be different for us to be different.
Our overall situations have to shift in order to feel better.
Actually,
It's the reverse.
We need to start cultivating a greater degree of joy,
A greater degree of optimism,
A greater degree of perseverance or resilience.
And then things can get better.
But we can't just wait around.
It's like the freezing guy standing next to this wood stove saying to it,
I'll give you some wood when you give me some heat.
It doesn't work that way.
So in the very midst of things not being as you want,
Who do you want to be?
Neil Donald Walsh,
In his work,
Conversations with God and all of his books,
Always said in every experience,
What we get to ask ourselves is,
Who am I going to create myself to be in this experience?
Not what is this experience making of me?
It's who shall I create myself to be in the presence of this experience?
Another aspect that can begin to shift things is to stop swimming upstream.
What I mean by that is,
It's very easy to be in a relationship with situations and people in our life where we're in resistance,
Where we're forcing,
Where we're manipulating.
We're trying to make things happen.
And wow,
That takes a toll.
And then we start getting even more attached to the outcomes.
And when people do what people do,
Which we really ultimately don't have a lot of control over,
And when things turn out the way they do,
And sometimes we can't always control that either,
What we get to remember is that we can control our own inner life.
And we can take a different posture to that.
And we can start flowing with things rather than fighting.
There's a martial arts practice called Aikido.
And it's all based on,
Rather than resisting,
Coming up against and resisting situations,
It's flowing with them and seeing where you can take them.
So rather than trying to row upstream,
You turn the boat around and you man the rudder and you flow where you want to go in that situation.
Ultimately,
What we get to do is remember that our greatest asset is our hearts.
Your heart is the key to living well,
To living happily,
And feeling good about yourself and about life.
If we'll spend some time in the heart,
Then we will realize we're here to practice a good sense of honesty in our life along with self-compassion.
Self-compassion.
And that it's also important to enjoy this life.
So as I conclude these thoughts,
I just invite you to spend some time,
If you've been kind of low about yourself,
Spend some time in your heart.
Release yourself from the tyranny of thinking outcomes have to be a certain way,
Trying to manipulate experiences and people,
And all these things that we do.
I just enter into a part of you that's here to live and love and enjoy this experience.
Give yourself a break.
Have some self-compassion.
And maybe even some fun.
Then all of a sudden,
You realize that one of the great errors we make is taking ourselves so blessed seriously.
And then we get to go back into life and live it the way we're designed to live it.
I bless you in this.
So let's take this into prayer.
We do what I just said.
We move the energy from the head to the heart right now.
Just relax.
Let your shoulders fall.
Center yourself in the heart and realize there's a fountain of love right here.
Open your heart.
Open your heart.
Ease into it.
All the reasons why you're not okay,
Let them be dissolved.
As you just open your heart to a presence that's always here,
It is love,
Divine love,
Incarnate as you.
And as you let this love energy flow over you like a healing balm,
And just sense that old things are finished,
All self-judgment is dissolved,
And life stands before you,
Ready to receive you,
Support you,
As you support yourself.
Affirm with me,
I am,
As the Divine made me,
A unique,
Specialized being of light.
I am creative.
I am resilient.
I am deeply joyous.
I am strong.
I create a new vision for my life and I go forward,
Living each moment in fullness and meaning.
I love the life that I am so that I can love life around me and others.
And this feels so good.
I let this be so.
And so it is.
