Imperfect Me

Each and every one of us has something about ourselves we’d love to change. Rather it’s our lack of athletic skills or the fact that we are too fat, there’s always something about ourselves we hate. Recently I’ve been finding myself focusing on my own faults, but not in the way you may think. In my life the biggest crippler of my confidence, my outlook, and my self-worth has been my self-criticism. What I have been trying to learn is that my type of self-criticism is not helpful, but downright destructive. 

 What I learned is that the traditional berating I suffered through as a child and young adult, carries over into adulthood. The sad part is this current berating doesn’t come so much from others as it does my own self. And that this same abuse I cowered under as a child I find myself doing to the ones I now love. It’s a maddening cycle of abuse that can last generations. 

 My focus today is more on the understanding that this cycle can be broken, but to do that we must start with ourselves. From my reading Buddhist tradition speaks of living a balanced life to be focus and aware of the here and now. But to do that we must learn that our self-hatred only leads to more hate. In Christianity we are taught that forgiveness is the beginning of salvation. But for that gift to work beyond that, we must learn to forgive our own faults as well. 

 Knowing our own limitations isn’t a bad thing. Also working to improve ourselves isn’t a bad thing either. What makes it destructive is how we do it. How can I ever expect to overcome my faults, if all of the time I’m telling myself I’m a worthless shit. It’s only through love that we ever overcome our so-called shortcomings. 

 I’m learning to be comfortable with my own skin, no matter how flabby it’s getting. But instead of berating me and calling myself a worthless pig, how much better would it be to accept that I’m overweight and tell myself, “let’s get healthier so we can spoil our arriving granddaughter a long, long time”. How much more can we improve ourselves with that loving mindset.    

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