How many times has another person’s comment impacted your day, your month, or maybe even your life?
I have had more than a few clients whose attitudes about their person or their bodies were shaped by a comment someone made to them back in high school. A competent executive reflects back on being told she would never make the school track team because she was “chunky and slow.” She allowed the comment to erode her confidence, she didn’t tryout, and she still views herself as "chunky" and nonathletic two decades later, despite evidence to the contrary. We can read this and think it’s crazy, but we all know the long echo of a comment that hits a sensitive place.
Confidence and sense of self comes from within. It’s a roller coaster to rely on the good opinions of others. If someone flatters you, you feel good. If someone makes a hurtful comment, you feel bad. Are you dependent on others to define who you are?
Cultivating a strong place within you, a place of acceptance and compassion, requires you to identify and build on your signature strengths. Developing that strong place within, just like lifting weights at the gym, takes training. We all need and benefit from constructive feedback, yet integrating only feedback from external sources gives your personal power to circumstance. Creating a strong sense of who you are, no matter the externals, is a daily practice. Identify, acknowledge, and get to know your strong place well and put her in the drivers seat of your life.
T A K E I T W I T H Y O U T O D A Y
"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit." --e.e. cummings