As a child you look to your parents and peers for validation. You look for them to compliment and praise you. You remember the feeling it gave you and you felt good about yourself. It gave you a boost of confidence, letting you know that you can accomplish and achieve anything you put your mind to. What about when you grew older and you were officially out of the "cute" stage? When the compliments grew less and you ran into peers who were not so nice, or you even ended up in a relationship that never valued your worth. The love that you had for yourself and the confidence you had began to decrease. You began to question so many things about yourself because those validations are gone.
Think about this, have you ever truly learned to be your own validation? More importantly did you ever learn that true validation comes from God? See we tend to be so caught up in defining ourselves based on what people say or how they react to us that we forget people were never meant to validate us and their opinions were never meant to define us. Now don't get me wrong we all love compliments because it makes us feel good. I believe we also need that encouraging comment to sometimes keep us going and let us know that there are people rooting for our success and well-being, but internally it begins with you. What you think of yourself and how you feel about yourself is what you show people about how they can treat you.
It is important to really take time to get to know yourself. Take time to look at yourself as a solo individual aside of being someone's wife, husband, mother, father, family member, friend, etc. Really look at yourself as just *insert your name* and ask yourself what is it that makes you feel good about yourself? What do you like to do? What is it about your features that you love? What makes you genuinely happy? Say affirmations over yourself daily, for example simply look in the mirror and say "I am beautiful". "I am smart". "My skin is beautiful". Say things like this everyday and you will first start believing it but then you will also start to walk and talk like it too.
I know some of you are saying well what if I've been verbally or emotionally bruised by loved ones or those around me? Just remember this one thing, God created you in His image and He did not make a mistake when He created you too. (Psalms 139:13-18) He sees you as wonderful and a work of art. You're a masterpiece to the Father and He sees you as perfection. Keep that in mind the next time you may be feeling down or low about yourself. What you may not be to others you are to God and His validation is all that matters.
My prayer today is that we all feel the love of God and that we feel whole and complete by His love. I pray that we will all recognize and acknowledge His thoughts about us before anyone else's. My prayer is that low-self esteem will be permanently replaced with self love and confidence. I pray that everyday we wake up we will fall in love with ourselves more and more from the inside to the outside.
I challenge you today to find something about yourself that you normally may not like about yourself and just study that part of you and find the beauty of it.
With love,
Yours Truly, Eb