Back To Basics
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” — Gloria Steinem
When I went to the bookstore last weekend to pick up The Shack
I haven’t started reading the book I went there for yet because while in the psychology section, I picked up another book. Also how I roll. This book looks and sounds like your typical psych-lite, self-help book. It’s short, only 122 pages. It has a purple paperback cover and was quite possibly self-published, based on the graphics and design of the cover and book. There are even cutesy little cartoon drawings every few pages used to demonstrate specific points. Strangely, I picked it up and flipped through it for a few minutes anyway. It’s called Learning to Love Yourself: Finding Your Self-Worth
Some of the points I read reminded me of when I first started on this whole journey to self-awareness thing. Back then the idea that I had the power to change my life simply by changing the way I think about things was a brand new concept. It was life changing. It reached me for the first time in the form of another book I would probably find objectionable (or at least way too simplistic for me) today. I’m even embarrassed to admit it now but that book was Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside Out
I read it in January of 2008. Only a few weeks after hubby and I separated. I know this because there was an exercise (come on, you know all self-help books have exercises) that I actually did and I have saved the e-mails. The exercise required me to ask a series of 10 questions of 5 people who I trust. The questions were all about their perceptions of me. One of them was, “Tell me what you think my strongest traits are.” I can’t tell you how embarrassed I was to send these 5 e-mails. I even put this in the subject line: “This may seem weird…”. The premise behind this exercise is a concept that is now hard-wired into my brain and that I understand completely but at the time it was completely foreign to me. It’s the concept of reframing your negative self-talk. We all talk to ourselves constantly (hopefully just in our heads) and we don’t even realize it. The tapes are recorded early on and become background noise. We don’t notice them at all. Anyway, the idea was to find out what 5 people who I care about and trust think about me in order to disprove my own negative perceptions about myself. I had to answer the questions first. Luckily none of the 5 chosen ones called the men in white coats to come take me away and were all extremely open, honest and more than willing to participate.
Their answers blew me away. I know these people well. None of them are the type to sugar coat things and they all gave me concrete examples and reasons explaining why they answered the questions the way they did. What was most striking was how similar all their answers were, when they are each from a different circle. None of them are close friends themselves. Some of them have known me since I was a kid, others I met after I’d already become a mom. They answered the questions so similarly that I couldn’t help but buy into their answers, and they were drastically different from my own answers to the same questions. I carried those e-mails around in my car for months. I still have them saved on my computer. I will never get rid of them.
Reading what they said made me start to realize just how negatively I viewed myself and also how completely off the mark I was. While that did lead to confusion, (what the hell else was I completely wrong about?!) it also lead to serious work on my part, questioning everything I thought about everything. It lead to massive personal changes, many of which I am still struggling with.
So that is why I picked up this silly little book about self-worth. Self-worth can’t be bad. The book isn’t too bad either. It’s a good idea to remind myself of some of the basics I learned from good old Dr. Phil. There are even some concepts that I hadn’t considered in the same way that they are presented in this book. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten them in my quest for enlightenment. Particularly…how we deal with anger.
Thanks for stopping by!
It really is hard to lose that little nagging voice telling you you’re not up to par, but you’re right. You just keep drowning it out with a louder voice that reminds you of how awesome you really are. (Just please do it all in your head or they’ll lock you up!)
You were brave to ask 5 people what they think of you. I’d be scared to death to get the answers!
I try really hard not to get locked up!
It seemed like it took forever for them to respond, because it was so awful waiting to hear back. Of course I thought they all thought I’d gone off the deep end.
This post reminded me of a time years ago when I asked the Narc in my life what he loved about me. The answer was so icky I can’t bare to tell you. I wish I would have asked five sane people the same question at the time so I didn’t get a stain on my brain for a few years. Truly, I was no where in the hemisphere of dealing with a potential blow to my fragile self after hearing I was loved for my kisses, tongue and eyes.
If I do try this experiment one day, I’ll be sure to ask women and men. What was your ratio of women to men … curious?
Dawn´s last blog ..I Confess, I’m Obsessed
1 male and 4 females. Ugh – asking a narcissist what they love about you would be the worst. But you didn’t know at the time. Typical, superficial response.