Krysta's Thought for the Day

Question: How often do you assume that what you hate most about yourself exists in other people? More importantly, what do your relationships look like as a result of not loving yourself completely?

I know the answers to these questions intuitively, as I have raked my soul across hot coals to answer them truthfully before. I know that there are things about myself that I resent existing; I can feel the sore spots in my being. Those also seem to be some of the things that I resent most in others. Now I don't think I need to write them out for the potential world to see, but i do think that it is vital to my understanding and appreciation (yes appreciation!) of myself that I know what these things are. You cannot hope to understand yourself only by focusing on the things that you feel confident about. You should be able to understand the weaknesses in your character.

Why?

Well this takes us to the second question. We need to heal ourselves and forgive ourselves in order to give ourselves fully to another person. There is no part of my being that i have not inspected time and again in the past four years. I know that I have surveyed any aspect of myself that i could think of. I am giving myself to someone for all eternity, and I felt like I should know what HE is in for. I came up with a sort of mental list. It was refreshing (yes, I swear) to admit that I am messy and enjoy dropping everything on the floor when I walk in from work. Or that I avoid confrontation until i am too angry to speak calmly. I stopped denying things that I hated about myself. I stopped criticizing people for things (like being lazy or non-confrontational) and I started - gasp - appreciating and loving myself more. And guess what happened? I opened myself up to be loved and appreciated more in return.

Now that wasn't hard, was it?