Are you satisfied with who you truly are and what personality you have been gifted with? Most of us if we are honest with ourselves would wish to be someone different. I wanted to be Kylie Minogue. She’s gorgeous, confident and people crowd around her in awe. The true reason I wanted to be like her was because she has an outgoing personality. Whereas I am by nature an introvert.

For instance in school, particularly high school the need for acceptance took on another level of importance and priority. Suddenly you find yourself surrounded by teenagers searching for an identity within the various groups. We’ve all watched mean girls hehe and we can recognise the different cliques, the popular and not so popular, the athletic and the straight A’s and our worst nightmare, the rebels. Throughout high school I tended to fit into the not so popular group.

With poor self-esteem hanging on my back I was always described as the shy and quiet girl in all of my reports. When other kids poked fun at me I just withdrew into my shell in an attempt to hide. Being the center of attention was possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Whenever I started comparing myself to the popular girls I felt even more defeated. These loud girls  would monopolise all the attractive boys attention and seemed to emanate confidence. It was as though nothing bothered them and life was perfect. While that may have been the case with some of them it didn’t occur to me until I got older that even loud and seemingly confident people can be insecure.

When I was living through insecurity I was unable to be myself. The insecurity squashed my personality on a regular basis. I dealt with it  by retreating inwardly with the purpose of keeping myself safe. This meant that I would shy away when asked to participate in class or group situations requiring me to speak in front of others. It also ensured that I would not go to the graduation as there was too much possibility of looking like the odd one out. Even though I am not the same person as I was when I was younger I am still a fairly quiet person. Being more on the quiet side is who I am and I don’t think I could ever be a loud person even if I tried. It would be exhausting for me! It took me years to figure out that it was OK to be a quiet personality type. If we were all loud imagine how noisy the world would be and if we were all quiet it would be too quiet.

If being accepted by others requires  you to  have to change who you truly are then it is not worth the friendship. Find friends that give you room to be yourself and most importantly embrace who you are! You were made with a purpose in mind that no one else can fulfill but you, so why would you want to be someone you are not. Focus on the strengths that you have instead of the weaknesses, and those strengths will develop to such a point that you won’t be so consumed by the areas that trip you up. Everyone has a place in this world 🙂

When I think about rehearsals the first thing that comes to mind is dance performances. As a kid I remember spending hours and hours in the backyard pretending to be a dancer. Even though I had never had dancing lessons it didn’t stop me from pretending,  it was so much fun!  When it comes to the new seasons of dancing or singing shows on t.v., I enjoy watching the dancing over the singing any day.  I imagine how many hours and how much effort it must take to practice and put something like that together so that the performance is a success.

Individuals involved in the entertainment world know how much practice is needed to rehearse lines or dance moves.  Individuals who play in a sports team have practice sessions weekly to improve their ability. As a child starts school they spend a lot of time practicing drawing and writing. When you really start to think about it we do a lot of rehearsing. There are wedding rehearsals, concert rehearsals and the list is endless… Rehearsing something over and over helps to perfect what you are learning. You get better at something over time. You may lack the skills in a particular area however after practicing you improve. Not everything is a positive rehearsal. So what happens when you begin rehearsing thoughts over and over in your mind about something negative? You get better at it! You may even start living that negative rehearsal out in your daily life. It becomes second nature and eventually you do not even have to think to be able to think it. It becomes automatic like driving a car.

As a teenager I had morning rehearsals every day when I was getting ready. I would stand in front of the mirror and say to myself ‘You are so Ugly’…… ‘No one likes you’….. It became automatic and believable over time. If anyone happened to pay me a compliment it was quickly ignored as all I believed was what I had rehearsed for so many years each and every single day. At the time I had no idea how destructive those rehearsal sessions were. It became such a part of my daily life that I did not recognise its damaging effects.

What do you rehearse each day? Is it positive or negative? Let me encourage you today to  take some time to think about what you are thinking about. So that your life does not take on something destructive which essentially robs you of the freedom to be yourself and the freedom to enjoy the life that you have been given. Life is  valuable and precious and so are you!

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a reaction as: the way someone acts or feels in response to something that happens or is said etc.  We are designed to react to certain situations. It can be for our safety for instance in which you need to move fast to avoid sudden danger. We may react to a certain smell in food which alerts us into avoiding something that is no longer edible it is past its due date. Our bodies are designed to react.

What about when we react emotionally. It is normal to react in anger when someone mistreats you or abuses you. Sadness is healthy and normal when you are grieving for someone or something lost. Being Happy is an emotion to an experience that brings us Joy.

So what is an over-reaction?

There are times when we may over react. Over reaction was common for me when I was growing up as a teenager through to adulthood.

As an example; when I was going out with my fiancé back in the day we often did the usual shopping trip to the mall. Everything was fine when we walked in but everything was not fine when we walked out. As a girl battling with poor self-esteem there were certain situations that caused my emotions to escalate out of control. My fiancé and I would be wandering around the mall doing our thing and if his head even so much as slightly turned in the direction of an oncoming attractive female I would immediately assume he were completely smitten and over taken by this person. The thoughts would start to hit me like boulder sized lies… “Your fiancé thinks that girl is prettier than you because you are in fact ugly”… These thoughts would start to overwhelm my inner world.  I found myself not being able to control those thoughts or those emotions that I felt it was as though they had power over me.

Once we got back in the car I would be in such a state of anguish unable to talk or even function in a normal state. My fiancé would ask “What’s wrong?” my response was always, “Nothing”. Later on that day or even maybe that week I would finally explode like a volcano erupting with the lava of hurt, pain and ugliness. This was not how I wanted to live. There was something much deeper in me that needed healing but at the time I didn’t have a clue what it was.

Sometimes our reactions to a situation don’t make sense. Poor self-esteem robs us of the freedom to be ourselves and has the potential to destroy our relationships. As I share my experience may it challenge you into realising that burying your true issues will only cause them to sit unnoticed until the next trigger comes along causing another eruption of emotions. While it may feel difficult to face issues that hurt I encourage you to consider how life would be if you were free from being controlled by low self-esteem.

In July of this year as a family we visited the state that I grew up in the capital of Australia, Canberra. It was winter time and Canberra can get very cold. While my eldest children were doing their own thing my husband and I and our eight year old decided to go for a visit to the Art Gallery.

The most memorable moment of that day was walking on the frosted grass outside and seeing this little yellow flower all by itself. I had to take a photo as it reminded me about not forgetting  the simple moments in life. Everything that we can take for granted on an average day. It also reminded me of how far I have come as a person. That even through all of the ugliness experienced there are areas within me that have changed that I would never want to give away. Those are the areas involving the heart.

Pain and hurt is never ever pleasant yet somehow it works within us something so much more valuable and everlasting. How we deal with the pain and hurt sets us up either for freedom or bondage. As a child I lived in bondage. Poor self esteem ruled my life every single day. The more I rehearsed the negative thoughts that were playing in my head the more I believed them which inevitably was reflected to others with my body language.

Everything within me desired to be free!!!!

I envied others who were comfortable with being themselves. It would not take much to trigger me into a corner of self defeat and hopelessness. Every negative remark spoken about me at school for instance would be welcomed in without a second thought. I truly believed that I was worth nothing and everyone hated me however, the hate that I felt was actually my own hate towards myself. We are all potential targets for insults and sometimes kids in school say things that are mean and wrong.

We can not control peoples behavior but we certainly have the ability to do a check up of our own hearts and deal with the hurt and pain in a healthy way that will benefit in the long term. When we don’t deal with issues of the heart the clutter just keeps growing and before you know it you are not the person you were created to be.