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When you look at
the mirror, do you like what you see? Are you still very embarrassed about your
scalping forehead? Are you disturbed by your African nose? Perhaps it is your
fingers or your eyes? What don’t you like about you when you look at yourself
in the mirror? Growing up, I didn’t like my teeth. They were big and very
spaced. If granted a wish to change a part of me, it would have to do with my
dental formula. When I got braces, they did not drastically change the formula
but they improved their appearance. I was almost dissatisfied even after the
money spent at the dentist but I learned something that made me stop hating
that part of my body. It is something that I have also been learning lately and
I wish to share it with you.
A man/woman who does not love himself cannot love
others effectively.
Apart from our
physical looks, there are other arenas in life where we feel let down by
ourselves. Have you ever felt let down by your temper? Did you speak out of
turn and let yourself down with your over-excitement? Or did your silence
create equal damage? Do you beat yourself up for your shortcomings? Is there
something about you that heavily and constantly disappoints you to the point of
hating yourself? Do you ever talk to yourself in the following way?
Nobody could love me
I could never change
It’s my weakness
I’ll never be good enough
I’m ugly
Remember our
guide:
A man/woman who does not love himself cannot love
others effectively.
Beloved, you
will notice that if you are in that situation, it affects the relationships
around you. Why do you talk ill of the girl with a smaller, slimmer, prettier
body figure than you? Why do you make fun of the person who is scoring higher
grades than you? Why do you find yourself constantly annoying those that you
love with your habits? Your relationships with others will be strained if you
are not secure in yourself. Christ said that we ought to love others as we love
ourselves (Mark 12:31). The degree for loving others according to God is that
of how we love ourselves. So if we do not love ourselves, we cannot execute our
love for others. A man/woman who does not
love himself cannot love others effectively.
All
unhappiness is caused by comparison
I strongly
believe that all unhappiness is caused by comparison. When growing up, I would
see children with wealthier parents and feel as if the world and all the forces
that forge the future were against me. I told myself if I only had as much
money, toys, opportunities as the other person, then I would be happier. What I
did not know is that, I was in a vicious cycle of comparison that only led to
unhappiness. There are people who are also looking at you and thinking they’d
he happy if they had what you got. However, I came to learn that God gives time
and chance to all men.
Ecclesiastes
9:11 “I have seen something else under
the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does
food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but
time and chance happen to them all.”
Life is not
scripted to favour a few. Life in its daily rigmarole of sin, accidents,
goodness and badness occurs. However, a Gracious God avails a common grace of
time and chance to all. So whether you are reading this from the slums or from
the leafy suburbs, realize that time and chance are availed to you. If you
compare your body to the girl on the poster cover of the magazine, you strangle
your time and chance. The time you stay depressed blinds your opportunities and
eats up your time. And opportunities will always look bigger going than coming.
If those opportunities are seized then your attitude towards those more
privileged and less privileged than you will increase. You will stop hating
those with more amenities and you will stop disdaining those with less. You
will love others and relate with them effectively. Remember, a man/woman who does not love himself cannot
love others effectively.
Stop looking at
the greener grass on the other side. If it’s greener, who knows, it is probably
growing on a septic tank or the water bills are high. Stop looking at what
others have. Instead like Moses in Egypt, ask yourself, “WHAT IS IN MY HANDS?”
So you don’t have a gym like Jim, but you have a dusty football field where you
can run around every morning and shed off that weight. The simple rod in Moses’ hand is what
saved Israel and split the Red Sea towards freedom. What is in your hands?
Remember, God will not bless your hands; He will bless the work of your hands.
Change your
environment of influence
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The reason you
think you’re not beautiful is because you are constantly told by those around
you that you don’t match up. Are you keeping friends who make fun of you,
demoralize you and then say that it is just for fun, or they were only joking?
By the way, the Bible condemns coarse joking (Ephesians 5:4). You may have a
boyfriend/girlfriend who makes fun of your body. It hurts you but you blame
yourself for being too sensitive to their jokes. The result, you feel worse
about yourself. Every time, you try to change your hairstyle, your clothes, or
whatever it is that makes you feel inadequate, you end up not doing it because
your environment has conditioned your mind that you cannot do it. When my wife
and I were dating, she affirmed me constantly. Turi always let me know that she
found me attractive. She let me know that others opinions did not count but
only God’s. She created an environment that brought out the king in me and
killed the fool in me. She encouraged me to join the theatre club in school.
Because of that, I have a very strong gift in theatre and entertainment. She
pulled out the king in me. Is your environment of people enforcing weakness or
building greatness. If it is not the latter, disengage from that group and find
building environments.
One way to love
yourself is to build a strong support environment. Here are four environments
that affect you greatly:
The friends you keep
The books you read
The music you listen
The media you watch
If you are
struggling to believe you are beautiful, you need to stop listening to the hip
hop rappers who associate women to wealth and objects like cars. You need to
disengage from friends, books, music and media that enforce your weakness. But
stopping the bad isn’t enough. You need to engage in good investments that
improve you. Forge close friendships that build. Bad company ruins good morals
(1 Cor 15:33). Read books that help you become wiser (especially the Bible),
listen to music that builds your soul and watch media that enhances your
character. Otherwise, you may grow up despising those with relationships that
work when yours is failing. A man/woman
who does not love himself cannot love others effectively.
Self talk
King David made
some huge mistakes in life. One of them was taking another man’s wife and
murdering that man. When David was downcast after messing up, he gave himself a
pep-talk. He said “Why are you downcast Oh my soul?” He then proceeded to
encourage himself to trust in the Creator and rejoice in him. David was
punished adequately by God for his sinfulness but he knew that no sin is too
great for God to forgive. He asked God to restore the joy of salvation and
renew a right spirit in him. Have you even been in a low state? Have all the
friends around you tried lifting you up but all in vain? Listen, you are down
but not out yet. Talk to yourself. Part of loving yourself involves practicing
to encourage yourself. When I feel down, I talk to myself in the shower. I tell
myself to cheer up. Don’t ignore the feeling? Don’t say to yourself “I
shouldn’t be feeling like this.” You will only know how to talk to yourself
appropriately once you acknowledge the feeling appropriately.
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Also, don’t
confuse talking to yourself with lying to yourself. Don’t just say that God is
loving and forget that he is Holy, Holy, Holy. Don’t underestimate your
problem. Don’t ignore the signs. Acknowledge the signs but remember, even in a hospital
bed, when the green line is flat there is no life. But when it is up and down,
it means there is life. The down moments in life are not bad. Why? Because it
means an up is coming. Don’t wallow in self-pity and miss the chance and
opportunity. The best self-talk is Scripture. Scripture is sure, definite and
infallible. Memorize a few verses on who God says you are? (See a few: John
1:12, Romans 8:31, Romans 8:37, 2 Corinthians 5:17, 1st John 4:4)
They will make good self-talk when you are downcast. Because they are
poetically written? No. It is because they have power in them. Scripture is
loaded with the Spirit of God. Scripture is not like a quote from Mark Twain.
Those quotes by men are good. However, some of them have a form of godliness
but lack the power. How do we know which ones are? We don’t. But we know about
Scripture and it’s work is sure.
Jesus said in
John 14 that the Holy Spirit would come and remind us His Word. The Holy Spirit
cannot remind you what you do not know. Spend lots of time in the Word and
memorize it. There are times when I have memorized a whole chapter or a whole
book in the Bible. I am currently memorizing the entire book of 2nd
Timothy with a group of people in my church- 3 chapters down, one to go. It
accounts for the overcoming victories I have had in low times. If you are
telling yourself that you don’t have a good memory and you cannot memorize,
then you are back you square one. You don’t believe in yourself because you
don’t love yourself enough. When you encourage yourself, you avoid creating a
poisonous ambience with your drudgery. You even encourage those in hard times.
You are able to show them love because you talked to yourself and showed love
to yourself. A man/woman who does not
love himself cannot love others effectively.
Don’t own troubles
Catch your
tongue. Stop saying statements like:
It’s my weakness
My temper is uncontrollable.
My habit isn’t common.
The Bible says
no temptation is uncommon (1 Corinthians 10:13). King Solomon goes on to say
that there is nothing new under the sun. If you own your troubles, your
troubles will own you. And if that happens, you will be repulsive to those
around you because you will believe it is your right to be in a horrible state.
You have no right to ruin anyone’s day because you imagine that your feelings
are superiour to your environment. A man/woman
who does not love himself cannot love others effectively.
Take
responsibility
There are things
about our body that we can do something about to change how we feel. If you are
overweight, you have the opportunity to tweak your diet and engage in physical
exercise, frequently and consistently. However, it sounds easy to say start
exercising and start eating well. It isn’t the gym that’s the problem; the
problem is our mindset. It takes loving yourself to start that exercise and
diet program. If your girlfriend is hitting the gym, you need to do so too. It
may sound petty but she may feel cheated that she looks good and you make no
effort on yourself. A man/woman who does
not love himself cannot love others effectively.
Take
responsibility for the spheres within your control. I pray that God will grant
you the power to change what you can change; that He may grant you the serenity
to accept what you cannot change; and that He may grant you the wisdom to know
the difference.
Treat
yourself kindly
If you call
yourself stupid after you mess up, you will not find it hard to reject when
someone else calls you stupid. If you don’t take leave when you are tired, you
will not see the problem when your boss overworks you. If you don’t take time
to feed your spirit, you will not see the harm that perverse entertainment does
to you. Your physical, emotional, rational, psychological and spiritual selves
will react but because you will not realize that you are being unkind to
yourself. Your system will be conformed to mediocrity and self-abuse and you
won’t even know it. Ever heard friends who call each other fools, stupid,
idiots and laugh? Ever seen people who are tired but insist on working to
finish their projects or assignments? Ever seen people indulge and enjoy a
movie that does not support their moral stance? These things look obvious but
they are an indicator that you do not love yourself. And you forget that when
you do these things, you are relating with yourself and you are being unkind to
several people: your physical self, your psychological self, your emotional self,
your rational self and your spiritual self. You are treating these people
badly. You are not loving them well and they will also not love others well. A man/woman who does not love himself cannot
love others effectively.
Forgive
Perhaps the
reason you don’t feel confident, beautiful, worthy or useful is because someone
killed you inwardly. Perhaps it was an abusive father or a demeaning mother.
Perhaps it was a teacher who said nasty things to you in school. You were called
ugly, useless, foolish, imbecile and I’m just mentioning the conservative list.
Take a piece of paper, Beloved. Write down the names of all those people and
humble yourself. Go before God and ask Him to take away any hurt that you have
held in your life because of these people. Pray for each one of them and ask
God to release you from the hurt and bitterness. Ask God to give you the
humility to forgive them just as he forgave you. Ask God to change your heart of
stone and give you a heart of flesh such that even if you met these people, you
would not hold any hard feelings towards them. Cancel each name as you pray
until you are done.
Forgiveness is
for you. Holding onto hurt and bitterness is like taking poison and expecting
the person who offended you to die. You will notice that you may have been
subtly treating your children, siblings, friends, spouse the same way you were
treated by those people that killed you with their words. I call it the
pain-transfer syndrome. We transfer our frustration to people who had nothing
to do with it. I pray that you will ask these people you transferred the hurt
to for forgiveness. Let them know that someone in your past caused you not to
love yourself and you have learned that a
man/woman who does not love himself cannot love others effectively.