What if you’re not a failure after all?

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

Before you continue with your usual rounds around social media today, I want you to take a moment and look for the following; how many articles pop up telling you what you are doing wrong? How many articles are simply about letting you know how messed up you are and how you should live your life? How many are about guilting you about how broken you are? The funny thing is that at the end, most are written by people or posted on sites who make money every time you feel like you are failing at life?

What if I told you that you aren’t failing, but rather you have been taught to think you are a failure? What if I told you to consider how you have actually succeeded to survive every single one of the worse days in your life, and you are still here! THAT is far from failing.

I want to take this week to focus on breaking free from the social programing you are constantly being force fed and making you realize just how much you already have going for yourself. And the first thing we need to understand is that thinking you are a failure isn’t an accident, but an open strategy that is constantly forced on you by people who want to benefit from your insecurity.

Sure, you are far from perfect. We all are. And there will be times where you DO need help dealing with those imperfections and personal challenges. But as soon as you are told that EVERYTHING you are doing is wrong, you have to wonder and question what are the intentions of the person making you feel like that. Do they want to help you?

Or do those people want you as miserable as they are? Do they want you weaker than them? Do they want to exploit you? Helping you is often the least they want to do. You can only help someone by building on the positive, by raising the person up. When you focus on the negative, you simply bury that person even further. Last time I checked, kicking someone who’s down is no way of helping them.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t own up to what you have done; quite the contrary. I am saying that the only way to take accountability for the bad you have done is by doing good. It’s not about letting someone know you feel guilty, but proving to them how you are making up for it. Focus on the good you can do, instead of the bad you have done. At that point you will realize if the person even wants you to make up for your mistakes, or they simply want to make you suffer.

Take a second and look at the good you have done; and go out to do more of it. Take a second and look at the good people you have around; and go find more people like that. Surround yourself with things that elevate you. Surround yourself with the good you want in your life. When you do this, you will notice how the good in your life starts to outnumber the bad.