THE BIGGER PICTURE: There are things that are true about us, whether we want to pay attention to them or not. We each have good, positive characteristics: our strengths and successes.
We have beautiful qualities - some since birth, others developed from life experiences. We care deeply about things, and respond as such. We are intelligent, and so, have made the best choices we could in each situation facing us given the resources available. We each contribute something unique to the world in our own particular sense of humour.
Human beings are wonderful. Yet, few of us feel like it. Something has made us believe we are worthwhile only if we focus on our struggles all of the time. While it is true that struggles need attention, they need more than just ours, and for far less time. Actually, they require only a small proportion of our thinking, and only in select, strategic moments.
Our struggles need the attention of people outside ourselves, who will model love back to us, allowing us to release and heal them. When this happens, they cease to demand our attention, and we learn and move forward, delighted with ourselves. When this process is denied or interrupted, however, our struggles get stuck within us, hijacking our perceptions of both our self and the world.
Everybody struggles, and everybody is frustrated and embarrassed by their own struggle. Focusing on it all the time becomes a form of torture, evoking chronic humiliation and hopelessness. Furthermore, it doesn't shift the struggle. In fact, it makes it worse. Alongside making you bad company and less attractive, it diminishes your joy, depletes your energy, and renders you less able to take charge against it.
When misery is nourished, it creates more despair. Notice this in the work place: It is impossible to work in an environment where people are persistently negative. When workers are discouraged, production decreases; when workers are encouraged, production increases. This is also true for individuals. If we discourage ourselves, our lives are sluggish and unfulfilled. If we allow ourselves to really believe, anything is possible.
It is not necessary to highlight our struggles at every moment. Not only is it exhausting, but it paints a distorted, untrue picture of ourselves. There are things we do well. This is true regardless of whether we notice them. However, deciding to notice them is honest, and far more constructive than pretending they don't exist.
When we acknowledge our virtues, we get energy back. We also get balance, more free time and the opportunity to feel happy. We gain the possibility of thinking bigger and better. We become entities worth caring for, and take action to reflect this. Ironically, this makes it possible for us to constructively deal with struggle.
There is no risk to believing in ourselves. Nothing terrible will happen. Most of us are afraid of being "branded" selfish, self-centred, arrogant or rude. We fear no one will like us, and so we will be rejected and misunderstood. Those fears aren't entirely unfounded. In a bizarre twist of fate, self-love has become threatening in our world. We are afraid to shine for fear of making others around us (people we love) feel worse about themselves. And still, true, genuine self-appreciation lets you be more encouraging of yourself, and so, more encouraging to others.
Focusing on your own difficulties can become a habit that is hard to break - spreading so that you also focus on the struggles of others. When this happens, you stop seeing the beauty and humanity present around you. Your world really becomes small and possibilities seem out of reach.
We are so used to governments, businesses and other institutions not modelling responsibility, it has felt inevitable to expect people to be irresponsible. Taking our attention off each other's struggles feels equal to accepting low standards and a lack of change. This leaves us feeling hopeless and disempowered. Nevertheless, we have every reason to believe that people who have strong self-belief will opt to be responsible. And, there is only one road towards strengthening self-belief: offering support and encouragement.
Our world would be wonderful if each person were free to notice their goodness. We could cease to model limitations and discouragement, and move towards a world aligned with human priorities.
Developing a genuine love for yourself demands that you evaluate your struggles with honesty, compassion, perspective and proportion. Most importantly, you must be willing to do something to transform them. In the absence of this project, there is no really useful reason to pay attention to our difficulties at all.
No one is defined by their struggle. Our struggles require a few minutes each week, no more, to notice them and plan against them. In all other moments, all that is asked of us is to have faith in ourselves, go off and have a life.
Shalini Sinha has established Forward Movement, a clinic where she practises life coaching, the Bowen Technique, and studies nutritional medicine.