There\u00a0are about two dozen of my book covers in frames of all shapes and sizes hanging\u00a0on the office wall behind my desk. A friend suggested I hang them up to remind\u00a0me of who I am and what I\u2019ve done when I doubt myself.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0was hesitant to take ownership. \u201cThey belong to someone else,\u201d I told her.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo\u00a0they don\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cThey may be about someone else but they wouldn\u2019t exist\u00a0if it weren\u2019t for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u00a0was right. Today, they don\u2019t make me feel like I\u2019m flaunting my
accomplishments. They remind me about what I\u2019m capable of and the work that\u00a0shaped me. They help me when I hit a roadblock in my writing. The inner critic\u00a0goes to town, telling me I don\u2019t know what to do and even if I did, I wouldn\u2019t\u00a0be able to do it so why bother. I believe that voice at first and I lose my\u00a0sense of self, but when I stop and look at my wall of fame, I get the courage\u00a0to move forward. I tell myself, \u201cYou can do this. You\u2019ve done it before and you\u00a0were successful. You can do it again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For\u00a0some reason, the inability to embrace and appreciate who we are and what we\u2019ve\u00a0done is an unwelcome trait that many of us have.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u00a0a nice dress that is,\u201d someone says.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u00a0this old thing?\u201d you answer.<\/p>\n
We\u00a0seem to be programmed to think the worst about ourselves. I remember being a\u00a0little girl and looking in a mirror in the hallway of my childhood home. I liked\u00a0what I saw. \u201cI\u2019m so pretty,\u201d I said to my mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t\u00a0be vain,\u201d she said harshly.<\/p>\n
From\u00a0then on, it became difficult to appreciate how I looked. A similar thing must\u00a0have happened to my mother. My father thought she was beautiful. She was, but\u00a0if he complimented her in any way, she gave him the wrist. Once I heard him\u00a0tell her she looked like a movie star and the expression on her face looked\u00a0like someone had just assaulted her. When anyone told her that I looked like\u00a0her, she said, \u201cShe\u2019s the improved version.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ram Dass said,\u00a0\u201cYour problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u00a0can use someone\u2019s appreciation as encouragement to keep moving forward. Or we\u00a0can use it to feel unworthy. When someone expresses admiration about me or\u00a0something I did, my work is to tell them, \u201cThank you.\u201d I was in a spiritual\u00a0retreat some years ago, when the facilitator said, \u201cEveryone talks about\u00a0giving. I think what the world needs is good receivers.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u00a0know a kind woman who goes out of her way to help her friends. She doesn\u2019t do\u00a0it because she thinks she should. It just comes naturally to her. We hadn\u2019t\u00a0seen each other for a while and when we did, she looked filled with light.\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019re so beautiful,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo\u00a0are you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Her\u00a0answer made me feel hollow. If she had just thanked me, the idea that she liked\u00a0what I had said about her, would have been a compliment in itself. Her refusal to accept what I said hurt me. I felt disappointed that my gift wasn\u2019t\u00a0received. That my sentiment wasn\u2019t valued.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0my writing class, I gave my students a prompt that said, \u201cWhat is beautiful to\u00a0you? What makes you smile?\u201d When it came time to read our pieces out loud, one\u00a0of my male students had written about a female student. About how much he\u00a0appreciated what she had to say and how lovely she looked. She cringed\u00a0throughout the reading. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else. She\u00a0couldn\u2019t meet him in the eye and he looked deeply disappointed. I asked the
woman why she had such a hard time hearing wonderful things about her. It\u00a0turned out that her mother had been so dismissive of her when she was growing\u00a0up, she thought she was worthless. And that had followed her all throughout her\u00a0life.<\/p>\n
Any\u00a0time my sister or I gave my mother a gift, she sent it back. We tried giving\u00a0her flowers and she told us never to do it again because they were a waste of\u00a0money since they died. We felt terrible. We wanted our gifts to make us feel\u00a0connected to our mother but they had done the opposite. So if you can\u2019t accept\u00a0a compliment or a gift for yourself, try doing it for someone else. I once\u00a0received a scarf from a friend for a birthday gift and I didn\u2019t like it. The\u00a0material was scratchy and the color was not becoming for my complexion but all
I did was say thank you. My friend lit up with pride. I wasn\u2019t being dishonest.I may not have loved the gift but I loved that she wanted to give me something.\u00a0That was enough to make me feel appreciative.<\/p>\n
The grace that comes with acceptance is golden. To give and to receive in equal measure creates the balance of a good life. When we acknowledge and accept a compliment with graciousness, we are blessing the person who just blessed us.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil we can receive with an open heart, we\u00a0are never really giving with an open heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
– – – Brene Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u00a0are about two dozen of my book covers in frames of all shapes and sizes hanging\u00a0on the office wall behind my desk. A friend suggested I hang them up to remind\u00a0me of who I am and what I\u2019ve done when I doubt myself. I\u00a0was hesitant to take ownership. \u201cThey belong to someone else,\u201d I told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2749,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2748\/revisions\/2749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}