Falling From Grace and Recovering

Since the beginning of 2010, I have been exploring who I am, who I can be, my strengths, my weaknesses, and the things I want to change about myself and my life.  I've been doing a pretty good job of breaking down some of the walls and barriers that had been built up.  After a huge plummet, I've managed to increase my confidence and happiness, and change my perception of and attitude towards a number of things that had previously stressed me out and made me upset.

As proud as I am of these changes and improvements, there are always road bumps to overcome.  I don't believe the journey of self-improvement is ever really finished.  There are almost always minor tweaks or major changes that can take place.  There are always outside influences that have the potential to knock you down, but there are also many influences that have to potential to pick you back up.  We have the capability to choose how to react to each influence.  Lately, I've been allowing myself to feel doubt about my abilities as a mother, significant other and friend.  I've allowed criticism and sarcasm from various sources to get the better of me and eat away at my confidence.  Needless to say, I don't like it, and I've decided that I'm going to put an end to it.

It's really all about how we choose to handle things.  We can't control what other people do or say, but we can filter out the bad from the good.  And we can determine what's worth getting upset over and what isn't.  Sometimes a criticism has some merit.  Sometimes the people or things that knock us down do so out of love and concern, or do so unintentionally.  Sometimes a good, swift kick in the butt is what we need to make a change.  And sometimes, after careful consideration, these things can be disregarded.

Throughout my life, for every one person who has said something negative about or to me, there have been at least 5 people who have said something positive.  Every time my confidence was thrown out of whack, there are at least 5 instances when it was built up.  For every angry word said toward me, there have been hundreds of loving words.  I am not perfect, and I will do stupid things from time to time, and I will admit it when something I've done negatively affects someone else.  Neither are my friends perfect, and sometimes things they say or do may negatively affect me.  In order to avoid some of the hurt that I sometimes perceive from others, I need to find the courage to let them know my feelings.  This has always been a little difficult for me, but I have learned the hard way that it does no good to keep things hidden away.

It's not necessarily the fall from grace that scares me.   It's the staying down that scares me.  If you can rally yourself with enough courage to hold your head high, even when you feel like you're being beaten down, to stand tall when all you want to do is curl up and cry, to face the criticism when you wish it would just blow away... if you can do all these things, then your recovery will be much easier and the fall won't seem so bad.