One of the things I admire most about young people (i.e. people that are 10yrs or more younger than me) is their unabashed directness. They aren’t being rude, just fearlessly honest.
Take today for example:
I recently befriended this really bright, beautiful, young woman at work. It’s more of a telephone friendship as I realise now that I feel frumpy when I’m in her company. She hasn’t done a thing to make me feel this way at all, it’s all my own doing.
She hit me with a whopper today. We were chatting and I was on my usual self-deprecating humor mission. I said something about being a fat old hag hahaha and we had the usual skirmish where she said I was really cool and pretty and I scoffed and she said ‘You know what? It’s really unattractive when you say stuff like that about yourself’
And I thought Wow. How true.
I know that what we say about ourselves reflects what we think of ourselves and works to re-inforce our belief of our self-worth. And that we are only as good/smart/pretty as we think we are.
I realised that when I make these comments about myself I’m only reinforcing the incredibly negative self-image I have of myself.
So. As of now I’m going to be bold and brave and start believing that little voice inside that says ‘but you are pretty/clever/amazing!’.
What have I got to lose?
Ps Please do me a favour and call me on it when I do it?