In a world full of options, opportunities, and opinions, it is vital that you know for sure, who you are and what you have to offer. Because of all these options, opportunities and opinions, to be proud of who you are and of who you are becoming is often found to be one of the greatest challenges for some to conquer. These challenges exist often times because too much attention is given, instead, to who somebody else is and what they have to offer. Learning to place the many options and opportunities available and opinions of others in perspective is key to trusting God with your own existence and all that it encompasses.
With the access we have to one another today through the internet, social media, news media and cell phones, the act of comparing is at an all time high. Because human nature sets you up to desire acknowledgement and acceptance, comparing has become a very important step, perhaps too important, in getting that stamp of approval needed to feel accepted. But it’s not the comparison alone that could hinder your ability to trust God with your own. It is what you do with and how you respond to feedback received from your audience or connections.
The danger in comparing yourself to others, especially unnecessary comparisons, is you may begin to form a distorted perception of yourself. You begin doubting your own, what you already have, even what you have already learned to love and now discounting your own uniqueness. What you once thought was a good thing, a good trait, about yourself, you can very easily begin to discount when you spend too much time comparing. Relying too much on what others think or how they respond to what you choose to share can also contribute to a distorted perception of yourself. Depending on the thoughts and opinions of others and their response or even lack thereof and comparing such to the responses someone else may get, can lead you to a place completely out of line with who God would have you to be. Your desire to be acknowledged can allow the options and opportunities available to become much more enticing. Self-respect can very easily be compromised when the opinions of others become more important than your own. Not thinking of consequences that could occur later, possibly even years later, can very easily open the door to you doing things you never thought you would. It is even possible that your need to compare has led to a state of desperation, to an unhealthy desire for attention simply because you’ve allowed the opinions of others to matter more. But how do you keep from falling for this conditional love; a love solely based on how much of yourself you’re willing to share?
Trusting God with your own.
Anytime you open yourself to a need for acknowledgement, acceptance, and approval, you also open yourself to rejection. Are you ready to receive any of these or maybe even none? What does each one really mean to you? Sharing your life, your gift, and your services with others in the world of social networking calls for your ability to already know who you are and always on a journey of even more clarity; a journey fit for confidence-building. An already existing awareness of your own comes through your ability to trust God with the way He made you, molded you and the way He has decided to present you to the world. Already knowing you have His acknowledgment, His acceptance and His approval can alleviate a great deal of these needs from others. Taking the time to address these needs within can help you get to a place where you already know. Taking the time to really love the way you’re made and learning how to build on the intelligence that already exists will give you the stamp of approval that so many search for in all the wrong places. Already knowing, accepting, and loving yourself, trusting God with your own, before you need it from others is how you keep from falling for the deception of conditional love.
Be careful with what you need from others, the attention you need, the acceptance and approval you need. Get clear about the best ways to meet these needs and understand how such acknowledgement can elevate your life and how it can completely deceive you. An obsession with fulfilling needs of acknowledgment, acceptance and approval based on what others think can cause you to waste a lot of time and bring on lifelong regrets. Such hunger can cause you to end up sharing too much of yourself and too much information about yourself over and over and over again, trying to fill something that can never be filled by others. Trusting God with your own existence and all the beauty and strength it contains will help lessen your need for comparisons against another. Already knowing and being sure about who you are and all the goods you have to offer will help you understand that the opinions of others is never a final say.
Acknowledgement, acceptance, approval…..when they all come from within, much less is needed from the outside which means you will have a much lesser chance of being misled about who you really are and how good enough you are. Simply trust God so that you don’t have to compare and change and become somebody else because of those never-ending comparisons. Learn to trust your own and trust God as He works with you from within.
Author Tawana
