Introspection

Yesterday I received a few compliments on my NMM post I put up.

My initial reaction was, "Oh, wow, thanks - but...." and I proceeded to negate those compliments with various thoughts:

- I'm not as coherent as I once was

- My vocabulary has dwindled such that it is an insulting caricature of what it used to be, and I'm only as "good" as I seem because I rely heavily upon a thesaurus

- My posts have been either really fluffy or all woe-is-me mommy-blogging and didn't I used to be more interesting and, oh, happy, than that?

Et. Cet. Er. A.

You get the point, right?

It's no different than when someone says, "Wow, your hair looks great, and so shiny!" and you proceed to tell them that really you haven't. done. a. THING. to. it, and the luster they are seeing is caused by the 3 days you've had that haven't seen a shower.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can't we just own a compliment and soak it up with grace and decorum?

I am especially prone to doing this, but I'm trying to work on it. It may seem cheesey, a bit Stuart Smalley for my tastes, but I need to affirm the truths of life - that is to say those things spoken positively about me as well as reminders of God's promises to me [and anyone else who follows Christ for that matter].

This re-wiring of the brain is sometimes called Flip Switch- ing, as coined by several New Age self-helpers, but really it's just substituting positive things for negative - pretty simple if you ask me, yet so terribly hard to implement!

At risk of sounding pathetic, here goes:

I am a good writer - talented even if I am to listen to my English teachers and various professors over the years.

I'd love to do something big with my writing someday, too. And that means I need to keep at it. Keep in practice, keep thinking on things that make my wheels turn, and keep on dreaming.



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