for the past five years, i’ve enjoyed facilitating a women’s group on facebook. at the beginning of each week, i pose a monday musings question for the members to ponder and discuss. this week i asked the following question >>
“are you comfortable in your own skin?”
someone in the group said she assumed that i was referring to body image. i responded by saying “no, not talking about body image specifically. just who you are as a person overall. are you comfortable being you? confident and authentic in the way you present yourself to the world, secure in the things you think and believe.”
i usually feel quite comfortable in my own skin. this is due largely to a dedicated process i’ve engaged in for years – diving deep to discover my true essence. as often as possible, i want to be able to respond and interact in a way that truly fits me. that aligns with who i am at my core.
but do i feel comfortable every minute of every day? of course not. i’m not even sure that’s humanly possible. sometimes things happen to throw us off track. we don’t feel well, or we’ve just experienced a huge disappointment, or we feel betrayed. and the pendulum swings. in instances like these, it is normal to doubt ourselves, to feel anxious, to have a hard time trusting our instincts. even (in extreme cases) to question our very existence.
we have to remember that these are the teachable moments. the times when it helps to sit back and look at what has happened and how we’ve responded. to decipher what tripped us up or masked our true selves. to determine how we can be more honest with ourselves the next time, and more loyal to what’s most important to us.
it’s not easy. we tend to shy away from introspection because it involves taking a raw look inside, unraveling our reactions and our emotions. finding out what pushes our buttons and why. realizing the reasons are not always the other person’s fault. facing the answers that reveal themselves. difficult stuff indeed.
the good news is that a sense of freedom often accompanies these hard inward journeys. we realize that we have a choice. though circumstances are often out of our control, we can always choose how to respond. and that realization feels like welcoming in a huge burst of fresh air.
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