October 15

Today's quotation:

Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem.  If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.

Fritz Perls

Today's Meditation:

Who's my judge?  Who are my judges?  Do I even need a judge or two or twenty in my life?  I don't believe so.  Once I start depending on other people judging me for my own self-esteem to be healthy, then I put my happiness and my contentment in the hands of other people, and I'm not doing myself any good at all if I depend on someone else's approval for me to feel good about myself.

I used to be greatly concerned about what other people thought and felt about me.  As an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, this was one of the traits that I developed very early on.  It took me a while to realize that I craved the approval of others almost as much as an alcoholic craves alcohol, and in order to gain that approval I would do things and say things that weren't at all authentic, that weren't at all me.  I was virtually an emotional slave to what other people thought, and it wasn't at all a good place to be.

Are you dependent upon the approval of others?  If so, what kind of power are you giving them over you?  How do you make yourself feel if you don't receive that approval?  And remember, no one else is making you feel any way at all--you choose how you feel by choosing how to react to things that happen in your life.

I don't want to be a slave.  And I certainly do not want to lose my freedom through my own choice, through the development of an unhealthy dependency.  I like myself, and I don't want to hurt myself, so it's important that I make sure that I'm not dependent upon the approval of others for my own sense of self-worth.

Questions to consider:

Are you dependent at all upon the judgment of others?

What kinds of things lead us to developing dependencies?

Are dependencies valued in our culture, or are they not valued?

For further thought:

There is no dependence that can be sure
but a dependence upon one's self.

John Gay

  

  

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
our current e-zine - the people behind the words - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     

Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation
~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

    

   

tm

All contents © Living Life Fully, all rights reserved.

  

 

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you.  Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader).  All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another.  Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!