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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
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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 a 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 way or 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.
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