Most of us have something about ourselves that we don’t like. It might be a physical attribute we despise—ears that poke out of our hair more than we’d like, or an overly distinctive nose, for instance. Or maybe we don’t like our temperament—we wish we were more extroverted, for example. Or maybe we’d prefer having a talent we admire in others. The number of attributes to compare ourselves to and become personally dissatisfied with is endless.
Psychological researchers have discovered that the average person talks to themselves 50,000 times each day. And what they found is that an astonishing 80% of it is negative. We literally talk ourselves into a conspiracy of self-diminishment. Over the last few months, I found that the volume of my own negative self-talk was way up. It probably well exceeded the national average. If negative self-talk were a commodity stock, my head was Wall Street during a bull market. But such trash-talk is more than mere mental self-decay. When I compare myself with others and harbor the self-diminishing thoughts that follow, I’m also trashing the very Creator of this creation called me. Conversely, when I repudiate such self-decay, I’m doing more than just trying to play nice. I’m thanking the Creator for His creation and submitting myself to a richer plan for me than I can yet envision.
Your thoughts? In what ways has self-diminishment affected you?