Beautiful Souls

Who am I and how is that different from who I choose to be in any given moment? Deep thoughts, right? I believe at my core, who I am is a spiritual being capable of infinite love, insight, and peace. Certainly, I do not always show up this way. Sometimes I act cranky, selfish, rude, impatient, lazy... the list goes on, but you get the point. The important distinction is that those negative states are not who I AM. In fact, they are distinct choices to act in complete opposition of who I was created to be.

My new bbf (blogger best friend - yeah, I just made that up... so what?), Lisa, wrote about forgiveness today. While commenting on her blog I started contemplating how frequently the person who I have had the hardest time forgiving is myself. At any given moment, my mind can present a wealth of evidence to support the claim that I am a terrible person. At times in my life, I've actually believed this.

I can most narrowly attribute this to an awful habit I used to have. I was so afraid of criticism or negative feedback that I used to prep myself for receipt of such by thinking of any and all things that could possibly come up and saying them to myself first. As is true for anyone who is told something often enough, I started to believe it.

These days, I try to shut down that voice before it really ramps up. It might get in a quip or two before I notice, because the habit isn't entirely conscious, but I try to weigh my negative feedback against the truth of who I know myself to be. If I have, in fact, acted in a manner that was outside of integrity, then I need to make changes. If the action was in the past and I'm still picking on myself for it, I try to align my current actions to ensure a healthier choice in the future, take a deep breath and focus on who I have the capacity to be instead of how my actions might have fallen short.

I'm certainly not advocating a lack of responsibility for my actions. In fact, exactly the opposite. I want to be open to feedback about the moments that weren't my best so that I can make corrections. What I am advocating is loving and knowing myself enough to forgive and stop punishing even after the changes have been made. It's not productive. Of course, I want to extend this same philosophy to the forgiveness of others as well. There is a time to hold people accountable but holding a grudge afterwards is not only unfair to them, it hurts me to carry around.

Also, as I work to truly value feedback, I'm forced to look at how I provide it. Does my language reflect the distinction between the essence of the person and how they (or I) chose to act or have I carelessly assigned judgment and attached them to my definition of the person? Since our minds are so susceptible to believing what we/others say, I can't think of anything more important than being careful to let people know that their soul is beautiful, even when their actions might not have been. After all, if we convince someone who has wronged us that they have an awful soul, what does that do to the chances of them changing course and choosing to act differently in the future?