I could go on about how I’m goal driven and constantly improving as an athlete and how my writing encourages others. I could also go on about how I struggle with my identity and accepting that any accomplishments I earn are the result of my faith in combination with hard work and discipline.
I keep my plaque and trophies from races out of sight. I have one on display because I happen to have a medal display hanger, but it isn’t prominent. It says “1st place female 35-39” on it, and I’m just now 39, so it’s relatively recent. I know nobody will give me a trophy for a personal best and that’s really what I strive for in practice. I just want to be better than I was before.
I strive to be special and important and stand out. When it happens, I attribute the success to an anomaly or dumb luck and shrug it off. I wish I could say it was because I’m “too cool” to let it go to my head. That’s not the case.
I also think there’s a part of me that always thinks I could have done even better and has already moved on to the next goal instead of celebrating the one I just pulled off.
My husband likes to tell me that nobody is harder on me than I am on myself. He’s right, but don’t tell him that. He does celebrate his wins.
So, recently, I realized I hated my Facebook profile picture and decided to take a new one. Let’s look at the old photo.
I can’t describe why, but I’ve hated my face in that photo for weeks and I hadn’t been able to find a new one that I found a satisfactory replacement. I propped my phone up on a holder on my desk and put the phone in selfie mode while I had some mascara and lip gloss on and felt like I looked good. I took one photo after another. Some, I laughed while chatting with my husband about selfies.
I hated every photo. My face was just too ugly whether I smiled or not. I prefer not to smile because it highlights my face not being symmetrical and my teeth being awful. Then, I have to deal with “smile,” comments about that. I wound up taking many photos and at one time accidentally setting off the automatic photo feature while I was in tears over it.
I finally settled on this one:
Anyway, I think this kind of brought to a head the fact that I am really hard on myself. I might need to think about celebrating the wins a little more and being kinder to myself. I have no idea why sometimes, I can act as if I’m confident and have it all together when I know that I’m not very kind to myself.
So, be kind to you. Set goals and crush them. Celebrate the wins and shrug off the misses. That’s what I should be doing, anyway.
Thanks for reading!
Jenn's Journey 