It's the Thoughts That Count

Growing up in a large family, it was always a fight for real estate. Emotional real estate, that is. It was easy to feel lost, or like no one was paying attention to me. I was lucky because I was very athletic as a kid so could put on the gymnastic show in the back yard for attention. I was skinny and gangly, and could turn a flip faster than the spatula at the brand new restaurant down the street called McDonald's. There was a huge part of my emotional development tied into the fact that I could get attention by doing something other than just being me. My head began to fill with thoughts of being less than...less important, less worthy, and less of a person than the next kid. I remember one of the kids in my fourth grade class got glasses that I thought were really cool. So I found a pair of my mother's old glasses, sans lenses, and wore them to school. Like a 10 year old has any idea that light reflects off of glass coupled with the fact that my eyes were so clear behind my faux lenses. My friend Carol told me they were fake, and being caught in a lie, of course I did what any fourth grader would do. I denied it. She was probably as fascinated with the fact that I would actually want to wear glasses and the ones I had were much nicer than the other girl's because my lenses were so incredibly clear and in that second when the thought was transferring to the nerves in her fingers, lifting her arm and nearly poking my eye out she probably wondered what it would feel like to be Alice and step through the looking glass. Instead, she just nearly poked my eye out.
So, the lesson here is that even as early as my earliest memory, I was constantly bombarded with my thoughts of my perception of myself. It is interesting to think about the absolute fact that we become what our thoughts dictate. So, at this point in my life I proudly wear real glasses, albeit the ones with really cool rhinestones on the ear pieces...not so dissimilar to the cat eye ones my mother had with the missing rhinestones in the frames. Hmmm. Anyway, I make choices daily, constantly, to see the best in myself, to look at myself with a loving and compassionate eye. I am the keeper of my soul, and my soul chooses to relieve myself of the negative images of my childhood and jump with palms open into my future. Today, I love my body more than negative thoughts, and just being me is more than enough...I hope you have a positively fabulous day!
XO,
Karen