Taking It to Our Knees - Defined By Our Self-Esteem

Defined By Our Self-Esteem

“I can only imagine how much low self-esteem has robbed us as individuals and ransacked our culture. It is a rogue beast bent on diminishing us to some point of forlorn incapacity. Plagued by this beast, we live out marginalized lives that surrender the accomplishments and forsake the achievements that could have been ours. We grope through this existence meagerly living out each day by surviving each day, rather than realizing that we can live with an intensity that will have caused the day to finish having survived us.”

• Craig D. Lounsbrough

From “The Self That I Long to Believe In”

 

Hi, I’m Craig Lounsbrough

Welcome to LifeTalk

We are not defined by the worst-case assessment of ourselves, although we tend to render just such an assessment. We hand-pick the worst of ourselves to define the whole of ourselves. We do that because the worst of ourselves always seems to render the best of ourselves less than whatever best it might actually be.

Our attitudes trend toward the downside of whoever it is that we are. The deficits. The failures. The reversals. The relationships that never happened or shouldn’t have happened. The goals that fell to the things that got in the way. Dreams that were crushed under the heel of reality. Choices that turned sour. Careers that died at the hands of corporate wrangling. Opportunities squandered. Surrender to fear when we should have feared the idea of surrender. We trend toward our interpretation of what these things say about us.

 

The Application of Our Interpretations

Once we’ve developed these interpretations of ourselves we apply them liberally. Their repeated application creates a negative skew where everything is painted in undesirable and self-defeating tones. The best of us never escapes the interpretation of the worst of us. Some small and commonplace error becomes catastrophic. An inconsequential misstep evidences our unworthiness. The normal hit-and-miss of life is turned into a relentless barrage of not so friendly-fire where we cut ourselves to ribbons.

 

Defined by a Fraudulent Identity  

In time and over time we come to believe ourselves to be who and what we’ve told ourselves we are. We become convinced of our own self-deprecating narrative. The fictional account becomes the non-fiction of our existence. We find ourselves unable to entertain any other possible interpretation of who we are and who we can yet become. We cannot comprehend another story.

 

An Authentic Script

We become locked in a story not our own. We play a role fabricated of a false self. We continually force ourselves into alignment with this story because we have come to believe that the ‘force-fitting’ is actually some sort of self-actualizing struggle.

 

We Are More

No narrative can capture the whole of who you are. And no narrative can destroy that either. The vastness of your humanity will always escape the scope of any words that we might use to either define it, or hold it hostage. In the same vein, the narratives crafted by our deficits, our failures, the reversals, the relationships that failed, the goals that fell, the dreams that were crushed, the choices that turned sour, the careers that died, the opportunities that were squandered, our surrender to fear…none of these can craft a narrative even remotely capable of embodying the entirety of who we are.

You are vaster than everything that would seek to define you, even if the person that’s doing the defining is you. In speaking to God, the Psalmist said, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…” That’s your narrative. That’s your story. That’s who and what you are.

You aren’t just one of many. You’re not just another person walking around on a planet populated by eight billion other people who are just walking around as well. You are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Your design is the product of an infinite genius crafting a one-of-a-kind human being whose skill-sets and attributes were specifically fashioned to impact the point in history into which you were placed. That’s your story. That will always be your story.

I would have you think about this. Read this carefully and slowly:

“Whatever you see within yourself, let it be the whole of yourself. For too often we have been brutalized by our own sense of inadequacy and we’ve been held hostage to the lesser choices born of such a debilitating sense of self. Know this, that latent within you there lies more than ample resources begging to be called forth to smash the chains forged of such an incapacitating sense of self. And it is my prayer that you would press against everything within you that would hold you back, and that you would raise whatever voice you have and extend that call.”

• Craig D. Lounsbrough

From “The Self That I Long to Believe In”

 

Thirty-One I Am Statements

The thirty-one statements made by God Himself declare that you are bound to nothing other than the magnificence of your design. Any low self-esteem only serves to mask the greatness within you.

You will find all thirty-one of these “I Am” statements outlined in my book, “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am.” This book is a fresh, entirely thought-provoking, and richly insightful thirty-one day devotional that will assist you in both discovering and living out your real self. You will find “Taking It to Our Knees – Declaring Who I Am” on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever books are sold.

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