you are brilliant

i have a friend who has noticed we often are critical of ourselves in photos and i have been noticing how hard it can be for us to like ourselves generally, and to take compliments in particular.

i was with a bunch of strangers this weekend and asked them to tell me an interesting fact alongside their name, and it was really quite tricky for any of us - me included - to share something about ourselves that we thought could be classed “interesting” - and yet, just like the time i asked people to say what they liked about themselves - people were far more readily able to say something interesting about someone else in the group.

so what is it about admitting to our own brilliance, our uniqueness, our wonderfulness that scares us so?

for starters, many of us are not in touch with it - we’ve accumulated so much self doubt, we’ve internalised so much criticism, that we notice and dwell on our imperfections and failings.

and then there’s the fear - if i share something i feel good about, what if i don’t live up to it? will everyone be looking out for the times i’m not as good as i claim to be? what if they think i’m boasting, full of myself?

i’m interested to know where this idea came from, that boasting about ourselves is such a bad thing... one of my fave quotes is often attributed to Nelson Mandela but was actually written by Marianne Williamson and goes like this. Read and enjoy :)

"We ask ourselves:"Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."