“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire
universe, deserve your love and affection” ―
Call it whatever you will, there are issues of
personal identity, social identity, collective identity and self-confidence. Personal Identity infers how you feel about
yourself, deep in your soul, without the social indications. Social Identity is when you allow others to
define you. Collective Identity is what
you think of yourself, deep in your soul, and including Social Identity. Self-Confidence is what drives Personal
Identity.
Personal Identity speaks to how you regard yourself,
how much you love yourself, in spite of all else. Yes, it is developed through other interactions,
but, sometimes, in spite of them. Self-Esteem
can be situational. Some things you know
you are good at, some things you know you struggle with, and some things you
know better than to try to do. It is a
gut/soul thing. There are often battles
between all of the esteems. When we are
nurturing, caring, healing, being compassionate with self, you are building
your personal esteem. When you listen to
the negative self-talk, you allow negative memories to outweigh the positive,
you are depressing your sense of self.
Our Social Identity is a dangerous precipice. We cannot allow ourselves to be put on a
pedestal by anyone else. Life seems to
have us want to lose our self-confidence.
We are so afraid of failing others, so we may hide our potential, our
personal gifts, from the world. But,
then, we can also hide behind our papers, our degrees, with our sense of being
owed some kind of respect (Positive Social Identity) because we have gone to
gather those bits and pieces of paper we may, so hard, try to make part of our
Personal Identity. It can make us too
terrified to let our light shine. We begin
to allow Society to devalue, or think they value us, and we listen and try to
take that in as authentic Personal Identity.
Look, we all fail ourselves many times. We become afraid to take risks, to get into
the adventure life has to offer, we lose ourselves to become another minion in
another mass, living in 'ticky tacky houses all the same'. We tend to want to become what everyone else is,
to cling to the standards of the group, rather than cause waves by being something
'more than' or 'less than'.
Our Collective Identity can be the title of the war
that goes on within us. Are we, in fact,
what others say, infer, of us? Or, are
we what we know to be true according to how our soul feels about ourselves? Are we nurturing ourselves so that we do not
care what others say, think, infer about us, in the negatives, because we
absolutely are confident in who we are where it really counts?
I remember doing a youth talk once where I spoke of
such things. I told them, when someone
says negative things about you, stop and think for a minute: Have you been a bitch? Um, yah.
Have we been.....whatever they label you as being? Ummm, yah, that one time, that ten times,
that fifteen times... I told them to stop, think, and smile, because the others had
no clue. That is empowerment. That is not giving away your power to past
things, past people, people in the now, and future people, places, groups. Our Personal
Identity is sacred...yes, sacred. It is
the feelings of your soul/spirit.
We can improve our Self-Esteem by engaging in things
we know we are good at, not because someone else said you are, but because it
brings you joy, peace, self-love, healing.
Stop the negative analysis of what others say or do to, or of, us. Again, stop, think, affirm within, and
smile. Absolutely refuse to allow your
inner voice to say to you what you would not have said to your most beloved(s)
other(s).
Ah, yes, it is a battle in the making to make
changes in our identity. We can never
ever erase things and start over, but we can hush the negatives with positive
self-talk back. Talk back, sisters! Positive changes happen when you do so. You will love yourself for doing so.
©Carol Desjarlais 3.14.19
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