What Do YOU Believe?
Specifically, what do you believe about identity, beauty, and your value? It’s an important question; because how you answer it is a great indicator of how you live your life.
Let us break it down for you…
Identity
What you believe about your identity will determine how healthy your relationships are, how you pursue your dreams, and how happy you are. It will affect how well you love others, and how much you allow others to love you. It can mean the difference between being confident, and being prideful; pursuing excellence (a good thing) or striving for perfection (not so good, though our current culture would argue that).
Beauty
What you believe about your identity has a direct correlation to what you believe about beauty. For example, if you believe our culture’s message that says your identity is defined by your outward appearance, this belief will likely lead you to focus on what you can do to change, alter or ‘perfect’ your outward appearance. Or perhaps, it will lead you to give up on taking care of yourself altogether – the images presented in the media are unrealistic. Why would any person hold them as a standard to try to measure up to? Ironically, the frustration, disappointment, anxiety and emptiness that accompany such pursuits are quite the opposite of true beauty.
Which do you believe?
Value
What you believe about identity and beauty will ultimately determine how you see your value and what kind of impact you make in this world. Think about it… if we believe that our identity is tied to what other people think of us, then this can parallelize and stunt our truest potential so much that we can become self-absorbed and powerless to be free. What kind of impact does that have on those around us?
Is it positive? Or negative?
On the other hand, if we can believe that our identity is not our physical appearance, how much more likely are we to love others and allow them to love us? How much more time and energy might we have to invest in serving others? How much more passionate can we be about pursuing our dreams?
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Our culture teaches us that we impact others most with physical beauty and talent.
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I say that we impact others and the world most out of who we are, and that the greatest impact we can have is to believe we are more than our outward appearance.
Which do you believe?
Wrestling with the Truth
At one point or another, all of us struggle to embrace truth in our lives. Maybe we feel let down; disappointments have overtaken us and we have simply lost faith.
Or maybe it’s hard to believe that we are worthy love when we are caught up in the ‘little’ things, such as our frustration with our bodies, our struggles with relationships, our desire to be liked by others.
Yet another challenge can be the idea of trusting that we are.
“And you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
Parts reprinted by permission from TRUE Campaign.