{"id":5014,"date":"2017-02-07T18:01:42","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T02:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernjournal\/?p=5014"},"modified":"2017-02-07T18:01:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T02:01:42","slug":"loving-thyself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/loving-thyself\/","title":{"rendered":"Loving thyself"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Keith Mathew\r\nPhoto Editor<\/pre>\n
When do we think of ourselves as good people? Do we even think that at all? As a society that thrives on self-deprecating jokes, we start to believe the jokes we create for ourselves on a subconscious level. I see a large majority of people I know who don\u2019t think they\u2019re good people, or at least to the level of everyone else around them.<\/p>\n
I am one of those people who doesn\u2019t think highly of themselves. It has taken me a long time to \"\"get to the point of starting to improve myself. It takes an immense amount of effort to start the process and to continue it. The most common thing people say is \u201cfake it until you make it.\u201d It\u2019s kind of true; having fake confidence in one\u2019s self is a trial run of the ultimate goal. Fake confidence is the start of getting comfortable with the idea and feeling or acting confident.<\/p>\n
I feel the reason most people have low self-esteem or a lack of confidence comes from the tendency to compare ourselves to other people: I\u2019m not as smart as them, I\u2019m not as cool as them, I\u2019m not as masculine as them, I\u2019m not as fit as them. These comparisons are harmful. They put us down because we aren\u2019t at the level of another person. We think that because we aren\u2019t at the same level we are lesser than, thus creating a negative self-image.<\/p>\n
There is a common thought process for people with low self-image that they should be working on themselves before they start to date another person. It annoys me because it takes a lot to work on yourself and another person may actually help. Another person may open the mind to improving and the love of another person can help heal, repair, fix and improve.<\/p>\n
The love of another person pushes the other to try and to become better. I bet no one was 100 percent confident in themselves when another person came along. That line of thinking just doesn\u2019t help, having another person is not bad, it is good for loving one\u2019s self.<\/p>\n
With my experiences of low self-image, friends and family try to make me feel better by complimenting me however, because of the compliments I feel bad for not feeling better about myself. The problem is not whether I know I\u2019m good or not, it\u2019s the feeling. I know that I\u2019m smart, I know I\u2019m nice, I know that I\u2019m amazing but the feeling is not there to back it up.<\/p>\n
It is my goal this term to improve myself and to have real confidence, not just the fake kind. The best way to improve is to have a mantra, a saying to tell yourself how great and amazing you are. Sounds cheesy but it does help. Self-love is a process and it\u2019s hard work.<\/p>\n
Contact the author at kmathew14@wou.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By: Keith Mathew Photo Editor When do we think of ourselves as good people? Do we even think that at all? As a society that thrives on self-deprecating jokes, we start to believe the jokes we create for ourselves on a subconscious level. I see a large majority of people I know who don\u2019t think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":937,"featured_media":5128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/937"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}