Looking Inside

St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.- Oscar Wilde

For the past month or so I have been working on a presentation for a group of female street youths between the ages of 17-25. The topic of my presentation is looking inside oneself. Some of these females have been sexual assaulted at home and on the street, some have been mentally, and physical abused, and some suffer from mental illness and addiction issues. I can relate to some of these issues. I have never been sexual assaulted or have lived on the streets, but I have grew up with an older sister who suffered from mental illness and addiction issues, and who was abusive. I learned my own coping mechanisms deal with what went on in my younger years. I wanted to volunteer my wisdom and my coping mechanisms to other victims so that they can see that there is always a brighter side you just have to find it.

Workings of my Presentation

We are often encouraged to look back in the past and deep within to what makes us unhappy, and I'm actually doing quite a bit of that myself at the moment, but when I think about it, the periods I have had when I felt more together and happier are actually when I haven’t been looking inward but focusing more on what I have and accepting me as I am now and being grateful really. I always feel pulled back to my confusion and unhappiness at some point though and its always as if there is some undercurrent of turmoil and unhappiness in me - maybe you feel this? It’s just that I find with focusing on it endlessly and trying to analyze it actually makes me feel worse.

Refusing to indulge constant self-analyzing isn’t running away from things, but whilst you delve into your past and what you perceive as negative too often doesn’t actually always bring you resolutions but very often just accentuates the issues and makes them bigger. I think there’s a place for looking back in the past and trying to understand it all - providing we do that and move forward but I think often we get stuck with all this inward looking and miss what’s actually on our doorstep now and appreciating what we have.

Maybe you should try accepting yourself - warts and all! Make a list of what you like about yourself, if this is hard see yourself as another person who you know intimately and write down what you like and what you think is good. I think you may be surprised at how much there is and what you don’t like, well love that too! There is no such thing as a perfect person and everyone has personality traits that they don’t particularly like, but we don’t have to indulge characteristics that we don’t like. Concentrate on what you are good at and what you like and just accept that no one is perfect - but lovable just the same