Today’s lesson uses photography as a metaphor for how we perceive ourselves. When a photographer captures an image, they might use different shutter speeds for an effect, choose a specific lense for a certain detail or even a polarising filter to get a more textured shot. Today ask yourself, what do your lenses and filters look like? How much have you altered, distorted, enhanced or polarised the reality of who you are? What about when you place rose coloured glasses on? What happens when you remove them all completely?
I think my distortion of myself came from my past trauma. I didn’t see myself in a good light. I thought wasn’t good enough to be anything or be with anyone. Cycling thoughts of “I’m ugly” “why would anyone love me?” “I will never be successful” “what’s wrong with me?” etc etc is just a glimpse of what I used to be. I think we’ve all been there – where we’ve lost confidence or just don’t believe in ourselves. I know the root cause of this distorted perception of self came from the torment my father put me through. Then I had a boyfriend that didn’t do much to build my confidence and self-esteem either, which added to this blurred perception I had of self.
So for the majority of life, I never saw how truly good I was. I had so many good qualities, but if you spoke to me back then, I wouldn’t have believed it. I have sooooo much belief in myself now. I am 34 this year and I think I’m the best I’ve ever been. I believe I can do anything and the more I say it, the more I believe it. This came with some confronting experiences of going through my trauma and accepting it, but also growing from it. There is pain along the way, though I feel this is just a step that you need to go through to be able to open your heart. When you also have compassion for self, this allows you to accept that bad things happen and you make mistakes, and that’s okay! There is so much to learn about yourself when you’re more accepting of yourself.
So I’m to complete this sentence after that self-reflection:
- One thing I can see with greater clarity about myself since I began this course is______
***************
My answer:
- One thing I can see with greater clarity about myself since I began this course is the life I want to lead.
I think I bang on a lot about wanting to help people as my ultimate goal. I just know that I have to go through my own self-exploration before I get there and I have faith in myself that I will achieve what I need to.
What filters do you place on yourself? And have they changed over the years?