*Ignoring my mint joke in the title… Contentment in American society today is even more difficult to find than a person who has actually achieved work-life balance! But when you’re content with what you have, whether food, clothes, or your unique strengths, you can not only be grateful for them and enjoy them but you can find creative ways to use them.
So what’s that got to do with being weird?
We talked last week about the importance of owning your weirdness, those things that make you unique. It’s hard sometimes, to appreciate the thing that’s made you weird your whole life. Quite likely, it’s been labeled as bad by someone else and it takes some mental and emotional work on our part to reclaim that same weird thing as awesome!
That’s exactly the work we need to do, though. You can never fully appreciate your strengths as long as you’re comparing them to someone else’s. You’ll always be able to find someone using similar strengths in a way that you think is better. The internet is great in a lot of ways, but it also puts comparison in our face ALL. THE. TIME! Look at this person being awesome over here! *Feel a little worse about yourself* Look at that person being awesome over there! *Feel even worse*
We don’t have time for me to launch into my diatribe on limits on technology and a full tech detox (Cliffs Notes version: they’re both extremely necessary for each of us!), but I want to highlight the challenge that looking elsewhere creates for us truly appreciating our unique strengths. Theodore Roosevelt said it best, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Basically, when we’re focused on the thing we don’t have, we can’t be content. And until we’re content and fully appreciate our own strengths, we won’t be able to fully use them.
#PositiveAction Spend 5 minutes being grateful for the strengths you have. Write them down and think about how helpful they’ve been throughout your life.*
*Note, I love this exercise because you only have to spend a few minutes doing it, but you can refer back to it as often as you want!