I always wanted to be a good person.
So much so that I allowed others to determine whether I was or not.
I liked to be a good girl when I was younger and it had carried over into adulthood.
Because of that, I allowed others opinions of me to determine if I was meeting, or missing, the mark.
If someone told me I was anything other than good, it would send me spiralling into an insecure mess, and I would overcompensate trying to make it better.
It wasn’t until recently that I made up a list of all of the things I wanted, and asked a friend to help me sort through the muck that I had a lightbulb come on.
I put “I want to be a good person” on that list, and I remember as I was writing it feeling the urgency of really wanting something while I wrote it along with everything else I wanted.
He took the list and re-sorted it into things I already achieved, things that were in progress, and things that were pending.
He put “be a good person” on the already achieved list.
When I read that, the lightbulb went on in my head.
I could just BE a good person, it wasn’t something I should be WANTING to be.
The wanting came from allowing other people to decide for me. I was wanting to be seen as a good person.
Not only can I not control what other people see through their lens and with their opinion, it’s really none of my business what they think of me because it’s more of a reflection of who they are, than who I was.
But if I chose to BE a good person, by my definition of what a good person is, then I could allow others the space to hold their own opinions based on their definitions.
The interesting part has been, the more I feel like I already am a good person, the more generous I can be with my time, attention, and support for others.
As always, if we focus on the lack of something, we spend all of our time chasing it… but when we focus on what we already have, it becomes more than enough.
And when it comes to how we feel….feeling like we are enough is good place to be,