Life’s Not the Same Unless We’re Different

From where does anxiety commonly emanate? From making comparisons with others; from a fear of failing to meet others’ standards; from failing to meet our own standards; from feeling unsafe in our world; from some unknown (or known) stimulus or trauma we survived in our development. The list would run on.

Anxiety emanates from thinking that expects what’s unreasonable.

It’s our underlying expectations that we cannot meet — where there’s a mismatch, whether it’s known or not. Even if we know in our logical mind that such expectation is unreasonable, we may still struggle to accept that our best is good enough.

Of course, our best is good enough. It has to be.

What if dealing with our expectations of ourselves was the thing that could free our minds of the burden of our anxiety?

What if challenging the comparisons we make with others was a key to feeling freer?

What if our chance to shine was truly based in us being different? And what if us being different isn’t what we think it is... what if we’re awesome just as we are? — different and all!

Life is short. Recently I was looking at a sporting final my favourite football team won. It was over twenty years ago! It was another age ago. But it didn’t feel that long ago.

We are who we are, and besides it being too much work to change personality and being, we are best accepting who God made us to be — annoying differences, mannerisms, habits, and all. This is not to say we shouldn’t work on our character, which is kindness, humility, patience, gentleness and compassion — love.

Feeling like we need to conform to some predetermined ideal creates such stress. Call it anxiety. Resolve to embrace our difference. Celebrate: you and me. We are different.