#InspirationTuesday | | Why you should stop beating yourself up

I was going to share something else today but this was steaming in my mind, so I just had to share.

It happened that my church celebrated her 13^th anniversary last Sunday which means we had a lot of visitors from neighbouring churches. As one of the lead vocalists and backup singers in the church, a time was allotted to in-house choristers to sing and I was to do that.

First, my choir coordinator spoke in my ears, he said, ‘prove to them that you can sing too o, don’t fall my hand’. Then the pressure started.

Like why the heck would you just distort my ready-made singing mode with that?

With that, it felt like the whole world was waiting for me to put up a real show.

No problem, I will try my best.

And so, it was my turn to sing then the keyboardist decided to mess up (maybe with me).

Gosh! I was super pissed.

Long story short, I sang the song the best way I could but I wasn’t pleased.

I felt I could have done better than that; sang better, chose a more suitable song, arranged it well etc.

Guess why I’m telling you this?

I’ve been beating myself up since Sunday, reminiscing people’s countenance whilst singing. Everything has been playing in my head since then that I couldn’t even sleep on time. I was like, ‘you messed up in the presence of everyone, and you won’t be given the chance again (which is not true)’.

After the rendition, I asked the coordinator how I fared; he only gave a straight answer. That just made it even worse! Under no circumstance would I have asked anyone to validate me, but it happened that day anyways.

Listening to songs is one thing I do every day but I couldn’t because it reminded me of what how I performed (really, it wasn’t that bad as I thought but I wanted to do more). Every verse I listened to was making me to be more peeved with myself.

But it will pass.

However, before it will pass I need to know few things:

• Don’t prove yourself to anyone even if they want you to. Prove yourself to yourself because really, that’s the only person that matters.
• Don’t seek for approval or validation. It will only show that you’re insecure about what you’re doing and you need assurance that you’re doing great which isn’t necessary. However, there might be a need to ask people to evaluate you but not automatically validate you.
• Don’t compare yourself with others; you are definitely not on the same journey. So why compare?
• Focus on the brighter side; great things you’ve done before that time, how well you handled it etc.
• Use it as an opportunity to be a better you.
• Believe in yourself.

 

So, are you still beating yourself because of something you didn’t do right?

Could it be because you’re yet to achieve everything you’ve set out to do this year?

Does your goals appear scary and seem impossible?

Are your age mates doing better than you?

Deserved job promotion didn’t come at the right time?

Scholarship applications were not successful?

You might want to use these few words of confirmation instead of beating yourself up:

‘I am the best.’

‘I will be great because He said “I will make thee a great nation and I will bless thee”.’

‘I won’t give up now; I will keep going till I reach the very end.’

Finally, I’m just going to stick with the second verse of Shakira’s Try Everything (You can join me too). It goes thus:

“Look how far you’ve come, you filled your heart with love
Baby, you’ve done enough, take a deep breath
Don’t beat yourself up, don’t need to run so fast
Sometimes we come last, but we did our best.”

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Much love,

Lara.