Recently, while updating my resume for a potential writing gig,
I suddenly realized how exhausted I’d become. It’s taxing, I’ve found, to make
yourself sound as wonderful as you really are so that someone will want to hire
you or purchase your wares. It’s a helluva lot easier to make yourself sound
bad. In fact this is something I can do in my sleep!
One of my
favorite books/DVDs is Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. The film opens with
a young woman who is constantly berating herself. It takes hard work (sometimes
for a lifetime) to train yourself to be positive when you think and speak about
yourself. But the truth is, doing so can truly heal and change your life.
I’ve come a
very long way from the days when every thought I had contained a negative
innuendo or outright insult about myself. In fact, thanks to yoga, those days
are long gone. Nevertheless, I still find it difficult to “sell” myself. Sometimes, it just seems more natural to say, “Nah, I can’t
do that. I’m not good enough. Someone can do it better than I can.”
If you look
closely at yourself, however, you’ll find that’s quite often just not true. You are just as
good as anyone else, just as valuable, just as brilliant (even if you don’t
have a PhD, or, even if you do!). Life experiences sometimes bring us down,
or we listen to others instead of to our own hearts. Inside we know that we
are “good enough.” In fact, we’re better than good enough. But we live in a
world that judges harshly and so we learn to harshly judge ourselves.
In my
studies of yoga, I’m constantly reminded not to judge others. But the first
step in the awareness of this is learning not to judge yourself. I’m not talking
about giving yourself a pass for areas that need improvement; I’m talking about
recognizing your many gifts and making the most of them.
Not
everyone can be Madame Curie or Gandhi. But we all have positive qualities. On
a resume, unfortunately, we may not get a chance to describe what our best
qualities really are. Yes, I can type 75 words or more a minute. But is that
more important than my ability to listen with an open heart to my friends, to
have patience with my kids, or to give love without expectation of something in
return?
If you think of your true gifts,
talents and attributes you may find that the resume, however hard to write, is
just the tip of the iceberg. We are all so much more. Think of the great jobs
we could all snag if we could put the truth on our resumes: i.e. Amazing wife,
mother or husband, child; devoted friend, healing presence, aura of light;
peaceful, giving person, committed, trusting and trustworthy being, filled
with/giver of love. And, can type 100
w/p/m!
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