She’s not your competition; Day three 1

Discontentment with who we are is an age old problem and yet I believe it is perhaps more of a challenge today because of our excess of choice.  We are so used to choice we come to expect choice.  The challenge of this expectation is that we come to believe we have the capacity for choice in every aspect of our lives.  And yet, we don’t have choice in every aspect of our lives.

I don’t have the choice in everything.  I don’t have the choice to do anything I want to do, primarily, because I am not you and you are not me.  We are all unique, uniquely gifted and uniquely placed. The design was not for all of us to be clones, each gifted with the same box of tricks, and then its being a matter of first in best dressed to the options.

It wasn’t the design for each of us to be anybody we want to be and do anything we want to do. I am not talking about having a yearning to make some adjustments and changes, to do better and live better. Our challenge is that we often see these boundaries as negatives instead of gaining an understanding, and in turn appreciating our rareness.  Our conversation with ourselves, perhaps, should be:

‘I am a remarkable individual. There is so much to me that is distinct and brilliant and, if I bring the best of me, my contribution will be outstanding.’

I need to be okay with who I am.

I need to take ahold of who I am, and that means accepting who I am not.

Each day for the month of July, we will be reading together segments of Penny and Kelley’s recent release ‘She’s not your competition.’ If you would like to read the book in it’s entirety, it is available in an e-version to download from our online shop. All proceeds from sales of the e-book this month go to the grassroots Rwanda Project.