Are You Secure Within Yourself?

What does it mean to be secure? To me, it means that you enjoy yourself in life. You continually improve on your strengths and continually try to diminish your weaknesses. You understand that you have a place in this world and you excel if you have found it or you work toward it if you’re not quite there yet. You accept others as they are and offer help if they need and want it, but you also value that we need to have differences in this world to fill our lives  with varied and rich experiences.

Let me posit it to you in some other ways. If you’re secure in your:

• Sexuality - you don’t put down people of the opposite sexual orientation. Gay, straight, undecided. It’s hard enough finding another person to love without having to worry about if people disapprove of the sex of your partner.
• Religion - you don’t put down other religions. Your religion should make you whole, should comfort you in times of trouble, should be your divining rod in moral crises. How another person chooses to deal with this world, whichever deity another person chooses to worship should not affect you. No need to “discredit” other religions as wrong if you feel yours is right. Keep practicing and if anyone wants to know more about it or is wanting to convert, be the welcoming hand. Not the hand that shuns because their God sports an elephant trunk and yours sports a bearded man in a robe.
• Size - you don’t put down people who are significantly bigger or smaller than you… the terms “skinny bitch” or “fat whale” should not leave your mouth unless you are talking about a underweight female dog or, well, a whale who likes to indulge in penguin goodies way to often.
• Race/Culture – you don’t put down others’ race/culture/ethnicity. I’m Nigerian. Proudly Nigerian. I’m Black, proudly Black. Would I put down an Ethiopian? A Korean? An Indian? A Canadian? No, I figure as much as I love my culture and my heritage, I can learn a lot from other cultures. How can you rally against Mexican immigrants when just last week you chowed down on chimichangas and downed a strawberry margarita? How can you rally against Arabs when you ordered an extra side of hummus last month? I must be hungry right now!  But when we all borrow from each other’s cultures, who are we to say that cultures that are foreign to us are bad?
• Achievements - you don’t put down others’ achievements. What have you done with your life? Have you reached your potential? Are you trying to reach your potential? No? So why are you putting down someone else who has reached theirs or is progressing towards theirs? By stopping their progress, do you advance yours? By destroying their will to improve, will your will become bigger? If so, take a real look at yourself… you could be considered a parasite if you leech off of others and stop their growth in order to further yours? Instead, it’s better to work on yourself and if so inclined or able, help others along their path to their potential. Build. Do not destroy.

To be sure, it’s a hard thing to be 100% secure within yourself… but if you find yourself overwhelmed with insecurities and find that you are resorting to diminishing others in your mind, in your word, and in your deed to make yourself feel better, superior, what does that really solve? Are you making yourself better? Or not? Those insecurities still remain. You must deal with them before you can grow, before you can prosper, before you can help others.

What will you do today to become more secure?

Take a look at another perspective on being secure within yourself at OwlAsylum’s blog.