| Words of Wisdom
(2) |
My Declaration of Self Esteem
I am me.
I am unique. There's not another human being in the whole world
like me -- I have my very own fingerprints and I have my very own
thoughts. I was not stamped out of a mould like a Coca-Cola top to
be the duplicate of another.
I own all of me -- my body, and I can do with it what I choose; my
mind, and all of its thoughts and ideas; my feelings, whether
joyful or painful.
I own my ideals, my dreams, my hopes, my fantasies, my fears.
I reserve the right to think and feel differently from others and
will grant to others their right to thoughts and feelings not
identical with my own.
I own all my triumphs and successes. I own also all my failures
and mistakes. I am the cause of what I do and am responsible for
my own behaviour. I will permit myself to be imperfect. When I
make mistakes or fail, I will know that I am not the failure -- I
am still O.K. -- and I will discard some parts of me that were
unfitting and will try new ways.
I will laugh freely and loudly at myself -- a healthy
self-affirmation.
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The Baker and the Farmer
A baker in a little country town bought the butter he used from a
nearby farmer. One day he suspected that the bricks of butter were
not full kilos, and for several days he weighed them.
He was right. They were short weight, and he had the farmer
arrested.
At the trial the judge said to the farmer, "I presume you have
scales?"
"No, your honour."
"Then how do you manage to weigh the butter you sell?" inquired
the judge.
The
farmer replied, "That's easily explained, your honour. I have
balances and for a weight I use a one-kilo loaf I buy from the
baker."
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The Mountain
There were two warring tribes in the Andes, one that lived in the
lowlands and the other high in the mountains. The mountain people
invaded the lowlanders one day, and as part of their plundering of
the people, they kidnapped a baby of one of the lowlander families
and took the infant with them back up into the mountains.
The lowlanders didn't know how to climb the mountain. They didn't
know any of the trails that the mountain people used, and they
didn't know where to find the mountain people or how to track them
in the steep terrain.
Even so, they sent out their best party of fighting men to climb the
mountain and bring the baby home.
The men tried first one method of climbing and then another. They
tried one trail and then another. After several days of effort,
however, they had climbed only several hundred feet.
Feeling hopeless and helpless, the lowlander men decided that the
cause was lost, and they prepared to return to their village below.
As they were packing their gear for the descent, they saw the baby's
mother walking toward them. They realized that she was coming down
the mountain that they hadn't figured out how to climb.
And then they saw that she had the baby strapped to her back. How
could that be? One man greeted her and said, "We couldn't climb this
mountain. How did you do this when we, the strongest and most able
men in the village, couldn't do it?"
She shrugged her shoulders and said, "It wasn't your baby." |
