So I figured that people affected by BPI may experience self-esteem issues, or have times when we lack confidence-I know I have! That is why I wanted to write about confidence and how to feel comfortable in your own skin. BPI for instance, affects the way we look. Some of us have shorter arms than our
other side, look smaller, bent and so on… For me, people don’t usually notice unless for some reason I need to raise my arm, or in gym class my friends will notice when I don’t do push-ups. My arms are pretty equal in length, and you can only see a difference from the side where my elbow is slightly bent (Though with surgery and therapy it has gotten better now). Self-image is a huge facet of our confidence. But we can’t look at outsides, that’s just the shell we were all given. We have to look on the inside, so we can shine on the outside! Just the other day in my women’s class we were watching a video of how women are portrayed in the media (pretty scary stuff), and there was a woman talking about her time in Africa. While there, she asked a tribal woman if she liked her body. The woman looked at her in shock and could not believe she would ask such a thing. She then went on to tell the woman about how no one person is the same and that we need to love ourselves. She told her “I love my body, I love my hands and my fingers, my arms are so strong they carry me along…” and more. The woman replied that she doesn’t know how to do that, to love her body the way it is. The African woman then told her to look at a tree, and then at another tree. She said do you think that this tree isn’t pretty because it doesn’t look like that tree, or that it’s ugly because it doesn’t look like that tree? She said, I’m a tree, you’re a tree, you have to love your tree!
Being different from someone is a good, no GREAT thing because it makes you
unique
Why should you care what others think about you,
especially if they are negative thoughts? You can’t compare yourself to others:
why can’t I look like that? Why was I born this way? How can I change? You will
never be someone else, and you cannot change certain things about yourself, but
what you can do is change how you view yourself.
BPI, being a nerve damage injury, limits us to what we can do; or does it?
I know what you're thinking.(0.o what!)
Who said it does? There is an NFL player with BPI and if that’s not proof that you can play a sport with BPI than I don’t know what is. Though I don’t know the level of intensity of his BPI it is possible to train your body to work for you, the way you want it to. How do you think people hold their breath underwater for over 16 minutes? They train themselves physically, and mentally; telling themselves that anything can be done. At therapy, I was working on my range of motion and I would do ceratin exercises to help strengthen my arm, to lift it on its own all the way up to my head. Every week my arm grew stronger, and I was pretty close to lifting it all the way. Now if I continued to exercise daily, just imagine how I'd be now, if only a few weeks gave me better range.
Esteem usually, for a lot of us, comes from others such as friends,
family, and other daily people we see in our lives, but not too much from
ourselves. Why? Because we interact with these people and talk to them and we
care about what they think. I mean, no one thinks to themselves all the time
about how awesome they are. So we end up establishing our confidence in how
others view us, which is improper esteem. We need to hold confidence in our own
hands, because if someone else is holding it, then YOU’RE NOT.
“The man who has no internal resources, and who has no approving conscience; who is happy only when others smile, and miserable when they frown, is a man who can have no security for enjoyment.”
Sometimes I wish we all had a magic mirror that showed what we looked like on the inside, instead of the out. (Hopefully we would all be beautiful on the inside! ) Because the inside, your thoughts, emotions and more are what makes you, you. We would see our kindness, our confidence, our compassion, what a good friend we are to others, our talents, and our love.
Focusing on positive thoughts will help you grow to love yourself, and appreciate your body the way it is, because the way you look is not as important. I dare everyone for one week to look at themselves in the mirror every morning and say out loud or silently to themselves, three things that they love about themselves. And think about them throughout the day when you feel down to remind yourself how AWESOME YOU ARE!!
So, I’ll leave you with a Native American story that really makes you think about
the need of faith in ourselves to overcome our bad thoughts.
The Two Wolves
A Cherokee elder was teaching his grandchildren about
life.
He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me… it is
a terrible fight between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret,
greed, arrogance, hatefulness, and lies.
The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope,
humbleness, kindness, friendship, generosity, faith, and
truth.
This same fight is going on inside of you, and inside
every other person, too.”
The children thought about it for a minute. Then one
child asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf will
win?”
The Cherokee elder
replied…
“The one you
feed.”
other side, look smaller, bent and so on… For me, people don’t usually notice unless for some reason I need to raise my arm, or in gym class my friends will notice when I don’t do push-ups. My arms are pretty equal in length, and you can only see a difference from the side where my elbow is slightly bent (Though with surgery and therapy it has gotten better now). Self-image is a huge facet of our confidence. But we can’t look at outsides, that’s just the shell we were all given. We have to look on the inside, so we can shine on the outside! Just the other day in my women’s class we were watching a video of how women are portrayed in the media (pretty scary stuff), and there was a woman talking about her time in Africa. While there, she asked a tribal woman if she liked her body. The woman looked at her in shock and could not believe she would ask such a thing. She then went on to tell the woman about how no one person is the same and that we need to love ourselves. She told her “I love my body, I love my hands and my fingers, my arms are so strong they carry me along…” and more. The woman replied that she doesn’t know how to do that, to love her body the way it is. The African woman then told her to look at a tree, and then at another tree. She said do you think that this tree isn’t pretty because it doesn’t look like that tree, or that it’s ugly because it doesn’t look like that tree? She said, I’m a tree, you’re a tree, you have to love your tree!
Being different from someone is a good, no GREAT thing because it makes you
unique
Why should you care what others think about you,
especially if they are negative thoughts? You can’t compare yourself to others:
why can’t I look like that? Why was I born this way? How can I change? You will
never be someone else, and you cannot change certain things about yourself, but
what you can do is change how you view yourself.
BPI, being a nerve damage injury, limits us to what we can do; or does it?
I know what you're thinking.(0.o what!)
Who said it does? There is an NFL player with BPI and if that’s not proof that you can play a sport with BPI than I don’t know what is. Though I don’t know the level of intensity of his BPI it is possible to train your body to work for you, the way you want it to. How do you think people hold their breath underwater for over 16 minutes? They train themselves physically, and mentally; telling themselves that anything can be done. At therapy, I was working on my range of motion and I would do ceratin exercises to help strengthen my arm, to lift it on its own all the way up to my head. Every week my arm grew stronger, and I was pretty close to lifting it all the way. Now if I continued to exercise daily, just imagine how I'd be now, if only a few weeks gave me better range.
Esteem usually, for a lot of us, comes from others such as friends,
family, and other daily people we see in our lives, but not too much from
ourselves. Why? Because we interact with these people and talk to them and we
care about what they think. I mean, no one thinks to themselves all the time
about how awesome they are. So we end up establishing our confidence in how
others view us, which is improper esteem. We need to hold confidence in our own
hands, because if someone else is holding it, then YOU’RE NOT.
“The man who has no internal resources, and who has no approving conscience; who is happy only when others smile, and miserable when they frown, is a man who can have no security for enjoyment.”
Sometimes I wish we all had a magic mirror that showed what we looked like on the inside, instead of the out. (Hopefully we would all be beautiful on the inside! ) Because the inside, your thoughts, emotions and more are what makes you, you. We would see our kindness, our confidence, our compassion, what a good friend we are to others, our talents, and our love.
Focusing on positive thoughts will help you grow to love yourself, and appreciate your body the way it is, because the way you look is not as important. I dare everyone for one week to look at themselves in the mirror every morning and say out loud or silently to themselves, three things that they love about themselves. And think about them throughout the day when you feel down to remind yourself how AWESOME YOU ARE!!
So, I’ll leave you with a Native American story that really makes you think about
the need of faith in ourselves to overcome our bad thoughts.
The Two Wolves
A Cherokee elder was teaching his grandchildren about
life.
He said to them, “A fight is going on inside me… it is
a terrible fight between two wolves.
One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret,
greed, arrogance, hatefulness, and lies.
The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope,
humbleness, kindness, friendship, generosity, faith, and
truth.
This same fight is going on inside of you, and inside
every other person, too.”
The children thought about it for a minute. Then one
child asked his grandfather,
“Which wolf will
win?”
The Cherokee elder
replied…
“The one you
feed.”