Sunday Morning Coffee Musings: The Power of Introspection

It was when my daughter was born, I began the journey to look deeper within myself to find out why I was the way I was at that time. The journey has progressed over the years to why I am the way I am now, how I want to be in the future, to forgiveness of self and others, to ever evolving. And so much more.

I can tell you the first step to introspection is brutal honesty, but gentle forgiveness and a course of actions to remedy the issue if there need be one. I’ve gotten my instructions from logic, books, observations of others and ultimately God who sent all the aforementioned things via the vehicle of wisdom. Brutal honesty with yourself is a practice that is necessary if you want to get to the heart of the matter and I am not just talking about honesty about yourself, but honesty about others and the situations that have occurred in your life.

I started by addressing the things people said about me often that I refuted vehemently.

“You are wishy washy, very indecisive”

“You never smile. You’re always frowning. I thought you were mean.”

“You’re too clingy.”

“You are so sensitive.”

These are just a few. It took years to get through the layers of those four things alone. It was the saying; “If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, looks like a duck it must be a duck” and “If everyone is saying the same thing to you over and over it must be true.” All four of those things I shared were true and are still true at times. I worked on being more decisive. I had to get to the underlying cause of that. It was work and it was years and I realized it was rooted in childhood and my nature. I smile so much now and I love it. I also know why all of those years I didn’t smile much. I didn’t know I had a reason to smile. I was bullied as a child and my frown was my defense! It kept many people out as I grew older. What was a fence for protection became a wall for isolation in many ways.

Being too clingy…ahhh yes, that really hurt. That was really hard work. Too many bad relationships made me want to hold on to anyone that crossed my path. It hurt to lose. It hurt to let go. I didn’t like pain. Who does? I had to learn several lessons from that:

If you hold on too tight you squeeze the life out of relationship. If you hold on to who’s hurting you, you hurt you! Trust is necessary and if it’s broken, then you have the option to leave or mend. It’s true, a person will do what they want to do because you can’t be around them 24/7 to ensure they won’t and why would you want to be? Who wants a relationship like that? Trust is essential to a successful relationship. (So much work in that area including becoming self-confident and building self-esteem).

You are too/so sensitive. I am. I tried for years to change that, but I realized being sensitive is how God created me. I govern my sensitivity by asking myself can I let that go? Am I taking that too personal? But I don’t question every single thing I feel. I feel deeply. I am who I am. Some people are just too rude and too mean and they want you not to be offended by it. Life.

Introspection is a lifelong journey. The one thing I love about this journey is rarely do I have time to judge others, but I do have time to decide if I want them in my company. I find you are more understanding of others actions/ways. You recognize yourself in others or things you know they need to work out. You can deal with them or not. You can only heal yourself and aide in the healing of others. I am more whole and a healed person than I was at 25. I thank my God for that.

~Nikki