The topic of self-esteem has gone through many changes in the world of psychology. Traditionally it was thought that you must increase low self-esteem. This was done in a variety of ways including positive thinking and self-motivation methods. In recent years though, even that seems to be changing as people realize that trying to like yourself is hard. But not only is having high self-esteem hard, I believe that it’s the problem.

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Much is made of what we believe or do not believe. And rightly so. What we believe has the power to change the course of our entire lives. Unfortunately many of us confuse knowledge for conviction, preventing our lives from matching what we know to be true.

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There are few things that give me joy like seeing someone experience freedom in their life. I love to see others discover their identity in Christ and be changed forever by the truth of who they are in Him. But the biggest obstacle in reaching that place of freedom is dealing with the lies that keep us stuck.

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I played a lot of sports as a kid. I was a perennial all-star in both basketball and baseball up until high school. I had a shelf full of trophies displaying all of my accomplishments. A trophy I never had on my shelf was a participation trophy. No thank you.

It occurs to me that there may never have been a generation before ours with such an ingrained sense of entitlement. Rather than bumper stickers touting the fact that your student made the honor roll, I see ones that say “My child won the monthly attendance award”. Well, color me impressed.

I’m not an advocate of making anyone feel entitled but we have a tendency to over-correct. The reason the idea of participation trophies even came about was to correct our society’s glorification of winners. The mentality is that if you win, you’re valuable but if you lose, you’re a loser. Yet another label I despise.

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I long for validation. I’m not talking about kind words from an acquaintance. I’m talking about weighty validation from someone I respect. But many times I sabotage a compliment before it can even come.

Have you ever created something that you loved and then felt like you hated it?

I’ve actually apologized for my creativity. I’ve done it before anyone could make a comment just so that I can protect my heart from criticism.

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There’s a video on YouTube of a dad recording a little boy after riding his bike for the first time. The boy is so excited he can barely get his words out to describe how he feels. His dad encourages him to share some wisdom with others and the boy proceeds to give one of the most inspiring speeches I’ve ever heard.

I don’t have any background on the video but I have a feeling that this boy had been at it for a long time. Why else would he be so excited? His perseverance finally paid off and he was a success. His dad was excited as well and was the one encouraging him to share with others. I’m sure he was there the whole time while his son continued to fall off the bike and he helped him get back on it.

Watching the result of his victory made me ask myself a question.

Does God want us to fail?

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If you’re like me, you have probably already OD’d on hearing about New Year’s Resolutions or the One Word of the year. I’m pretty sure I read my body weight in blog posts about these subjects. It’s all good and very ambitious. But what would it look like to have an anti-resolution for the year?

A good friend of mine named Carla just started blogging. She inspired me to something I’ve never had the courage to face with the right perspective:

Failure

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As I reflect back over this year, I see how many great things have happened. My blog has grown more than I expected, my writing has improved and I wrote more this year than I have in the past 10 years.

I’ve been able to write about the most memorable personal aspects of my life like meeting and marrying the woman of my dreams (and a fellow blogger) and quitting my job to pursue a dream.

All in all, I can say that this has been one of the best years of my life. And I know that 2012 will only get better. So with that, I give you my top 9 posts (because who needs 10?) of 2011:

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Typically, December only held within it four major occurrences in my life – the anniversary of my salvation, my husband’s birthday, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. However, 5 years ago – my life changed drastically on December 19th, 2006.

At the time, before Facebook really took off, MySpace was the dominator in social networking. I utilized this platform at the time, and on this night I found myself utilizing it to see if [by chance] I could find someone I had been sporadically looking for on and off for 8 years since I learned about him.

My half-brother.

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Two of my favorite virtues are love and humility. They are two of the qualities in a person I respect most. But it wasn’t until I heard this phrase from a mentor that my perspective was completely shifted:

Love gives. Humility receives.

Love

I’ve always thought of love as being something that happens to two people. I’ve seen people say that they love without being loved in return. But I was pretty sure that at the end of it all, I felt that the lover was foolish and couldn’t sustain it.

I thought of love as a two-way transaction. If it only goes one way, it is not complete. But then I understood this truth:

The truest, most perfect love is the one that is not reciprocated.

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