What does it mean to show yourself?

     Hey friends. It feels like these personal posts are coming up much more often now, especially since I am working on a few different courses related to potential vocational calling and betterment, and I hope you won't mind another writing about the things that I'm wrestling with right now. The upside for some of you is that this post will most likely not be quite as long as some that I've written in the past. The classes that I'm taking are making me explore just what it means to be searching. What am I called to, what am I called away from, etc. Many questions have related with me through different songs, weirdly from Disney movies. If you know me, then you actually know that it's not that weird for me to be relating things to Disney (I have my red Disney shirt on even as I type this). The first week, as we were first talking about "doing the next right thing," of course, I thought of the song "Do the next right thing" from Frozen 2, the next week involved a lot of emotional searching within ourselves, and the song, "Show Yourself," also from Frozen 2 emerged as one that I connected with. Today I would like to talk a little bit about what it's like for me, someone who has been very unsure of how open I should be with my emotions, to do just that.

    If you know me, you most likely know my tendency to be sorry for various things that I haven't done. I'm sorry that the weather is bad, I'm sorry that the pants that you bought last week don't fit as well as you thought they might, I'm sorry that your friends and loved ones aren't treating you the way that you would like to be treated. In addition to this, I'm sorry for things that I say, and even the way that I am sometimes. I've been guilty of basically being sorry for just about everything, and that's tough. It really takes a toll to be sorry all the time, even when I myself haven't done anything that I feel is too terribly wrong. When you say sorry all the time, it's easy to start feeling bad for even the really good things that you've done because you may feel good about what you've done, and heavens forbid that you feel proud of yourself for something good that you were a part of. That could lead to being too proud of yourself, and even boastful, which is equally frowned upon. So many things go through my head all the time, and many of them are less than kind to myself. I'm not trying to get sympathy points here, this is just how my brain processes things. Over the last few years, I've really tried to push myself to get out of this pattern of thinking and feeling about my position in life, and let me tell you, it's tough.

    It can become hard to even trust your own perception, because it's impossible to know how someone else is reading a situation unless you deeply discuss it with someone else, it's simply up to you to tell yourself how you feel. In that case, if you're sorry for even what you're thinking, it can be easy to go with what others are thinking, because maybe you'll trust someone else's judgement above your own. All this leads to a constant spiral of self damaging and difficult thoughts to wrestle with, and it's hard to open up and tell someone about this type of thinking, because it's just not a comfortable conversation. I don't want to be a burden to anyone else, and I definitely don't want to put myself in a position where I'm putting myself in front of someone who has it worse off than I do. 

    A lesson that I learned in a class that I'm taking right now, which is actually a pretty simple one, and one that I've heard before, is that your feelings are valid. Whatever you are feeling is okay, as long as it's not a feeling that could hurt someone else or yourself, whatever you feel is valid. It's a little cliche, but hearing that a few weeks ago really made me feel a bit better. I don't need to feel bad about what I'm feeling, or how I react to whatever situation comes up. It's okay to feel something other than joy all the time, it's really human to have all kinds of things going on in your head, and like Inside Out shows, the emotions all have to work together to make a functional human being. Riley can't be the successful and growing girl that she is without Joy and Sadness working together, along with all the others. 

    The important piece that I have for you, my friends, is this. When I say that it's fine for me to not feel bad about my emotions and what I'm feeling, that goes for you too. If you're anything like me, you are much more forgiving of others than you are of yourself. Chances are that you've done something pretty incredible with the time that you've been given, and you need to be as proud of yourself as someone else would be. I know that's a hard thing to do, especially for me, but I think there's something to that. I'm not saying to rub all of your accomplishments in someone's face, of course, but there's a middle ground between the two extremes, there has to be. Something that I've thought about a lot lately is the phrase, "unapologetically myself," and that's a goal of mine. Hopefully I'll get to a stage in my life where I can do that,  but for now, I'm still working on it. I will say that I'm much better at it than I used to be, but I still have a ways to go.

    This has been a much longer and more in depth thought than I originally intended, but it's important to, again, "Show Yourself" to the people that you really care about, which can include yourself. You can never know someone completely, of course, we all face demons in our own heads, but it's okay to open up and feel things. I know that this is a tough week for so many people in our country and our world, but just know that I'm proud of you, continuing on and facing whatever feelings you have right now. For those of you that have helped me to come to this place and this realization, thanks so much, I hope you're proud of me and rooting me on just like I'm always rooting for you.

    Thanks so much for reading this overly feel-y post, friends. It ended up being much more rambly than I ever anticipated, but I hope that you're able to get some amount of comfort out of what I said. Thanks again for being my friends and for all the support that I've received over the years. Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Dreamer who is working on bettering himself. I'll talk to you again soon.