The Best Advice for When You Let Yourself Down

Yesterday, we went to a coffee shop to do some of our school work which was fun and nice for both Annabelle and myself. That’s when I mentioned it.

“What work do I have left to do today, mommy?”

“We need to study for a test, and you have piano this afternoon.”

Piano.

Lessons had not resumed since our Christmas recital at the beginning of December, and though she’d done some practicing, she hadn’t done all of it. In her mind, all she could see was a big, giant, flashing notebook list of things she was supposed to complete and practice, and there was not enough time to do it all and get it done before her lesson.

“I’ll never finish. I’ll never get it done.”

The pressure was mounting in her.

Sometimes when she speaks to herself that way, I begin to do the same. “Dang, I forgot to help her practice piano. Again.”

But this time, I did not. We’ve done a lot of healing, and instead I was firm and told her to stop.

I said the best thing you can ever learn, the best advice for when you let yourself down, is to be kind to yourself – to give yourself some grace.

She doesn’t like to think of herself as a perfectionist, but she is a first-born, and she struggles with managing her time and focus, so I think she struggles with what to do when she lets herself and others down.

I told her that there are things we need to change and to do better, but we are works in progress, and listing our failures over and over again on repeat just causes us to seize up and be unable to do the thing we need to do. It would have been nice had I thought to pray, but in the moment, I didn’t. I just said, “The fear of worrying about whether we’ve messed up and let ourselves down or whether we are going to let our teachers down is not helpful. Be kind to yourself. We must change our thoughts.”

The Best Advice for When You Let Yourself Down

1. Give Yourself Grace.

   Give yourself forgiveness. Often we are our own worst critic. Jesus was kind to us, and His grace is immeasurable.

2. Take Captive Your Thoughts.

   Fix your thoughts on Jesus – the most high (Heb 3:1). He asks us to think about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy (Phil 4:8). We are to take captive our thoughts and set them where they should go (2 Co 10:5). Jesus calls us to see our sin, but He does not keep us cast down. He lifts up our head. He doesn’t call us the names we call ourselves. Just like when I catch my children giving themselves negative self-talk, and it makes me sad, I think the Lord is also sad when we degrade ourselves.

On that note, I must confess that on Tuesday’s post about community when I shared the graphic, I was not intending to be self-degrading or to call those of you who also struggle with community a self-derogatory name. A couple of you sweet friends called out the line where I said, “I am dumb.” There is a piece of me, maybe surprisingly, that doesn’t always come out in my writing, that doesn’t take myself so seriously, so I was using my silly side to poke fun at myself and the meme, to call out myself to be vulnerable with you all. I did it in the spirit of the stick figure meme that was going around Facebook and felt it fit. I was talking about how I’d written a post I took down. In writing, vulnerability is hard. I think it is important to take it to God before you take it to a community. Also, the spirit of how you feel when you write is important. In one post, I felt defeated. In the stick figure one, I felt like I was in a healthy place to be vulnerable and share honestly. So I took down the one piece for my own integrity’s sake, and to be faithful to myself as a writer, to you as the reader, to God, and to my family. However, I can easily go down the path of negative self-talk, it is an honest struggle for me, and I appreciate you saying that I am not dumb. 🙂