Giving Your Consent

Would you give your consent for someone to hit you? Someone to spit at you? Someone to step on you? Of course not! And yet that is exactly what we do when we allow others to make us feel inferior when they look at us a certain way, or move their mouth in a certain way, or speak to us in a certain way. We feel inferior because of something they have said or done, and yet that is only possible because we are tacitly allowing ourselves to feel that way. In other words, we feel inferior because of something inside of us that is triggered by their words.

This post is not meant to substitute some real work that you can do on yourself, but it is meant to serve as a red flag that you can observe and take notice of, the next time it happens to you, so that then you can see it for what it is instead of blaming the other for making your feel less than you are. Therefore, by recognizing that it lies in you, the process of working on it can begin. And that begins by understanding that first you must love the self. And loving the self begins by making a priority of your own inner well-being.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Photo: Shot from the village of Bubion, above the clouds in the High Alpujarras, Granada, Spain