Learning To Love Yourself, Flaws and All.

During the Grammys,Sam Smith made a speech about how he learned to succeed. He stated that he tried to loose weight and be like everyone else and it was not until he learned to do his own thing that he finally started to succeed.

How many of us can resonate with what he is saying?  In case no one else wants to admit it, I will admit that I was once like this.  I used to look at other people’s lives, other peoples dreams,and I would wonder why God would not bless me with the things that they had or bless me in the way that He has blessed them.

I have always had a thicker figure.  I am a darker skinned African american female. According to one Psychology Today expert (see here).  Black women are the more unattractive of all the races of women.  For myself, I grew up always thinking I was fat.  Always thinking that I was not as pretty because I was darker, and always wanted someone else' life.

As a teen I used to diet so much, exercise obsessively, and barely eat any food.  Now I know that I suffered from  an eating disorder.  And no matter how small I got, I would still look in the mirror and never feel like I was skinny enough.  Despite other people telling me I had lost so much weight that I looked like a crack addict.

My point is that I was trying to be something and someone that I was not intended to be.  And because of it I was never satisfied.  It was not until I heard God tell me that I was being ridiculous.  I was being obsessive about my weight and I was idolizing someone else's ideas of beauty, someone else's gifts, and someone else's life instead of finding out what my own were.

The point that I am trying to make that if we always covet what someone else's is and someone else's life then we are never going to be satisfied.  God has blessed them to be the way that they are, and therefore there is no reason for us to try to imitate or be them.  There is already a them.  They are already good at what they do.  They already look the way that they look, if God wanted to make you them, then He would have.  But He didn’t, He made you, you instead.

The only thing that we can do is learn to embrace ourselves our gifts and find out how God wishes to use those gifts.  Can you imagine if Sam Smith stayed on trying to sing like some else and being like someone else.  He would have missed out on his blessing all together.  Now imagine how many of us are missing out on our own blessing because we refused to accept ourselves for who we are and we continue to look at at other peoples lives wishing that we were them, wishing we had their life, their husband, their home, or their money?


For everything that you are, flaws and all, God made you this way. It is your unique set of flaws, gifts, and imperfections that make up you.  And it is both the good and and the not so good part of you that God can use to get you were He wants you to be.  The only way that you will get there is coming to terms with yourself.  Coming to terms that you are yourself, you are going to be stuck with yourself forever, and praying that God can use your unique set of gifts that only you have that can propel you to the next level.

True success I am convinced only comes with you learning to be you.  After all, if you put on a fake self to get where you want to be, this is the same fake self that you are always going to have to maintain.  Missing out on the opportunity to show people the real you.


In closing I give this example.  Lupita Nyong'o.  Who knew that she would be voted People most beautiful person last year.  She is very dark skinned, short hair, no weave, and of African decent.  Not the usual sense of beauty that is on the cover of magazine.  But when God says yes, who can say no.  It is those unique attributes that caused her to be in the movie 12 Years Slave.  Which propelled her to the next level.  Had she been light skinned with a long blonde weave down to her butt, then she may have not fit into the role so well.  But she embrace herself and saw her own beauty, and because she believed in herself, we all believed in her too.