Get jiggy with your dark side

2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else Galatians 6:2-4

The Bestie has a saying; "We all have a dark side".  We were having a good chat about it yesterday, and it got me really thinking about the importance of becoming intimate with one's dark side...and embracing it.

It's only in totally knowing ourselves, that we truly give ourselves the opportunity to reach our potential.  Society has given has such huge pressure to present "the best possible image" at all times, I think we've started even lying to ourselves about who we are.  And that stops us from becoming the best that we can be.

I don't mean the "faults" we trot out in job interviews.  "I'm too generous sometimes" or "I can have a tendency to be a perfectionist".  I mean the real faults...the really ugly we ones we don't want anyone to see...including ourselves.  

Deep breath...these are some of mine. I can be far too clingy. I'm prone to jealousy and paranoia. I crave approval at almost any cost.  I can tend to fixate on life events and obsess over them, to no positive end and to the exhaustion of those around me.  I'm impulsive.

I've spent years trying to deny those qualities or rationalise them away.  To blame the behaviour that they drive on the actions of others, on hormones...anything and everything but making myself accountable to my own behaviour.  Because at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if someone else's actions are worse than mine...what matters is that mine are the best that they can be.

The only way I can be the best me that I can be, is by being aware of the worst me I can be...and smacking her butt!  The more I focus on finding my own faults, and others' strengths, the more I find I'm able to see the best in them, and be patient and loving with the worst of them...because I'm well aware of the worst of me.