Day 99 - Affirmation

So, after writing yesterday about rejection, I figured I would flip it to the other side and talk about affirmation.  Because I believe that the opposite of rejection is affirmation.  To affirm someone is to basically speak life into them, confirming the positive in them.  It’s to say that you believe in the person, their gifts, their abilities, all of that.  Now, for some people, this is like a compliment, and it doesn’t necessarily mean much, but for others, affirmation can be everything.  If you’ve never had anyone verbally believe in you, it means the world to have someone believe in you.  In my mind, affirmation has levels.  Someone can tell me randomly that they like my writing, but it’s something else for one of my friends to live in relationship with me that affirms by supporting my writing, encouraging my struggle, and helping me to see that they truly believe in me with their actions. 

For me, this is why affirmation is so important – it is a committed effort that means giving of yourself to pour into the life of someone else.  You can’t just leave a few words and expect to have done the job of affirmation.  Like love, true affirmation takes time, awareness, intimate knowledge, commitment, and care.  People without such a blessing in their lives, especially as children, find it hard to establish and maintain self-worth.  When no one actively believes in you, it is often hard to believe in yourself, especially when you haven’t been alive long enough to establish a healthy basis for self-worth.

So what do you do when you grew up without said affirmation in your life?  Are you destined to live with low self-esteem, forever depending on others to tell you who you are, and searching your entire life for the affirmation that you lacked as a child?  No.  Thankfully, you can seek affirmation in the Divine, appreciating your creation from the perspective of a Creator who loved you enough to shape you uniquely.  You can also affirm yourself by getting to know yourself – your strengths, weaknesses, gifts, passions, flaws, influences, etc – and learning to embrace who you are as an individual. 

Seek to affirm yourself and others.  Even if you don’t have deep relationships with everyone around you, you can still make a difference by speaking positive affirmation to anyone who needs it….  And trust me, everyone alive needs it, whether they know it or not.  Seek to pour into others, and trust, you will be taken care of.