25 Words

My friend and fabulous licensed clinical social worker Jamie shared this fabulous challenge to come up with 25 words that describe your self without using physical attributes.She posted her words here and I thought, easy peasy. Two hours later on a Friday night I had reached desperation and could come up with nothing more. I thought, surely I am close to 25...nope I had only written eleven words. I don't know if it was cheating or not but I finally solicited my husbands help. He kept insisting "sexy" could be a non physical attribute. Eye roll.Why is it so hard? Why is so hard to first off, believe good things about ourselves and secondly be able to compliment who we are on the inside.I've noticed that so many of our compliments and kindnesses are physically related, when we all know that stuff doesn't matter as much as who we are on the inside. At least I hope we know that, sometimes I doubt that I do.I want to pass this challenge on to you. You can go to this website to make your own nifty word art. Hopefully it takes you less time than it took me, if not that's okay. I am taking this opportunity to get curious and ask myself what made this so hard. I encourage you to do the same.After some self reflection here are some things that made this tough for me:

1. I don't do well with compliments. I usually try to deflect compliments and even sometimes turn them back into a negative! Time to get curious about what that's all about!
2. Society doesn't teach us to give women non-physical compliments- seriously studies have been done on this and most women are given praise for what they look like and are wearing. This is less true with young boys.
3. I am highly self critical and often spend more time thinking about what I don't like about myself vs. what I do like. A list of 25 things I would change could have been written out in seconds.

This is one of the things that I love about giving clients (and myself) homework. You discover so much about yourself and have the opportunity to grow from what you have found. I'll definitely spend some time investigating the things that made this activity tough. Now to go print off and post my 25 words!