Accept Reality

Let's face it. You would love to be ideal, perfect, and heavenly. You would like to have the looks and body of the latest movie star, the heart of Mother Teresa, the intellect of Albert Einstein, or the wit of your favorite comedic figure. But the reality is that you are attractive in your own way, have a good and imperfect heart, are smart enough to do what you do, and find humor in your own way. And guess what? These things would be very, very, attractive- in fact intoxicating- to the right person. Just as you are- not perfect, but juicy and real.


But, if you don't feel you are attractive, you won't be. If you feel as though you aren't good enough and would only be good enough if you were your ideal, then the real you won't be attractive to that very same right person. He or she won't ever see you because the real you will be hidden by anxiety, performance issues, fears of rejection, narcissism, hiding, and defenses- all of the things we call insecurity. If you feel you are not good enough, you won't be. Not because you aren't but because you don't feel as if you are, and you show it.

In addition, you will look for the "ideal" or the perfect person to make up for what you feel is lacking in yourself. And this is never attainable. As soon as you've found the perfect person, he or she will disappoint and not be good enough. So you will always be alone and looking, too picky, or you will be attracted to those who try to appear ideal and perfect but have made themselves unattainable. You will chase them and never catch them, as it is their strategy, like yours, to never be caught.

Instead of that scenario, you could join reality and learn to accept your good parts, your bad parts, your imperfections, and the real you. You can be known in your hurts and your failures. Then you would be loved as you are, and you would have nothing left to prove. You could "take off the fig leaf" and stop hiding. Then there would be a lot to be attracted to. Those parts would be real, touchable, able to be experienced, sexy, juicy, life-giving, interesting, and all of the other real things God has placed inside every human soul, if they can be seen by others.

But to do that, you must come out of self-judgment and be known and loved by others as you really are, first in a nondating context. Get into a relational setting and practice these skills:



- Confess your faults and imperfections.


- Talk about the things you feel the worst about.


- Pray together about them.


- Practice loving what is less than ideal and perfect in others.


- Do not disregard others when they are less than perfect.


- Accept your failures and others when they fail.


- Process negative feelings, like sadness, anger, hurt, and fear.


- Don't expect perfection in yourself, others, or the whole world around you.


- Forgive everyone.


- Rework your ideal and have it be a real person and not a fantasy.


- Rework distortions in the way you evaluate yourself.


- Monitor the way you talk to yourself about your imperfections.





So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).




How to Get a Date Worth Keeping: Henry Cloud




God's love and blessing to everyone! Serendipity