You have, as a human being, this unique ability to have an opinion about things. Your stance on politics blocks or buffers a new leader into power. Opinions guide decisions about the smallest of acts, many of which can accumulate to bring about a positive or negative change.
Given your status in the world, you might be fooled into believing that your opinion doesn't matter but it does and it matters most in connection to the people that are closest to you. Most of all your opinion matters in reference to you. Your power and responsibility to yourself lie in the opinions that you form of yourself and the things that you do.
On the surface, we can believe that we have a single stance on ourselves. I'm a good person, or I'm a bad person. This blanket evaluation is far too simple and only represents an overview of what we truly think about ourselves. Our important self-thinking can be connected to what we think we can do, our view of our past accomplishments, our sense of confidence, our sense of worth, our sense of self-acceptance, and how free we feel in our endeavours, amongst many other aspects of ourselves. Each tiny detailed self-opinion we have, which is held with strength and conviction, adds up to shape our future, our sense of belief in ourselves and the extent to which we thrive.
It is very important, that our opinions are grounded in fact, logic, and practicality and so very often they are not. To begin to form better quality opinions about ourselves we can start by being self-reflective. By noticing when opinion is playing out for us and begin to examine the extent to which our opinions are factual, logical, and practical.
For example, in the face of a mistake or a poor personal performance, what is your automatic opinion? What are you thinking about yourself at that moment? and most importantly-
1. Is what you think about yourself grounded in fact or are you overstating, generalising and forming sweeping opinions?
2. Does your automatic opinion make logical sense? For example, if you acted in a way that you don't approve of does that make you a totally terrible person?
3. Finally, how helpful to your future is the automatic opinion that you've generated? For example, if I am of the opinion that I performed poorly how helpful is it to think of myself as a totally terrible person when a totally terrible person is not likely to achieve many goals and enjoy life?
You've heard it in countless voting campaigns over the years I'm sure, your opinion counts. It counts most, of course, where you pay the most amount of attention to it. Begin to see that you have the opportunity to vote for yourself and your future many hundreds of times per day. What is harder to recognise is that self-criticism and depreciation have an insidious and pervasive impact on the quality of your life. Use your right and responsibility to vote wisely. Vote for you.
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