On Monday nights I like to take a yoga class with my favorite teacher, Ashley. She always begins class with some sort of uplifting comment, idea, or reading to meditate upon and think about. I just got back from her class tonight and I really think God was speaking to me through Ashley's thoughts tonight because what she talked about aligned directly with one of the things I'm working on this Lent.
Ashley said she's reading a book called The Untethered Soul. She shared that one of the things she's been reading in it is the idea that we all have a roommate ... and that roommate is us. More specifically, that roommate is the voice inside us that provides ongoing commentary to us about how terrible we are, how ugly we are, how we make awful decisions, etc. Basically everything negative we think about ourselves. And Ashley shared that if we had a friend who did this -- followed us around telling us how awful we are all the time -- we'd basically punch that person for two reasons: one, they are saying mean things, and two, they never stop talking.
So very, very true, right?
Before Lent started this year I was thinking about things I could work on to draw closer to God. One thing that I decided I should "give up" this year is thinking negative things about myself. I am so very, very good at telling myself what a terrible person I am, so I decided that, to use Ashley's metaphor, I needed to kick out my roommate.
I got this idea in my head when I shared a certain "Thought of the Day" on my board at school a couple weeks ago. I always share a quote of some sort -- sometimes serious, sometimes funny -- and I get them a variety of places. I can't remember where I saw this one -- probably randomly on the internet -- but it was my Thought of the Day, and I took a photo of it because the longer I looked at it, the more important I realized it was:
Isn't this so true?
So my prayer for you is that, if you have a really mean roommate like I do, you kick that person out, too. You don't need someone being mean to you all the time.
You're awesome.
Thank you for this!
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