Who are you?

There are mainly three ways we can define ourselves as humans, through our self-esteem, through our self-worth and through self acceptance. Self esteem can be defined as confidence in one’s ability and a simple formula we use to define this is Performance divided by Expectations. Yeah, we’re going mathematics on this;

Everyone knows you either have a high or low self-esteem about yourself and more often than not, this is determined by those two factors: performance and expectation. Let’s say you had a test in this course you’ve been struggling with and lo and behold, you actually killed it and got an A, of course your self-esteem in that aspect is increased and you feel good about yourself.

Needless to say that self-esteem applies to the things you consider important to you, you wouldn’t have your self-esteem affected by the fact that you can’t skate as much as failing a crucial exam, right?

Let’s for a minute see self-esteem as a balloon that of course can be inflated and deflated at any time, doing things you’re good at and being successful at them would definitely inflate the balloon right? But let’s talk about things that affects this balloon.

1. Comparison – This is one of the worst things we use to punish and inflict misery on ourselves! It’s one thing that can deflate the big, beautiful balloon in a matter of seconds. You decide to go to the gym to start exercising in other to keep fit but then you sight those body builders and boom, your goals have changed, you compare yourself to them and start hating on your body, wishing you could look this way or that way. You’re pretty happy and comfortable with all you have,living happy and feeling good about yourself until you meet an old friend who appears to be ‘faring better’ and then the ugly head of comparison sneaks in again and there goes all the achievements you took pride in before, suddenly you’re not good enough and the balloon is all flat.

2. Approval – Here’s another thing with self-esteem, we usually base it on how well we look to others, on how well we’re accepted by those we consider friends,cliques and families. When for one reason or the other, we’re not accepted by people we consider special, it affects our self-esteem, we begin to think we’re not good enough and feel bad about ourselves.

Enough about self-esteem now, let’s talk about self-worth. Unlike self-esteem which is how we perceive ourselves, self-worth is our actual value. To make the difference clearer, you could go to a market, pick up an item and depending on whatever condition you met it, you esteem it to be at a certain price but then only the seller can actually tell you how much it’s worth.

As Christians, no matter how good or bad we consider how self-esteem to be, the one true thing of importance is who God says we are! it’s how much value he knows we’re worth and you know what that is? Christ! We’re worth Christ’s blood, isn’t that amazing! It’s not about what you think of yourself, it’s about knowing who you actually are and coming to terms with that. It’s knowing you’re created in the image of God, knowing nothing absolutely nothing can separate you from his love not even you! There’s nothing you do that can change your worth, nothing that can avert the sacrifice made for you beforehand but it’s not just about knowing all this either, which brings us to the third part self acceptance.

Dear Friend, have you truly accepted who you are? Are you living in the reality of your worth? your value? Are you living like the royalty that you are? because honestly, all of this wouldn’t make much sense if you don’t accept you for who you are. Who are you again?

YOU ARE ROYALTY.