So here’s the question…Do you appreciate you?

No, I didn’t ask if you liked you.

Do you appreciate you?

Do you appreciate all that you already are and all that you were created to become? Do you appreciate all the talents, gifts, and abilities that reside within you? Do you appreciate your voice, your vision, your passion? Do you appreciate the importance of the contribution that only you can make in this world?

Do you appreciate your significance?

Growing up no one ever told me I should appreciate myself.  To be fair, no one ever told me I shouldn’t appreciate myself, either. Appreciation was only a topic of conversation when I would complain about all the stuff I didn’t have. That made me ungrateful and unappreciative. That’s as close as I ever got to discussing appreciation.

WORTHINESS The world has a word for people who consider themselves to be significant. Arrogant. Significance, in order to exist relies on a comparison to insignificance. But the significance I speak of is not an arrogant, ego-based proclamation of superiority over the inferiority of others. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement of one’s own purpose and worth.

My journey to a place called happiness has taken me in many directions as I took who I thought I was and meandered through life looking for who I thought I was supposed to be. Immediately the conflict is evident. Who I thought I was wasn’t good enough, because if I felt that I was, why would I have ever been searching for the person I thought I was supposed to be?

For me, happiness came down to a matter of worthiness. Was I really only supposed to live within the limitations I somehow established for myself?

When we question our worthiness, we question everything about our capacity for greatness. We deny our own divinity. Questioning our own worthiness undercuts our very being, leads us to doubt our very essence. Doubting ourselves divides us against our self, preventing us from ever becoming all that we were created to become.

It was a life-changing moment was when I realized that when I looked at me, I didn’t see the same person that God sees.

A UNIVERSAL VISION When I looked at me what I did see was a good person with some talents and abilities who thought he wanted success in life but had always played it safe, who viewed the world through eyes of scarcity and limitation. A person who got excited by drafting big dreams but silently knew that none of them would ever come true.

When God looks at me He sees a person who’s been given a unique combination of talents, gifts, and abilities who is here to fulfill a divine purpose within an environment of unlimited opportunity and abundance.

Certainly we had dramatically different views of me. But God’s view of me wasn’t exclusive to me. That is God’s view of everyone. A Universal vision, and since I was here, by default I was included in such a Universal vision.

That understanding dramatically changed everything.

It’s a tall order to see yourself as significant in the eyes of God when you don’t even see it yourself. But it is so much easier to accept God’s vision of you when you understand that God’s vision of you is the same vision He has for everyone else. You don’t feel the burden of accepting your own specialness, your individual worthiness when you understand that collectively we are all worthy of our own divinity, of our own purpose, of our own path. I don’t have to look at my significance as something that makes me special, simply because we all share in the same Universal significance.

That’s when I began to allow myself to see in me what God sees in me.

DIVINE CONTEMPLATION Accepting God’s vision of you can be quite daunting. But if accepting the idea of your own significance is difficult, try looking at it from a different angle. Contemplate the idea of your own insignificance. Contemplate the idea that you were created to be “not as good as”, comparatively defective, nothing more than slightly irregular merchandise on the shelf at God’s Factory Outlet of Humanity.

Why would the Universe waste it’s time?

The Universe has never created a insignificant person. Insignificant is a judgmental label created, affirmed, and allowed to be accepted as the truth. Even if it isn’t. Even if we are the ones who label ourselves as such.

When you discover your divinity you discover the real you, the one you were created to become. Doubt and uncertainty are replaced with a calm sense of knowing. Unworthiness, until this point for me a spiritual monkey wrench, replaced with an understanding of significance and purpose.

When you look at you, do you see what God sees?

Seeing what God sees, life takes on a new significance. You are no longer just you. You are a part of something greater with a purpose to fulfill. You develop a humble reverence for who it is you really are, and everyone and everything around you. You move far beyond simple appreciation. You embrace your significance.

When you look at you, do you see what God sees?

We all share the same Source. We all share the same Light that shines within every one of us.

That includes you, too.

Remind yourself. Often.

It’s a great day to be you!

photo: David Niblack