What Silence Reveals About Your Self-Worth
What Silence Reveals About Your Self-Worth
How would you rank your self-worth? Try this. Be quiet for ten minutes. That's it. Just ten minutes.
How's that working for you? No, I mean totally quiet. No thinking either. No brain chatter. No "to-do" lists being created. Not even prayer. Ten minutes. Total silence. Set a timer because after about three minutes you'll want to check the time. After five minutes you'll want to check your phone. What is it about silence that is sooooo uncomfortable? It's just so unproductive.
Self-worth and Silence
Silence is powerful because it reveals your self-worth. The longer you can sit in silence the healthier you are. The more secure you are. But discomfort means you NEED activity in your life to feel adequate. You NEED someone texting you or emailing you to make you feel wanted. You NEED to create that "to-do" list because it's only in doing something that you have value. You NEED to pray or think great thoughts to justify your existence.
Come on, admit it. It's okay. Reality is your friend! You might say...well, I have ADHD. That's true for some of us. But a LOT more people call themselves ADHD than really are. The real issue is they are approval junkies looking for their next fix and they typically find it in doing something that will win approval from others.
Henri Nouwen on Silence and Self-Worth
Henri Nouwen says...A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive...In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the center of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us..It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts...In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness.Show Me the Way, page 67,68
Work on being quiet for a few minutes each day. If you must think something then keep telling yourself...God accepts me just the way I am. Let that be your mantra. The world around you wants to make you dance to their tune and jump through their hoops to earn their acceptance. That's why Nouwen said that a life without a quiet center is destructive. But not so with God.
Silence is a discipline that will help you break the hold that performance based acceptance has on you.
Question:What is it about silence that makes you uncomfortable?