Your own perception of yourself matters a lot in life. As a matter of fact, people around you may have a wrong perception of you, but the way and manner you see yourself will go a long way to help you. There is an adage within Yoruba parlance which says that “whatever a man calls his or her calabash is the same thing people will call it”. The truth is this, people around you or sometimes, your situations and circumstances do not make you who you are. It is whatever you call yourself that the person around you in return calls you. If you call yourself ‘success’ for instance, people would not call you differently. Our reality in life first and foremost begins from how we see ourselves. Proverbs 23:7 succinctly puts it this way - as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he (KJV).What this means is that you are what you think about yourself. Your true reality begins from the realms of your imagination.
Mahatma Ghandi must have been a fan of Solomon’s wisdom when he said something related to the above scriptures that “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If you keep on saying to yourself that you cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that you may end up really becoming incapable of doing it. But on the contrary, if you have the belief that you can do it, you automatically receive the capacity to do it even though you may not have such capacity at the beginning”. People become really quite extraordinary when they start seen themselves in the light of possibilities. The first secret of success in life and one’s endeavors is to first believe in oneself. Correct self-perception is an essential component of self-improvement. If you do not know where your strong point or feebleness lie, you would not in truth know what areas you need to work on. Self-perception is simply being aware of who you are, what you are like and what you really are capable of doing. Your self-awareness a times goes beyond positive self- admiration. It may involve coming into terms with some of your inadequacies, adjusting how you see your abilities or better still, recognizing your challenging areas and working on yourself to improve upon them.
One sure way to perceive yourself correctly is to see who you really are in the light of God’s word. The truth is, you can never know yourself more than the person who created you. A product for instance cannot know itself more than what the manufacturer documents in the product manual, and this is one area where people miss it nowadays. Perceiving yourself outside of what God has made you to be or called you would be a wrong perception of yourself. As a matter of fact, we cannot question God why he has made us the way we are. A lot of people complain why God didn’t make them in a particular way, and that why did he make them the way they are presently? It is all these wrong perceptions of oneself that gave rise to all manners of transgenderism that is sweeping across the globe. Look at the way Isaiah 45:9 puts it -
Woe unto him that striveth with his maker. Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth, shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, what makest thou? Or thy work, he hath no hands? (KJV)
God in his infinite mercy who has decided to make you tall or short, black or white, African or American, Nigerian or Ghanian has the best plans for your life, and he also knows that we can fulfill our life purposes in the form that he has made us. He alone knows why he made you a man and not a woman and vice versa. The problem people generally have with the way they think they are because they haven’t been seen themselves in the light of God’s purposes and plans for their destinies. Isaiah also has this to say - But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand (KJV). You are simply perfect the way God has made you. Don’t seek or try to re-make or change yourself into whom God has not made you, that would amount to not perceiving yourself correctly. Be yourself and see yourself the God sees you. The Psalmist says that we have been made in the image of God, fearfully and wonderfully crafted.
Another way of perceiving yourself correctly is not to allow people tell you who you are. The truth of the matter is this; people can have or form a wrong opinion of you or about you. Your teacher may have said you are the dullest in the class, your boss at work might have talked you down that you are not good at your job, or even; your biological parents might have spoken some great swelling words against you, telling you how terrible a child you are or have been. The fact is what people say or they don’t say should not be the basis of how you see yourself. There are about three billion character-descriptions of who you are written in the language of God according to science and that if a man were to study just one of your characters, every night and day; it would take 96years for such study to be completed. If this scientific discovery happens to be the truth, how will you now allow people tell you who you are? Dear reader, begin to learn to see yourself in the light of who God has made you to be.
Let me conclude this way. You are today where your thoughts about yourself and capacity have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. Begin this week by seeing yourself in an absolutely different way before now. Develop a ‘can do’ spirit, overcome every thoughts that have constantly ministered to you that other people are better than you. Let the thoughts of who you are in Christ constantly be in the fore-front of your mind. Apostle Paul said “I can do all things through Christ which Strentheneth me”. You can also begin to look at yourself in the light of who God has said you are. People may have all manner of opinion and about you, but that is not who you are. Stop seeing yourself in the light of what people say you are, they didn’t create you. Learn to perceive yourself correctly, especially in the light of God’s word, and everything about you would change for good in a short time. I believe you have been blessed by this short piece. Have a productive week.
Thank you for reading.