Life Without Limits (11 page)

The kind of self-love and self-acceptance I’m advocating is not about loving yourself in a self-absorbed, conceited way. This form of self-love is self-less. You give more than you take. You offer without being asked. You share when you don’t have much. You find happiness by making others smile. You love yourself because you are not all about yourself. You are happy with who you are because you make others happy to be around you.

But what if you just can’t love yourself because no one else loves you? I’m afraid that is simply not possible. You see, you and I are God’s children. Each of us can count on His unconditional love, His mercy, and His forgiveness. We should love ourselves, be understanding of our imperfections, and forgiving of our mistakes because God does all of that for us.

During a tour of South America I spoke at a drug rehabilitation center in Colombia. The addicts and former addicts in my audience had so little regard for their value as human beings that they’d nearly destroyed themselves with drugs. I told them that God loved them no matter how long they’d been addicted. Their faces lit up when I assured them, through an interpreter, that God loved them unconditionally. If God is willing to forgive our sins and love us like that, why can’t we forgive and accept ourselves? Like the daughter of the Singapore banker, these Colombian drug users lost their way because, for whatever reasons, they devalued their lives. They felt they were unworthy of the best that life had to offer. I told them that we are all worthy of God’s love. If He forgives us and loves us, we should forgive and love ourselves and then strive for the best life possible.

When Jesus was asked to name the most important commandments, he said the first was to love God with all your heart, soul,
mind, and strength, and the second was to love your neighbor as yourself. Loving yourself is not about being selfish, self-satisfied, or self-centered; it’s about accepting your life as a gift to be nurtured and shared as a blessing to others.

Instead of dwelling on your imperfections, your failings, or your mistakes, focus on your blessings and the contribution you can make, whether it’s a talent, knowledge, wisdom, creativity, hard work, or a nurturing soul. You don’t have to live up to anyone else’s expectations. You can define your own version of perfection.

The psychiatrist and author Elisabeth Kübler-Ross said people are like stained-glass windows: “They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” To live without limits and especially to survive the darkness of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, or any major challenge, you must switch on that light within. You must believe in your own beauty and value as someone who can make a difference, someone who matters.

Finding your purpose is the first important step to living a life without limits. Maintaining hope for the future and faith in the possibilities even in difficult times will keep you moving toward that goal. But to be fulfilled, you must know in your heart that you are
worthy
of success and happiness. You must love yourself, just as God loves all who are faithful.

I have a friend who is so comfortable with himself, so at peace and enthused about developing his gifts, that he just seems to radiate good feelings. I love being with him. Everyone loves being with him. Why? Because he shines from within. He loves himself, but not in a “you’re so vain” way; he accepts himself as blessed, even when events don’t go his way, even though he struggles just like you and me.

I’m sure you know people who give off that same comfortable vibe, just as you probably know the opposite sort of person whose bitterness and self-loathing drive everyone away. If you don’t accept yourself, it not only leads to self-destruction, it leads to isolation.

If you don’t shine from within, it may be because you rely on others to validate you, to give you confidence, and to make you feel appreciated. But that is a sure road to disappointment because you must accept yourself first. The only important measure of your beauty and value as a person should be the one that comes from within.

I know, easy to say, tough to do. I’ve struggled with this too. As the child of Christian parents, I’d always been taught that Jesus loved me and that I was created perfectly according to His plan. Of course, all my parents’ Bible teachings and all my family’s efforts to lift me up came crashing down as soon as one snotty little kid ran up to me and screamed, “You’re a freak!”

Life can be cruel. People can be thoughtless or just plain mean. So you must be able to look inside for strength, and when that inner strength fails, you can always look above, to God, the ultimate source of strength and love.

Self-acceptance and self-love are important but often misunderstood concepts these days. You should love yourself as a reflection of God’s love and as someone put on this earth to make a unique contribution. Too many teens and adults settle for a more superficial meaning when they buy into the extremes of narcissism and self-indulgence. This is due, in no little part, to the cult of beauty and celebrity promoted on reality shows, movies, podcasts, and videos. When you watch those shows, it is easy to forget that life has a greater purpose than looking good, living in luxury, and hooking up. No wonder more celebrities are in rehab than in church. Too many of them worship the false gods of vanity, pride, and lust.

I can’t imagine that any previous generation has been lied to as much as the present ones. We are continually bombarded with messages that we need to have a certain look, a certain car, and a certain lifestyle in order to be fulfilled, loved, appreciated, or considered successful. We’ve come to a dangerous point in our culture when being in a sex video is considered a path to fame, fortune, and fulfillment.

Don’t you think this would be a better world if the paparazzi followed college graduates with advanced degrees, or missionaries bringing medicine and hope to the poor and needy, instead of stalking rehab dropouts with rap sheets and needle scars? But all is not lost. I’ve seen huge throngs of people, young and old, attend religious ceremonies and festivals of praise, seeking contentment by learning to love their neighbor. I’ve watched teens and adults spend their vacations building homes in Third World countries and serving the needy in impoverished areas of North America. Not everyone is obsessed with plastic surgery, liposuction, and Louis Vuitton bags.

When you get caught up in material goods and surface beauty, and when you let other people determine your value, you give up too much of yourself and risk letting your blessings go to waste. After watching my DVD, Kristy wrote to me: “You made me realize what’s the point of having someone love you if you don’t love yourself? I saw you over a year ago and again today. I realized I need to tell you what you have done for me. You have taught me to stand up for myself, love myself for who I am, and just live my life the way I want to live it … Oh by the way, now that I have changed the way I feel about myself, my boyfriend has noticed a big difference in me, and he is grateful to you. He was always scared for me, afraid I might do something stupid one day and kill myself. But now I have changed, and my life is so much happier!”

My message resonated with Kristy because I’ve been where she was. When I was seven years old, I went home after one particularly cruel day of rejection and disappointment and spent hours staring into my mirror. Most teens worry about pimples and keeping their hair under control. I had all of the usual challenges on top of the missing limbs.

I really am just a weird-looking bloke
, I thought.

Grief overwhelmed me. I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity for a good five minutes. But then a voice from deep inside said,
Okay, like your mum says, you’re missing some bits and pieces, but you have some good features too
.

I thought,
Name one. I dare you. Just find one thing, and that will be enough
.

I studied my reflected image a little longer and finally came up with something positive.

I have nice eyes. Girls have told me I have nice eyes. I have that if nothing else! And no one can change that about me. My eyes will never change, so I will always have beautiful eyes
.

When you feel your spirits tumbling because you’ve been hurt or bullied or disparaged, go to the mirror and find one feature you love about yourself. It doesn’t have to be a physical characteristic. It can be a talent, a trait, or something else that makes you feel good about yourself. Dwell on that special something for a while. Be grateful for it, and know that your beauty and value come from the unique person you were made to be.

Don’t cop out and claim, “There is nothing special about me.” We are so hard on ourselves, especially when we compare ourselves unfavorably to others. I see this especially when I talk to teenagers. So many of them struggle with feelings of inadequacy, or the sense that no one will ever love them.

That is why I make it a point to tell them, “I love you just as you are. You are beautiful to me.”

Those are simple words from me, a strange-looking stranger. I offer them in most of my speaking engagements for schools and youth groups. My simple words always seem to strike a chord. In fact, the response is usually quite remarkable.

The typical reaction begins with a muffled whimper or a smothered sniffle. I’ll look out to see a girl with her head down or a boy with his hands over his face. Then the powerful emotions will sweep through the room like a contagion. Tears will flow down young cheeks. Shoulders shake from stifled sobs. Girls huddle together. Boys leave the room to hide their faces.

The first few times this happened, I was taken aback.
What’s going on? Why are they responding so strongly?

My audience members themselves have answered those questions. After my speeches, young and old, they line up to hug me and share their feelings. Again, the response is overwhelming. Often they line up for hours.

Now, I’m a handsome enough bloke, but people don’t stand in lines for hours to hug me because I’m so dashing. What really seems to be drawing them is that I unleash a pair of powerful forces that so many are lacking in their lives:
unconditional love
and
self-acceptance
.

Kristy’s is just one of many e-mails and letters I receive and personal conversations I have with people young and old who’ve thought about taking their lives because they’ve lost their ability to love themselves. When you are hurt, you build walls to keep from being hurt again, but you can’t build an interior wall around your heart. And if you will only love yourself as you are, for all your natural beauty inside and out, others will be drawn to you, and they will see your beauty too.

Our friends and loved ones can tell us one hundred times a day that we are beautiful and we are loved and that the hard times will pass, but too often we shrug off the supportive words and hang on to the hurt. I did that for the longest time. My parents would spend weeks trying to undo the damage done by one or two kids who teased me on the playground. But finally when someone my own age reached out, I was transformed. When one girl in my class told me that I was “looking good,” I walked on a cloud for a month.

Of course, a short time later, I woke up at thirteen years old with a pimple on my nose. It was not pretty. It was a huge, ripe tomato of a pimple.

“Look at this, it’s crazy,” I told my mum.

“Don’t scratch it,” my mum said.

What would I scratch it with?
I wondered.

I went to school feeling like the ugliest dude on the planet. Every time I passed a classroom and saw my reflection in the windows, I wanted to run and hide. Other kids stared at it. I kept hoping it would go away, but two days later it was even bigger, the largest and reddest pimple in the universe. I began to think it would one day outweigh the rest of me.

The monstrous deformity would not go away! My humongous zit was still there eight months later. I felt like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Australian. Finally my mum took me to a dermatologist. I told him I wanted the pimple removed even if it took major surgery. He examined it with a huge magnifying glass—as if he couldn’t see it—and said, “Hmmmm. It’s not a pimple.”

Whatever it is
, I thought,
let’s just get rid of it, shall we?

“It’s a swollen oil gland,” he said. “I can cut it off or burn it off, but either way it will leave you with a scar bigger than this little red dot.”

Little red dot?

“It’s so big I can’t see around it,” I protested.

“Would you rather be scarred for life?” he asked.

The giant not-a-zit remained on my nose. I prayed and fretted about it for a while, but finally I realized that the bright red bulb on my nose was no more of a distraction than my lack of limbs.
If people aren’t willing to talk to me, that is their loss
, I decided.

If I caught someone staring at it, I made a joke. I told them I was growing an extra nose to sell on the black market. When people saw that I could laugh at myself, they laughed with me and empathized. After all, who hasn’t had a pimple? Even Brad Pitt has pimples.

Sometimes, through our own doing, we make little problems big by taking them way too seriously. Having a pimple is part of the deal. We are all perfectly imperfect human beings, some of us maybe more than others, but we all have our flaws and our shortcomings. It’s important to not take every little wart or wrinkle too seriously because one day you will have something truly serious go wrong, and then what will you do? So stand prepared to laugh at life’s little knocks on the heads and bumps on the nose.

Laughter has been shown to reduce stress by releasing endorphin hormones, the body’s natural relaxant, boosting your immune system and improving your blood flow while also increasing oxygen to the brain. Not bad, eh? Studies have also shown that laughter makes you more attractive. A double bonus!