Stop Diminishing Your Value

I often do that. Diminish my value. I don’t really realize I’m doing it at the time. Someone will compliment me and I’ll wave it away. They’ll ask about my writing and I’ll minimize it.

Why do we do that?

I think it’s because we compare. We compare ourselves to someone who is better.  Someone who is more beautiful, more eloquent, more gifted than we are.

So, maybe they are. But does that mean we don’t have worth? Does that mean we are not also gifted? And who “weighs” giftedness anyways?

I was recently in a conversation with someone about my writing. I told them that I may not be the most gifted writer around, but that I still believed God had things and words in me that He could use.  What this person told me in return meant a lot to me and showed me how I was minimizing the gifts that God had given me. They said, “you are a great writer because you write from the heart. I would much rather read something that is genuine and comes from someone who is "in the trenches" raising a family, than someone who has a PHd, and all of it comes from a "clinical" perspective. Don't discount how valuable your skills are. All that matters is that we bring God glory in our work. You do that in an outstanding way.”

Wow. WOW! They not only encouraged and affirmed my gift of writing, they gently told me not to discount and diminish the skills that God had given me!

We are each unique and individual. For a reason. We each have something different to bring to the table. Just because one person can bring the main course doesn’t mean that the appetizer is any less delightful or memorable.

We need to stop comparing ourselves to others and instead work on flourishing what we’ve been given. God has gifted each one of us in different ways.  We can be thankful for what He has given us instead of wishing it were stronger, bigger, wider, or fancier. We cannot be all that He intended us to be if we only focus on what we don’t have and can’t give.

Let’s stop diminishing our value.

Stop discounting how valuable our skills are.

Stop minimizing who we are and what we can contribute.

We each are outstanding in our own way and we each have something valuable to give. Enjoy it. Love it. Embrace it.

For you ARE valued and you DO have value to give.