Go! Go! Go! You Can Have It All!
“Go! Go! Go! You can have it all!” – an excerpt from the song Have It All by Jason Mraz
I don’t remember what lead me to skip a line 6 years ago, but just before this verse is another line that says: “Go! Go! Go! Raise Your Glasses”. In a song that is meant to be a toast to “You”, I like that Jason gets “You” to raise your own glass. It’s important because so many of us have learned not to praise ourselves.
I talked about having faith in yourself in yesterday’s post, but you can’t do that if you are constantly putting yourself down. Giving yourself the permission to acknowledge what you are good at is not only OK, but desperately needed. We’ve got to stop lowering ourselves in order to make other people feel better.
There’s a girl in my son’s school who is probably on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum. She’s in a different grade, but I’ve heard that she does get teased in school. Thankfully, her mom has really done a great job, and this girl’s self-esteem is ironclad! While in conversation, she would sometimes say things like “I am really smart. I am a genius at the piano.” I can tell she’s not looking for additional praise. She’s just stating facts.
Well, recently, there was a concert at school, and this girl played a song on the piano that she wrote herself. It was a song about how she felt riding a rollercoaster. Even though there were no words, I felt them all with her. The butterflies in the stomach, the rush of excitement, the highs and the lows. She really IS a genius at the piano!
I remember the insecurities of being a fifth grade girl. While it doesn’t make it OK to tease, I can understand why the other kids in her class might feel threatened by her talent. But what if the entire class had the same ironclad self-esteem? What if they all owned their talent and created masterpieces? What if they didn’t need to put down others to make themselves feel better, or put themselves down to make others feel better?
Then we really can have it all, all of us. Don’t you think? So raise your glass and toast yourself. Do it right now, in your heart. It’s OK. No one is looking. You deserve to make peace within yourself.