Personality: Accept, & Like Yourself for Who You Were Created to Be

As true as it is sad, many introverts today sometimes see no real value in who they are. Often, they just don’t like themselves. Despite the fact, we, as introverts, may put so much energy and effort into changing ourselves, doing our best to behave more like someone more extroverted more often and many of us are still unhappy with who we are.

It’s time to stop it.

With so many life significant emotional events for me these past two years, I often feel God drawing me closer to Him. More songs of faith play softly in mind. Situations more often are in my path, which gives me pause to be grateful, sometimes, generous. That’s when I find more strength, and when I stop not liking things including myself. Some of us who are believers, no matter what our personality preference, pull ourselves away when we don’t understand how our strengths and weaknesses have a purpose.

Maybe it’s about time we start accepting ourselves, liking, and more importantly loving the person we are? Truthfully, if we as introverts value ourselves, we wouldn’t try to change so much of how we are in order to feel others accept us.

Many of us, regardless of our personality preference, try to hide so many of what we believe to be flaws we have that we will do almost anything to accomplish changing ourselves. But the hard fact is, the more we duck, hide and try to cover up the more noticeable it becomes that we’re doing exactly that – changing who we are! We just don’t want to show those weaknesses.

Are you hiding your gifts, talents, accomplishments, and skills you possess? Do you hide those from others? Are you putting a kind of mask on to blend in? Why?

The gifts we possess and accomplishments we have achieved are good! God created you and me, and he did so with the traits, talents, interests, and put them in us for His purposes.

1– Listen to what God says about you, not to your perceived circumstances.

He said our traits, talents, characteristics, even our weaknesses, are good. Don’t hide what he gave you.

Exodus 35:35 (NIV)

35 He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them skilled workers and designers.

One reason we tend to hide what our accomplishments or our talents is because we don’t value them or see them as being “that important.” We think it’s nothing that we know how to do something or what we’ve accomplished.

Want to know the truth? That is nothing more than a matter of perspective. There are likely others who cannot imagine how you did what you did.

You can either have a limited perspective of yourself or a more limitless one of what God says about you.

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You are one of a kind and the gifts you have; no one else can perform them as you can. Only you have that ability! That in itself makes you a valuable and prized child of God.

2- Accept your God given gifts.

Another reason not to hide is sometimes we simply don’t accept what is given to us. We want what someone else has. We think another’s gift is better. We believe someone else has it better.

Stop and reflect on this. God gives each of us specific abilities that fit only us! Therefore, it doesn’t matter what gift someone else has, no matter how bad we “think” we want it if we would get their gift we wouldn’t like it because we are not made for it.

Appreciate what you have inside you – you are made for it after all. You are created in a very special handcrafted way by God, in a way that fits a definite purpose. He designed you specifically for the gifts you possess. Accept those gifts, because when you do, you will find that you not only like them, but you’ll love them, and that’s okay – that’s what you were meant to do.

2 Corinthians 4:7

We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.

We not only have to accept the gifts God has given us, but we have to USE them too!

Think about this, if someone gives you a gift for your birthday or Christmas and you don’t like it you’ll most likely accept it, but will you use it? Not likely, right?

If we get a gift from someone and we don’t like it, we might put in the back of the closet and think nothing of it again or give it to someone else who will use it.

God doesn’t want us to do that with the gifts he has given us. That is why He gives us gifts He knows we’ll love, even if we don’t realize it yet. God’s gifts were created specifically for us and us specifically for them. How could we not love them?

Accept yourself for who you are. You may not like every single thing about yourself, but you must learn to work with what you have. Anyone can work on the parts of them that can be changed, yes. But you will never change what God has given you.

The beauty of who you are will appear once you learn to accept yourself for who you are, accept the gifts God has given you and allow Him to lend the help, guidance, and attention He has for you and that you deserve.