Competing With the Shadow

The Shadow, Does Yours Haunt You?

Growing up I am sure that most of us grew up with expectations that we could never quite meet.  If you are the rare exception and your parents praised you a lot, I am very glad for you!

On the other hand, statistics show that 95% of us grew up in dysfunctional families, parents that I like to refer to as “empty vessels.”  They could only give out what was given to them, therefore, most of us grew up deficient in the self-esteem or “empty love tank” category.  This is what I call the “Shadow.”

It is as if we are always trying to please someone, competing with ourselves to obtain that love we never received.  For me it felt like that Shadow was always lurking around me and I couldn’t get rid of it.

I was always comparing myself to others and coming up on the short end of the comparison stick.

Do you often feel that way?

Now, I’m not saying our parents did not love us; on the other hand, they probably loved most of us very much.  Communication is the cornerstone in any relationship and I’m sure they communicated the same way they were communicated to. 

Either way, some of us grew up feeling like we were a disappointment to the very ones we wanted so desperately to please.

Parents have tremendous power over their children from the standpoint of acceptance.  We gain a lot of self-esteem and self-love IF we feel like we matter.  However, for many of us, we don’t feel like we matter, nor that we ever did.

This book is not intended to be any kind of a negative, downer-trip looking back at our past, playing the blame game.

Quite the opposite is true!

In the pages ahead I’m going to encourage you to focus ahead on your future and to love yourself with an unconditional love, one that will never fade! 

You may ask how? 

Or, is this going to be a long journey with a lot of pain?

I am not a Ph.D. in anything, except life experience.  I can’t tell you with certainty what this journey will bring to you, but I can tell you that if you do nothing to change, your destiny is predicted by not preparing yourself for a victorious future; for a life filled with a purpose. 

If you never change your thoughts, or your patterns of self-destruction, then you already have this answer in your heart and you know where you are headed.  Only YOU can make the decision to read the pages ahead and decide for yourself where your destiny will end.

Since I don’t have a Ph.D. to hang on the wall that brags I have all the answers, I hope you understand I am very much like you.  I am an average person who wants to live the abundant life of self-appreciation and positive thinking.  I respect very much the counselors, physiologists and therapists in our world.

This book is in no way a replacement of good traditional counseling, but is written by someone who has lived a very, very interesting life, one filled with heartache, happiness, failures and victories.

I’ve been told throughout my adult life that I should write a book about my experiences, so I’m taking my experience into the living rooms of your life.