"whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy." brian tracy

i really wish this weren't true. because what this says is: whatever i actually believe about myself ... well ... becomes who i am. and that puts the responsibility back on me to change the way others see me and more importantly, how i see myself, in order to witness significant change occur in my life.

i can blame a lot of people, because let's face it .. people suck sometimes. but i'm the only one who can make me angry, so it's time to start being more real.

so why do i feel undeserving of being 'chosen' by someone?

a few different reasons i suppose. most of which involve stories centered around memories of how someone else treated me or what they may have said.

for instance, in middle school and high school, i always had a ton of in-school friends. the popular kids let me sit at their table (which gave me some hallway cred), the choir kids would hang out with me during competitions and the debate/forensics nerds would geek out with me on our weekend trips. life was good. so long as i was in school. but when i got home ... none of those people called me. i wasn't invited to parties. and i certainly wasn't asked to go to prom. come to think of it ... i asked (begged) both of my prom dates to come with me. oh, there was one out-of-state prom that i attended and someone from another school that asked me to come to his, but is that what a girl needs to do to get a date?! i had this one birthday party that a lot of people came to, but they all left at the same time to go to a much more high-profile gig while my handful of close friends stayed behind to help clean the mess the others had made.

i remember being invited to an annual birthday party of another girl i was 'friends' with a few years in a row. she had the biggest slumber parties ever. and i always found myself camping out in a closet or random bathroom with another girl with our oreos and cheetos, talking about how uncomfortable we felt because we clearly were the 'filler' girls.

the point is. i didn't entirely feel as if the people around me really wanted me there. if it were their choice ... they would have chosen an alternative. this was the case with my natural father, boyfriends that would come later and church groups that i would find myself leading, yet have no community to turn to when things got really bad. but those situations don't have to be my crutch forever.

in fact, it can't be. because that crutch is unreliable. and in the end, i will have alienated everyone in my life who have chosen me ... just because i'm me ... all because i expect them to be like the people who never cared to choose me to begin with.

i've decided that's not fair. i've also decided that, if i simply choose to believe in myself as much as those who have chosen me do ... i'll begin to expect, with confidence, greater things. perhaps, brian tracy was onto something ...