While I was thinking about what happened this week and what I could write a blog post about today, I realized something. I care too much what other people think about me! Very often, I choose whether I will do something or not based on what other people will think of me and not how it could help others or bless them. It's very selfish and it's not something I'm proud of, but it's the way I am. How can I break out of this?
Often, I'm too concerned with embarrassing myself to actually do things. I feel like if I say or do some particular thing, everyone will laugh at me. When I think about it later, it's completely ridiculous, of course they aren't going to laugh. But I can't shake the thought that they will, so I just don't do whatever the thing is. I justify my thoughts by thinking about other times I have embarrassed myself. For example, I learned a lot of my words from reading. But the way words are spelled are not always easy to read, so I grew up reading books and mispronouncing them in my head. So when I actually started saying these words out loud, people laughed and made fun of me, and I felt really awkward. It's things like this that makes it difficult for me to talk much sometimes.
Unlike most of my other posts, I don't really know what to do about this issue. I have a hard time shaking these thoughts, and while I don't want everything I do to be determined by how I think others might react, there isn't always a reason to speak or whatever. So I don't know what the best course of action is. Maybe someday I'll figure it out, but for know, I'll just have to struggle with it and pray that God will do what he wants with me.