Being Yourself Might Just Not Be Good Enough

When I feel stressed and I want to just take a break and rest, I run through my social media handles to see what’s happening in the world around me. Because I am not so much of a social media person, I do a lot of scan reading and only inspiration stuff catches my attention. So, I search for those phrases, sentences, or captions that are motivational in nature and those are the stuff I press the like buttons for the most. One thing I have found to appear quite often in those motivational captions is the phrase “Be Yourself.” While I agree with this to an extent, I believe it doesn’t improve one in many ways.

Now, assuming being myself means me being judgmental, nagging all the time, being consumed in your convictions and not being opened to learning, always sourly, looking down on people and many negative vibes like that, then being myself would just mean being toxic to the environment around you and the people around you.

So, in marriage you need to know when being yourself isn’t working for you and when it is time to improve yourself. There are so many couples in marriage with an entitlement mentality who have crafted in their heads what and what they should be getting from the spouses based on faulty traditional norms and they are so consumed in those traditional shortfall ideologies that they fail to see its killing effect on their marriages.

The interesting thing is that they want a beautiful marital life where everything is rosy and sweet and they get all that they want without being ready to give anything just because the tradition gives them the right to make demands where they have sown nothing.

  A wife who has not been a significant part of her husband’s success story shouldn’t expect that he will be willing to give her all she wants and need simply because she is his wife. I have seen places in the Bible where God has asked the man to love his wife as himself and as Christ loves the church, but I have not seen anywhere in the Bible where it says the wife should depend on her husband for all that she needs and wants. But when a wife has been a strong pillar of support for her husband, encouraging him to be the best he can be and praying for him continually, when success eventually comes, she will not need to make demands before her needs and wants are taken care of by her husband. The grateful part of him will make him go overboard in caring for her because she has sown the right seeds in him that have produced a bountiful harvest for her.

In the same manner, a man who has not been loving and caring towards his wife should not expect that she will be excited to make him the best meals, or do his dirty laundries, or run his many errands for him just because the tradition demands that she cooks his food. It really doesn’t work that way. If you want the best, then you must give your best at all times.

So, I will conclude today’s post by saying, it’s good to be yourself when yourself is the best of you, producing positivity within your environment and for people around you. But when being yourself requires a lot of amendments, then you need to improve on you to get the best from people around you. And this is so important for your marriage. The beautiful marriage you long for can only happen from the beautiful input that you have invested in it.