I Can

I saw a quote about something I am big on.  It was by a writer called Marguerite Yourcenar.  "Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has."
Why I am big on this is it seems to me to be a real mistake to try and make another in our image.  Too often it seems to me there is a desire to tell someone of their short comings and a reluctance to let people know what they do well.
It is this change in thinking that is working for me.  I am very used to selling myself short.  Emphasising what I cannot do or my shortcomings.  Yet that did nothing for me but to de-motivate and hold me back.  I know me well enough to know where my shortcomings lie.  I know the fruit of being told continually (by myself) that I do not measure up, and being reminded of things that have and always will hold me back.
Yet of late the dialogue has changed.  I know I mention often “replacement theory.”  Yet it is that that is making a big difference for me.  Instead of concentrating on the negative I concentrate on the positive these days - what works, rather than what does not and has been my lived experience.
I am finding that as I replace the negative, I do not have the time or inclination to dwell on it.  Instead, it is what “I can” rather than what “I cannot”.  What this has done is to make me take what “I can” further.  And wonder of wonders, something strange and for me wonderful happens.  What “I can” grows bigger, and what “I can’t” becomes a thing of the past.  Even long-standing things of the past.
Maybe not immediately.   And maybe it is an aside, but it does grow smaller and disappear.  Despite maybe it being something that I have known for a lifetime.
I prefer a win to a loss.  Things may take a while, but for me it is often a case of not thinking about something and it disappearing or at the very least losing its power to pull me down or stop me from even trying.