You Have My Permission to Be Awesome

You’re awesome. No, seriously!

This is a compliment that gets passed around with some frequency these days. It’s usually meant in a specifically conditional sense (e.g., “you’re an awesome cook”) or slightly tongue-in-cheek (“awesome,” after all, literally means “impressive to a frightening degree”).

When someone says that to us, we take it as a compliment, but we also don’t really believe it. 

And for good reason.

Most of us aren’t very awesome.

We’re entirely flawed, fallen people, who wake up every morning just to make mistakes. We yell at the people we love. We’re selfish. We’re hypocritical. Sometimes we’re just plain wrong. 

Some of our faults we’re blind to and others we’re all too aware of.

I won’t for one minute say my ego is small enough that when someone tells me “you’re awesome,” I don’t grin and take them partially at their word.

But there’s another part of me–that latent (or not-so-latent) part in all of us, that brushes off the whole idea as impossible–that knows how un-awesome I am and believes whatever awesomeness I possess can’t possibly weigh out in the balance. Even better (worse?), that part insists I’m only being humble in saying so.

The dark side of self-improvement

During the last several years, I found myself in an aggressive cycle of self-improvement. Or at least, that’s how I thought of it. I was intent on being as ruthless in critiquing and improving myself as I was in judging anyone else’s flaws.

There was a lot of improvement going on (probably because there was a lot of room for it! 😛 ). One of the best measures of growth is being able to look back at your past self and realize you like the person you are now better–and I like the person I am now much better than I did the person I was ten or even five years ago.

That’s all to the good.

But, along the way, something else happened. I got carried away. I was cutting myself zero slack. I was expecting insurmountable achievements from myself and allowing myself no generosity with my mistakes. 

One day, I shared a quote I liked with my sister.

I told her, “I’m not very good at that.”

She said, “You’re too hard on yourself.”

I immediately responded: “No, I’m not. I’m just honest.”

That’s what I believed: that I had to be ruthlessly honest about my flaws.

Is self-criticism a virtue?

But then I started thinking about it. I was being awfully hard on myself–much harder than I would want to be on someone else. Since when does God expect perfection? He made us imperfect in an imperfect world, and His love has never been conditional on our earning it with a 110% effort to be perfect.

I appreciated director Guillermo del Toro’s comments from the commentary of Crimson Peak:

Imperfection is an altogether attainable human goal [and] love is acceptance of imperfections.

Speculative author Charity Bishop built upon del Toro’s insights:

The reason that line stood out to me, amid all the others, is that this year for Lent, I chose to give up “self-criticism.”

Some might argue that without self-criticism, we cannot be humble. Instead, I pose that self-criticism is a form of self-worship, through self-loathing. In hating myself, I commit dual sins of turning myself into an idol (to which I devote much time, energy, and emotion) and by criticizing God’s artwork. My imperfections are the result of living in an imperfect world; God intends me to be a masterpiece. I am a bit tarnished, but still His work of art and He will one day complete me in the fullness of time. I need neither hate myself in my current fallen state nor strive for perfection. I must neither self-worship through loving self excessively nor offend God through self-loathing.

I am awesome. So are you.

This January, I gave myself permission to be awesome. Not permission, I hope, to be prideful or arrogant about my strengths and virtues, but not to belittle them either–and, even more importantly, not to obsess about my faults. 

I am flawed.

I will always be flawed.

I will always be striving to be better.

But if I (try) to accept the imperfections of others and if God accepts all of our imperfections, under Christ, then what right have I to hold myself to a different standard?

Today, I give you permission to be awesome too (not that you need my permission). Will you join me in recognizing our flaws, striving to better them, but also embracing them and loving them?

Let’s chat! What’s something awesome you did today–big or small? Tell me in the comments!