Enjoy this excerpt from the book Spiritual Direction, by Henri Nouwen.

How much of our energy goes into defining ourselves by deciding “I am what I do,” “I am what others say about me,” or “I am what I have”? When that’s the case, life often follows a repetitive up-and-down motion. When people speak well about me, and when I do good things, and when I have a lot, I am quite up and excited. But when I start losing, when I suddenly find out that I can’t do some task anymore, when I learn that people talk against me, when I lose my friends, then I slip into the pit.

What I want to say to you is that this whole zigzag approach is wrong. I am not what I do, and you are not what you do, or what others say about you, or what you possess. “You are God’s Beloved!” I hope that you can hear these words spoken to you with all the tenderness and force that love can hold. My only desire is to make these words reverberate in every corner of your being– “You are the Beloved!”

The voice that speaks from above and from within whispers softly or declares loudly: “You are my Beloved son or daughter, on you my favor rests.” It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: “You are no good; you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable; you are nobody unless you can demonstrate the opposite.”

These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That’s the trap of self-rejection. It is the trap of being a fugitive hiding from your truest identity.