I have figured it out.

A couple days ago, before Lent, I was talking about how I couldn't think of what to do? I don't come from a tradition where "giving stuff up" is common - or at least not in the time and the place I came from it. So the idea of giving up chocolate, or tea (horrors!), or meat (which I probably could do) doesn't mean as much to me, I guess, not having been an ingrained part of my upbringing.

But I thought of it today. And it's something I'm going to list as a "working on," not as an "I will give up" because I don't know if I can give it up completely, and I am quite sure I cannot successfully train myself to give it up in a mere 40 (well, 38, now) days.

I am going to work on giving up my need for other people's approval. Or, more specifically, giving up feeling bad when I don't get some crazy little "award" that's making the rounds. Because that's just stupid, to beat myself up because I'm not an "You make my Day" blogger or because I haven't won one of the three "excellence in teaching awards" that is awarded every year on a campus with 200+ faculty.

I am going to work on believing that I am good enough even without some external validation of that fact. I am going to work on not craving that approval.

(Yes, that counts, spiritually speaking. Needing other people's approval is, as I word it with my Youth Group kids, "stuff that gets between you and God." I know what is right and what is wrong. I know when I am on the right path and when I've stumbled off of it. So I need to trust myself more and not look to external sources for validation).

I've been doing too much doubting of myself lately - a while back I wrote about, "Should I chuck the mode of teaching I've done for years, that I'm comfortable with, and frankly that I think I do well, because some educational pundits say we need to be more entertaining and interactive?" And while yeah, I probably could open up things more for discussion in class, I shouldn't have to try to be a dancing duck or have Powerpoint explosions in order to convey the information.

And really, that self-doubt was in a big part trying to chase after better evaluation scores. Or after one of those 3 danged awards. Because some part of me has got convinced that without a piece of paper with some muckety-muck's signature and a gold seal on it, I'm not good enough. And that's crap. And it's making me unhappy, it's making me less effective, and it needs to go.

So I'm going to work on doubting myself less. I'm going to work on not going into puppy-at-the-pound mode in front of other people, where I want them to like me, to really like me. Where I want them to shower me with awards so that I can be convinced I'm good enough.

Because, you know? The God I believe in accepts that I have value as who I am, and that value is not contingent on what my neighbors think of me, or my colleagues, or my students. And in fact, in some cases that value might actually be watered down by my being untrue to myself just to get people to like me. (And although my faith tradition teaches that we're not "good enough" by ourselves as we are, the point is - that's EVERYONE. It's not just me that's not "good enough." It's not that everyone else has found perfection and adulthood and I'm still sitting eating paste like Ralphie Wiggum. It's that everyone screws up, not just me.)

And while I'm not going to become an, um, "applehead," or start acting like a jerk to the people around me, I'm going to work on accepting this:

Some people - probably a lot of people - will like me for me. And that's cool. But some people, for whatever reason, won't like me for me. And that's their problem and not mine. It is not my job on this Earth to get everyone to like me, that's an impossible task. I can continue to be nice, kind, all that good stuff - because that's part of who I am - but I am going to work on being done with turning myself inside out for other people just because "they might not like me."

And it's also not my job to win awards. It's my job to do the best that I can, the best I know how to do. And sometimes even what I know to be best may be counter to what some people want...and in that case it is my job to do what I know is best, even if that makes some people unhappy.

I don't know. Maybe it's still a self-indulgent goal. But I do know I expend a lot of psychic energy - energy I could spend working or praying or heck, playing, obsessing over how people see me, what they say about me behind my back. And it shouldn't matter. Like the old saying that's attributed alternately to Mother Theresa and to Billy Graham (which probably means neither of them actually said it), it's not between me and them; it's between me and God.