Me, self-righteous?

I believe that “self-righteous” is one of the ugliest human traits. When I think of a person that is “self-righteous”, I think of a person who believes that his/her way of doing something is certainly the best—if not the only—way of doing it. This person is smug and intolerant. I don’t ever want anyone to think me “self-righteous”.

The problem is that I am self-righteous. My way is SO many times the best—if not the only—way to do it. I know what is best and I DON’T like people telling me I’m wrong.

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times, “The first step to getting help is admitting you have a problem.” I know that I have self-righteous tendencies. And I know that this is not something I want people to think about me, so I must suppress these tendencies.

Because I also believe that (to an extent) what other people say and do is not a reflection on me, regardless of my relations to that person, I find myself in constant conflict.

Yesterday, my daughter chose to wear clothes that didn’t match to school. I gently suggested that she change her clothes. I said that although her shirt was as beautiful as her pants, they didn’t look beautiful beside each other. She defended her choice by pointing out that the pants had many of the same colors as her shirt. These clothes didn’t just “not match”, they clashed SO badly, that I couldn’t even tell her what was wrong (just LOOK at it, for crying out loud!). So I let her wear them.

I spent the majority of the day reminding myself that this does not mean that I’m a bad mother, only that my daughter has a unique sense of fashion.

She told me later that night that I was wrong. No one had laughed at her, as I suggested they might.

Okay, fine, no one laughed at her…but it still would have looked better with the solid shirt.