Are You a Knock Off? A Shopper's Guide to Dating!

Knock Offs!

My book, “A Shopper’s Guide to Dating” is not just about shopping, and dating.  In fact, it really stems from knowing and understanding your purpose.  If you don’t know who you are or why you are here, you are subject to allowing people and things in your life that minimizes the gift of YOU.   Knowing who you are allows you to not waste time seeking and dating people that don’t fit you, nor you them.  The book calls those trying to be something or someone else "Knock Offs".  Some people are unintentional, they just APPEAR to be something they are not, that is why time is needed to understand who someone is.  Those who intentionally try to change who they are to be and appear different, are the ones we are talking about today.  

In the book, we define ‘A knock off’ as  - a copy or imitation of someone or something popular; an item intended to look like something it is not.

Normally a knock off will never imitate something that is not popular or viewed as less valuable.  It only works as a knock off if the item being imitated seems to be of greater value.  Trying to be someone we are not is only tempting when we think less of ourselves and more of others.  Since everyone has value, it is daunting to try to compare us to merchandise, but humor me for a moment.  

The Shoe

If you are purposed to be an athletic shoe, you can work to be the best athletic shoe you can be!  Specially designed and crafted to help anyone who wears you and bring comfort and style at the same time.  But what would be rather silly, is for you –an athletic shoe to try to be a 5 inch beaded pump. NO matter how nice it looks, how much someone loves it and how much it costs, that is not what you were meant to be!  So why try to be something you are not? 

We do that when we don’t know the value of who we already are.  Yes, as an athletic shoe, I may never be worn to the Grammy’s, I may never walk the red carpets of life, but if I focus on who I am, I can still be valuable and benefit people where I am. I can be the shoe of choice in the Olympics; I can help a wounded soldier in the worst time of his life.   I can simply bring comfort and protection to someone who is working on being a better version of themselves.  I still have value, great value.

Being a Knock Off looks like trying to fit in where we don’t need to be.  Trying to connect with people that we think are more valuable than we are!  NO ONE is more valuable than you.  And you are no more valuable than anyone else!   The bible tells us that all members are needed in the body, no matter how small they are, they hold a function and purpose.  The arm can’t say that it does not need the leg, nor the ear says that it does not need the tongue.  We are all part of this great body, and all are valuable.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it like this:

“What I’m saying to you this morning, my friends, even if it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel and Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; (Go ahead) sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”  If you can’t be a pine on the top of a hill, be a scrub in the valley—but be the best little scrub on the side of the hill, be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway just be a trail if you can’t be the sun be a star; It isn’t by size that you win or fail— be the best of whatever you are. And when you do this, when you do this, you’ve mastered the length of life.”

Bottom line:  When you look for someone to spend your life with, you should know who you are before you begin adding and taking away from who you are.  Grant others the same benefit of being who they are.

 

#wisdomspeakstoday