One Day Self-Love Challenge

Yes, I do believe that one of the single most effective and powerful things we can do to participate in the Divine’s transformation of our own lives is to learn to love ourselves more.  Time and time again, as I work with people, when we get to the core of the problem, be it limiting belief, addiction, etc., it is a lack of self-love.  The thing that’s behind the thing that’s behind the thing is that they have placed a very low value on their life and don’t believe they deserve to be happy.    It is the most messed up thing of all and most people are barely aware of it. I genuinely think people want to be happy.  Yet deep down in places they haven’t explored often, they don’t believe they deserve to be happy or are worth it.  It’s the most devious trick in humanity.  Somewhere in our life we were told that we aren’t worth it.  We either were treated that way by those who were supposed to love and protect us when we were young and vulnerable, or because of decisions we made in the past, mistakes, we buy into the lie that we don’t have value and we aren’t worth being loved.  And yet we can spend our whole lives trying to prove that we are worth being loved and go to incredible lengths to try to show everyone that we are of value.

But you don’t have to prove anything.  Let me say it again.  You have nothing to prove.  The fact that God created you is enough.  That oxygen flows in and out of your lungs, bringing life to your blood cells, is enough.  What if instead of constantly trying to prove ourselves to ourselves and everyone around us, we just acknowledged that because we are alive and loved by the Divine, that we are enough.

Tomorrow is the one day self-love challenge.  Now if you just read that sentence and rolled your eyes a little, I understand.  I used to respond in the same manner.  And then I realized that being a control freak and a perfectionist, and being harder on myself than anyone else hadn’t really gotten me the things in life I want… peace, happiness, self-control, etc.  Has the way you’ve been living your life taken you to the heights of your dreams?  So why not take one day and commit to loving yourself?  Why not take one day to be completely and utterly gracious with yourself?  Why not take one day and instead of criticizing yourself for making a mistake, simply affirm that you love yourself anyways, just the way you are?  Here are a few places to start...

1.  Make the commitment to love yourself for 1 day:  Make the commitment and choose love for yourself.  Do it now.  If love is the greatest gift we have to give, what could be possibly wrong with loving yourself for one day in all your thoughts and actions?  Go ahead and literally write it out right now or type it in an email to yourself or send it as a text to yourself.  "Tomorrow I will commit my entire day to practicing self love."

2.  Affirm yourself verbally throughout the day:  Think of the most loving thing you could say to yourself, and repeat regularly throughout the day.  Get up and repeat it OUT LOUD to yourself first thing.  Write it on a post it note and stick it on your bathroom mirror before you go to bed tonight.  If you are having trouble coming up with something loving to say to yourself, try starting here.

3.  Forgive yourself immediately after any intentional or unintentional mistake:  So you just screwed up and maybe no one else knows it, but you do.  Immediately forgive yourself.  If it helps, you can allow yourself to feel your remorse and then say... "I totally and completely forgive myself for ____________________ and I release myself of all my anger and all my disappointment."  Try it.  Forgiveness is incredibly powerful and it is the one of the most freeing things to experience.  In fact, maybe you want to start your day by forgiving yourself for everything you've done that you have yet to forgive yourself for.

4.  Give yourself a gift:  Choose one thing to do for yourself that you know brings you life and you know cares for your soul and heart.  Maybe you love going for a run but haven't had time lately.  Maybe there is a good book you just haven't allowed yourself to read lately because you haven't had time.  Read it.  Maybe there is a friend that always brings you life that you haven't spent time with or talk to lately.  Ask them to hang out or simply call them and just talk.

Taking the one day self-love challenge is a gift that you can give to yourself with no strings attached.  It's only one day.  How bad could it possibly be?  A better question and motivation is, how incredible might it be?  What if you discover some things about yourself?  Wouldn't it be worth it?

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me via the website and I will be glad to get back to you before you wake up tomorrow.  What do you say?  ARE YOU WORTH IT?

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“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”  - C.G. Jung

"Loving yourself…does not mean being self-absorbed or narcissistic, or disregarding others. Rather it means welcoming yourself as the most honored guest in your own heart, a guest worthy of respect, a lovable companion. "- Margo Anand

"Well-ordered self-love is right and natural." - Thomas Aquinas

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The Power of an Agreement

The power of an agreement is extensive. An agreement is a statement that was told to you at some point in your life, probably early on, that you eventually agreed with. It could be positive or negative. But the power lies in agreeing with the statement. For example, I have a friend who at 12 years old had her mother tell her that the shorts she was wearing didn’t agree with the size of her thighs. It went something like, “oh honey, your thighs are too big to wear shorts like that.” What a terrible thing for a mother to tell her daughter. But the long term, extensive reach of that statement happened when my friend agreed with her mom. For years she didn’t wear shorts… ever. The internal dialogue went something like this… “my thighs are big and out of proportion. I don’t look good in shorts. I shouldn’t wear shorts anymore.” And the agreement was born. And you can see how powerful it is.

This is one example of millions of agreements that are made. Some statements are subtle… “you don’t know how to tell a joke”. “You are a bad driver.” “Your arms are a little flabby”. “You’re not smart enough to be a doctor”.

And some statements are just brutal… “You’ll never amount to anything”. “You’re just like your father”. “You’re an idiot”. “Playing an instrument is for pansies”. “You’re ugly”.

These are just statements from people who have issues of their own obviously. The real power happens when we internalize the statement and turn it into an agreement. “He’s right, I am ugly”. “She’s right, I’m not really that smart”. And so we set our lives on a course in believing the lies that we are told. And it affects us every single day of our lives.

I grew up wanting to be a rock star. I would stand in front of my mirror at home as a child and sing for hours, pretending to rock a stadium full of fans. When I was in 6th grade I had a music teacher who was mean, abusive, and just plain old crochety. She told all of us over and over again that our voices were horrible, often times yelling at us for not hitting the right notes. I don’t know about everyone else, but I immediately began to believe her. I never joined chorus again and stopped singing in public for the most part. It took me years to break that agreement. I’ve been singing with a band every week for about 10 years on and off and it wasn’t until about 5 years ago that I broke that agreement.

Agreements are powerful and we all make them. The beauty of agreements though, is that they are completely subjective. You can break a negative agreement and turn it into a positive one. It’s as simple as that. Now it isn’t necessarily as easy as that. But like everything else, it starts with an intentional decision. “I’m not ugly. I am a beautiful child of God”. “I’m not just like my father. I’m my own man now”. “I’m not a silly blonde. I’m a creative, resourceful, intelligent woman”.

It’s powerful and the choice is all yours. What agreements have you made that are guiding and directing you in a negative way? What new agreements can you make that could open up new avenues of creativity and enjoyment for you? Make an intentional choice and see what happens.

Who Believes in you the Most?

You have to be the one who believes in you the most. That may not be where you are today. And if it isn't, don’t beat yourself up. That’s not how you get to where you want to go. If that’s what you do you only end up beaten, bruised, bloody and scarred by yourself, lying on the side of the road that you were so sure you wanted to travel on. However, if you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else? Do you wrestle with wondering if you’re worth it? Do you value yourself? Do you know how to actively love yourself? Stop right now and write down 10 ways you could actively value and love yourself this week. Starting with 1 way in the next 10 minutes. Maybe the first one is as simple as getting a cup of coffee and taking 5 minutes to be grateful today. That’s a very loving action towards yourself. Maybe one of them is as complex as learning to let go of the disappointment you have with yourself over previous failures.

But if you’re going to live a full and meaningful life, you are going to have to believe in yourself more than anyone you know. Believing in your self will add a multitude of self-support, confidence, direction, peace of mind, and faith. That’s right, faith. Believing in ourselves, loving ourselves and valuing ourselves will do more to strengthen our faith than just about anything else.

You deserve to be loved. You deserve to belong. You deserve to invest in your self so that you can grow in the ways you need to so that you may turn around and help the people next to you.

But if you don’t believe in yourself, then you will have a difficult time TRULY believing in others. If you don’t believe in yourself then you will never finish what you start. You won’t pursue your dreams. You won’t live the life you were truly meant to live. And you can live the life you were truly meant to live.

You aren’t an accident. You are on purpose. And you have a purpose.

So stop looking around, hoping you’ll find someone who will believe in you. You start believing in you. It can be as simple as making the choice… “I will believe in myself, somehow, some way.” It also can be as simple as a prayer… “Please help me to believe in myself more.” Intentional choices and intentional prayers. Now that’s a great way forward in life.

Is there something new that you've been wanting to start? Have you been dabbling in a new hobby or contemplating a new career? Have you wanted to begin to relate to others or yourself in new ways? Do you feel like your faking it most of the time, just waiting for someone to discover you're a fraud? Stop dabbling and start believing in yourself. Determine that you are going to make it.

Have you made your list yet of how you can love yourself this week? If you breezed by that, stop… DO IT NOW. Then, make that choice and say that prayer.

Now, move forward, beginning to believe in yourself more and actively pursuing those things on your list.

You Know What to Do

What do you think I should do?  What would you do?  Please tell me what to do.  How many times have asked these things to someone we trust?  How often have we gone to a friend or to a family member, told them our story and then asked them for direction?  The answer is probably countless.  And there is nothing wrong with doing this.  Getting advice is always a wise decision along the path to discernment.  The funny thing is, we often times seek advice and ask people to tell us what to do with our lives, all the while deep down we already know the answer. I believe one of the reasons why we surrender our decision making process to other people is because we usually know that the path our intuition points us towards is almost always a difficult one.  It’s either difficult because we know there is something that we will have to sacrifice or there is a price to be paid.

But I don’t want to get lost in the sacrifice or price today.  The point today is that most of the time our heart knows what to do in difficult situations.  Let me break this down a bit.

MOST - Now I say most, because there are occasional times and conditions where we truly are in the dark with no idea where to turn.  During these rare instances where we are completely in the dark and don’t what to do, it is extremely beneficial to turn to others for their guidance and direction.  But I’ve discovered that we usually ask for input not because we are at a loss, but because we want to be reassured of the action that we already know needs to be taken.  We just don’t trust ourselves.

HEART – When I use the term ‘heart’, I’m speaking of that centered place within us that is the core of who we are.  It’s that place that is moved by the melodic beauty of a wonderful craftsmanship of lyrics and vibrations.  It’s that place in us that we can’t hold or see and scientists can’t point to and say… “there!  That is the conscience self”.  But when overwhelmed with stimuli and decisions, the heart shouting and pointing the direction.  Often we are so busy hiding from our true selves that we barely hear it as a whisper on the luckiest of days.

I think 99% of the time we know the best way forward.  I just think we’ve become so disconnected from ourselves that we either can’t hear it or we don’t trust what we hear.  So we ask 3-10 people what they think we should do.

The remarkable thing to me is that we DO have an inclination as to how we should move forward.  We can trust ourselves.  What other person would know better for you?  But when we move forward, following our own advice, we are then ultimately responsible for the outcome.  If we fail while taking the advice of someone else, we can, with a sideways glance, put some of the blame on them.  But life is not a blame game.  No one lived a full life by making decisions with the caveat that they needed an out.

Listen to your heart.  Then, take bold steps forward.  You might fail.  You might succeed.  But either way, you will have made a decision by being in tune with who you are and affirming that connection with yourself.  Trust me, you’re worth it.