Appreciate Yourself Today!

Appreciate Yourself!

Sometimes we just don’t realise how hard we are being on ourselves. In fact, I’d say most people rarely notice. We don’t clearly see how often we berate ourselves or how little we encourage and appreciate ourselves.

How often during your waking hours are you telling yourself any (or all!) of these things?

I’m not good enough.
I don’t have enough money.
I’m not smart enough.
I’d like to do that but I can’t.
I’m too slow.
I’m not well.
I’m sick.
I’m too fat.
What if people don’t like me.
I’ve made a mess of my life so far.
I’m not a good mother, father, daughter, son, brother, sister, friend etc
I’m not good with people.
I talk too much.
I forget things.

The list of how we constantly criticise ourselves is much longer than the few things I’ve mentioned here. Isn’t that sad. Here we are, humans in this big world together and doing the best we can at any given time and yet, we never think we’re enough. We think about money, cars, houses we’d like to own, celebrities, other people whose lives appear better than ours, thinking if only I could be like that or have what they have. Do you realise every time you do that you’re putting yourself down! You’re basically telling yourself you’re a failure, not worthy and you’re not good enough.

There are exceptions of course. If you come from a place of self acceptance, appreciation and love and you’re on a journey of creating what you want from a state of loving kindness towards yourself and others, that’s a whole different story. It’s great to want the home of your dreams, drive a car you love, have financial abundance, vibrant health and loving relationships but if you’re constantly berating yourself because you’re not living your dream life, the chances of you having what you want are pretty low – if not impossible. Why would you give all those great things to someone you don’t like? Why would you allow the person you don’t like to have a happy, peaceful life?

So how can you start (a) noticing that you’re so hard on yourself and (b) change it.

A quiet mind is aware and notices. A chaotic, busy busy mind isn’t truly present and doesn’t see things clearly. So the first and most important step is learning to quieten your mind. (I highly recommend learning Mindfulness Meditation. It’s extremely powerful and brings great clarity. Click on the blue box below and the Mindfulness option for a great program you can follow).

Set an intention at the beginning of each day to pay attention to your thoughts as much as possible as you go through your day. Aim to practice monitoring what you’re thinking of and when you notice negative, self condemning thoughts, stop, take a deep breath and choose a happy, loving, joyful thought instead. You actually can do this you know. It takes practice but you have total control over what you think and how you feel. It doesn’t seem true because we’re not taught about the mind or our feelings in our education system and we’ve become so used to letting our minds race off on uncontrolled tangents, quite often filled with doom and gloom.

Negative, worrying and doubting thoughts will always pop up – that’s a definite. But it’s whether you let them run riot and take over your life or, turn them around into happy, appreciative thoughts that makes all the difference. The more you worry, the worse you’ll feel and creating the life you want when you feel dreadful is pretty darned hard.

The more you practice feeling genuinely appreciative about all you have in each moment, the better you’ll feel.

The more you practice Mindfulness, the more aware you become, the better you feel and the happier you’ll be – a much more beneficial state in which to make decisions and design your life.

‘Miracles’ do happen when you’re in control of your thoughts and emotions and Every Day Gets Better.