The encouragement you’ve offered to others has helped them succeed.  It’s time to offer the same encouragement to yourself.  This thought jumped at me this morning when I looked in the mirror.  I’ve put great effort, focus, time, and care into myself the last few weeks because I’ve diligently been working toward a new life.  I realized that I looked different and for the first time in my life I offered myself a sincere compliment.  I’ve had wild insecurities most of my life and it hit me: I’ve helped so many people succeed.  I have mentored and counseled hundreds of people, and while I haven’t been perfect, I have witnessed a majority of positive results.  I have helped people through everything from addiction to suicidal ideation to career planning.  I never realized how much I questioned my own advice.  Why wasn’t I listening to myself?  I often had the same insight and intuition about myself but I would ignore it. 

When I saw myself in the mirror, I finally understood that I was no different than anyone else I had mentored.  I know the steps to succeed, I know what works for me, and I know what I want to be doing so there is no reason to not move forward.  Aside from a bit of refining and clarifying, there is no reason to not execute.  There comes a point when we realize that we have to spread our wings and we need to be our own cheerleader.  We are more often our greatest enemy but we have the amazing capacity to be our best friend as well.  To honor what we are thinking and feeling and go treat ourselves with the same love and respect we’d give to anyone.  When we get in our own corner, it doesn’t matter what was said before because now we know who we are.  Get excited about what we do.  Get excited about who we are.

The more love and gratitude we express in our lives, the more love and gratitude we receive.  That includes love and gratitude for ourselves.  There comes a point when we realize that our inner talk is so self-destructive that we can’t go on as we are.  If we feel like crap after going through our inner dialogue, then clearly our inner talk is effective.  Why not change the tone?  Change the message?  We are all beautiful and worthy simply because we are here and have a gift to share.  That is the only purpose we need to worry about.  If we can offer support to others, then we are surely capable of offering that support to ourselves. As I mentioned yesterday, we don’t have to be great to start but we have to start to be great.  Start recognizing the good in who we are and celebrate that person.  Treat yourself as a friend and see how life turns around.