Whole self

Happy Monday,

How are you all doing on this fine Monday afternoon? What an incredibly beautiful day we are having. The sun is out and shining bright, the air is a little crisp, but the sun is keeping us warm and it’s the beginning of a new day and a new week. I’m excited to see what this week brings, after all, it is the week of Valentine’s, however, we won’t be talking about Valentines Day just yet, tune back in on Wednesday, and I’m sure I’ll have something to share with you about my Valentine and perhaps I’ll come up with some fun facts.

Oh hey, don’t forget to drop me a like, make a comment on your thoughts for this blog or any of my previous ones and, you can always email me or shoot me a text, I love hearing from everyone.

Today I wanted to talk about what it means to love your self, your whole self. I’m sure many of you would agree, social media has caused many of us to doubt our worth, even our bodies and how we look. I know for myself, I struggle with self-esteem as I mentioned in my previous blog. It’s funny, shortly after writing my last blog, I heard Mel Robbins say something that really resonated with me. She was talking about motivation and I might be boggling up exactly what she said, however, what I took from her comment was this. Motivation isn’t coming, it wont’ be delivered to us by any means other than by our own self. If we sit around and wait for someone to motivate us or for an opportunity to motivate us, well, we’ll most likely be disappointed. Motivation comes from within. It’s something we have to create for ourselves. It’s something we must put into action in our own lives, otherwise, we might just find every excuse not to do something.

What does this have to do with loving our whole self? It’s simple, we all have something about ourselves we don’t like. For me, it’s my smile and my weight. All the motivational speeches I listen to have yet to shed the pounds, made me fit or made me smile. These are things I must do for myself, nobody can do them for me. If I truly am dissatisfied with my body, then it’s me that needs to implement the change and stop making excuses for not being in the water, swimming and getting healthy. I need to be present with myself and buy out the time for my health, otherwise, at the rate I’m going with my heart, my days are limited.

I need to love myself, my whole self, enough to take care of me. “Love your whole self. Love the mistakes you have made. Love the anger, the sadness, the powerlessness. Love the little inner child with unmet needs. Love the inner teenager with her rage. You did the best you could with what you knew. And tomorrow you will do better because you know more.”-Elisabeth Corey.

There’s no magic pill to create happiness. There’s no magic pill to give us the power to love our whole self. We need to accept who we are, change the things we don’t like about ourselves and show ourselves the love and compassion we so freely give to others, yet fail to give to the one person who will be with us for the rest of our lives, ourself.

“The world doesn’t need our airbrushed stories or curated, scripted, boring, conforming selves. It needs our truths, messiness, weirdness, creative energy, and resistance.”-Kristen Lee.

When we scroll through Facebook or any other social media, those in our feed generally are happy and living life to the fullest, or so it seems. What most of us don’t show are the struggles, the self doubts and the sadness we may be enduring. Why? I think because we put on our big girl panties or big boy boxers and show the world what we think they want to see. I wonder too, if we put out to the world what we want to be, then maybe somehow we think it will come true. Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely can come true, the life we are showing the world, but it does take work and effort on our part.

Loving our whole self, yet airbrushing over what we perceive as flaws, and conforming to what we think we need to be or should be for others on our social media pages, that’s not truly loving ourselves. We are engaging ourselves in an idea of what we think we need to do to get others to like us or accept us. I know I’ve done this, however, by doing this, I’m showing up and showing others what I think they need to or want to see so they will accept me.

It’s my job to take care of myself, make myself happy and love my whole self, nobody can do that for me, nobody can do that for you. Sure, those in our life absolutely can contribute to our happiness, they can love us and root us on to the finish line of our goals, yet, if we don’t put in the effort to meet our goals, then nobody can do it for us.

It’s not always easy to embrace ourselves and take care of ourselves, especially for us gals. I think we’re programed to take care of those we love, but I believe it’s through our misguidance where we forget to take care of ourselves too. It’s our ability to get caught up on social media and media in general where we begin to gravitate to the mindset that we need to look a certain way, dress a certain way or be a certain way. I think we’ve gotten so far off course, many of us that is, that we’ve either never learned to love our whole self or we’ve taken a detour and forgotten how to love our whole self.

The world is full of challenges and it’s a shift in mindset where we need to find ourselves, embrace who we are and truly learn to love our whole self. Ourself is the only person who has been with us our entire life and the only person who will be with us for the rest of our life, it’s time to treat that person with love. It’s time to learn to love who we are and embrace him or her. It’s time to embrace, accept and love the only person who has ever been there every step of the way and who will continue every step of the way, ourself.

You and I are uniquely made. We are one of a kind and when you truly think about it, that’s pretty amazing and incredible, so let’s make the day we get on the path to embracing our whole selves. I believe we are all worthy of that kind of love and acceptance towards ourselves, don’t you?

Those are my thoughts for the day. I do hope you all have a wonderful week. Maybe you’ll make a memory or two, but, until next time, don’t forget, Love Life++ hugs…