Tag Archives: self-esteem

If Only You Loved Yourself

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Posted by in Lessons Learnt, Life, Thoughts in motion

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img_6515Works like a charm. Every time I openly confess my feelings about something, freedom follows. Give it a go, release your feelings and it need not be public but it must be seen by you. When you release the feelings, it no longer owns you and keeps you captive. 

Back to today’s post.

It’s so easy for someone to say ‘love yourself, value yourself, have self worth’, and the rest of it, when the reality of doing that is obscure to most of us. What school can we go to to learn this exactly? Many of us do not have a clue what that means or how to even begin to do that. 

I’ll break it down from my perspective, you may have yours and I’d love to hear it too!

Before you can begin to love or value yourself, you first have to know yourself.

Think about it, how can you love or see value in what you don’t know or understand? It’s near impossible. Do we love complete strangers at first glance? Typically no and that’s what some of us are, strangers to ourselves.

We don’t know what we like or don’t like, what makes us excited, what makes us happy, what makes us angry, what we will or will not do, our limits, our beliefs and so on. How then will it be possible to love yourself if you don’t know who you are?

Therefore rule no 1: Know Thyself.

To do this, spend time monitoring your thoughts, what and how you do things and the interactions and impact you have with/on people. Do things you haven’t done before, and revisit things you used to enjoy doing.

The aim is to put yourself in a position to get reacquainted with yourself, and in some ways discover more of who you are. 

For example, I know if something scares the crap out of me, thinking about it is not going to make it better. In fact I have to do the complete opposite and not think about it and just do it. That’s what happened when I jumped out of a plane, when I travelled to a different country for the first time alone, when I started this blog, when I attended university, when I left various jobs, you get my drift. Things get done when I get up & do it. I know this about me because I’ve watched how I respond to things. And guess what? the things I think about in excess seldom get done as I am the king of rationalising the hell out of something. In knowing this I am better equipped to maintain the most important relationship I have, which is with myself.

It’s only when you know more of who you are both in the good and not so good that you can begin to appreciate the essence of who you are and have an understanding of how you can then love yourself.  

A few ways I love myself are: 

1. Removing limitations with the things I desire

2. Being kind to myself and reaffirming the goodness in me whenever I feel low and ugly (yes I have ugly days).

3. Exercising discipline in areas that I desire to be improved upon (I checked my credit score yesterday and its in the 900’s, I could scream and yes I worked for it!).

4. Being still.

5. Having nice quality things and surrounding myself around good people.

6. Maintaining the standards that I have set for myself.

7. Saying no.

8. Saying yes.

Loving yourself isn’t only about physical self care, it’s also about accepting who you are and doing the work to improve the things that could be better.

What are your thoughts?

Xo

 

S/He is “Goals”

19 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in Life, Motivation

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I think we all can admit that we have looked at someones else’s life and admired them, possibly been jealous even at one point, but as I have learnt there’s only one life you should be concerned about, yours.

Its great that we can draw inspiration and learn from others, but we have to be careful how closely we focus on them lest we fall deep down the rabbit hole. Sometimes we look at someone’s life and think they’ve got it made until you hear about their woes, suddenly your life doesn’t seem so bad.

Learn to value where you are and have faith in where you’re going. Everyone’s journey is different as are the blessings and obstacles. Don’t look at anyone else and believe they’re “goals”, be your own goals.

Want to know how to do that? Set weekly, monthly, yearly real and practical goals and smash the shit out of them. Honestly, it works. It builds confidence and sharpens your tools. It will turn the focus back to you and on improving the quality of your life. Trust me, there’s so much living to do and if you’re doing it right, you won’t have time to inspect what the other person is doing. Granted, you can learn from them, however never hold their life in higher esteem than yours, ever.

Have a great weekend! And see you next week 🙂

Xo

Positively Negative

01 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Life, Thoughts in motion

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Humans are such strange creatures, they are my most interesting subject (she says as if she’s an alien). The way we work marvels me.

I had something entirely different to discuss today, but as with life, it is always subject to change.

En route to work this morning, I managed to read a book on my phone. I say managed because my commute to work is heavily overcrowded, but we’ll discuss this another time.

The book is ‘Write it down, Make it happen’ by Henriette Anne Klauser. The bit I pondered on was about compliment collecting, that is by my interpretation, accepting, acknowledging and appreciating compliments paid to us.

What I have noticed amongst people and myself included, is that we are very quick to deflect compliments but accept criticisms in a heartbeat, even to take them to our graves. It’s almost as if the good things said to us bounce off our foreheads onto the floor and the bad things immediately become a part of our veins-Why is that?

Many a time has someone paid me a compliment that I have soon forgotten about, because my first reaction is to be modest (maybe it’s a British thing)and make out that I am less than, that I am ordinary, and that there is nothing particularly special about me. Talk about self effacing?!

*Pause* I am not advocating that one becomes conceited, just follow my train of thought for a second.

Case scenario

Friend: You have a pretty face

Me: Yeah thanks/whatever (because it’s my friend, they are “supposed” to be nice lol) BUT my skin isn’t what I want it to be, if I could have clear skin then I’d be happy. Look at all the scars, it’s not even toned etc etc

A stranger compliments my outfit, hair, or efforts, my reply genuinely is gratitude towards that person. However, my subsequent response is to berate myself or downplay my achievements. So in actual fact I never receive the praise as I reject it in the very first instance. Who taught me/us to be this way?

On the other hand let someone tell me something negative, I will recall the date, time, where, when and who said it. It is ingested straight away.

Its partially down to the way we have been cultivated. We are not supposed to think highly of ourselves or speak positively. If you do or are seen to be too excited about the good things said about you, you’re deemed as arrogant, obnoxious, cocky, all terms that carry negative connotations.

But lets consider it carefully, why would you collect instances of negativity, yet hardly recall the times people have built us up?

Faith comes by hearing, and if what you are telling yourself everyday are all the destructive things you have ever heard, then there can really only be one outcome?

I think I’ll come back to this matter as there is more to explore, for now, let this be food for thought.

XO

P.s I do believe I may have a regular posting schedule, Mondays and Wednesdays, woohoo! Hopefully, I have not just jinxed myself!

 

 

‘As a man thinketh, so is he’

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Life

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Listen to the audio version here:https://soundcloud.com/lipstickandblackcoffee/no-30

Why can’t it be me?

In one of my rare moments of reading the newspaper purely to feast my eyes on the luxurious properties, I came across a piece on the ‘Design duo Jay Osgerby and Edward Barber’. They created the 2012 Olympic torch and I thought, what an amazing opportunity, which no doubt would go down in the history books. Following on from last week’s post, I had a thought, why couldn’t that be me or you?

Very often, we wistfully admire others and their accomplishments without realising that we also could be achieving similar things, if only we would accept that it is possible.

It’s almost as if we resign great achievements and fulfilment to the ‘chosen ones’ rather than it is those who chose themselves as worthy.

Today I would like you to think of this, life is a constant rotation of trade by barter. You get something in return for what you give, you give nothing, you get nothing. Make efforts towards what you’ve always dreamt of.

Everything we see, use and live by was once a figment of someone’s imagination. Look around you, your TV, laptop, phone, house, car, was once a foolish idea. Your aspiration might be to be debt free, or to go on holiday with your family or to change careers, whatever it is, no matter how small or grandiose your ambition is, accept first, that it is possible.

The world is made up of so called impossibilities, let that fuel your fire.

Three valuable things to note that will help you:

1) You must surround yourself with people who are in line with your belief.

2) Saturate your life with the things that you believe or wanting to believe via books, videos, the conversations you have, pictures, visiting locations whatever supports your idea, cling to it.

3) Again, you must accept that it is possible and you are already half way there. Reject anything that opposes this idea. Keep your vision at the forefront of your mind, and do something every day that adds to your belief.

I reiterate the importance of your belief above because it governs what you do and how you live your life. The most important one of all that I haven’t mentioned is to believe in yourself, as it is a pre-requisite for embarking on any journey.

We attach so much of our self worth to things, money, individuals and the danger with that, is if that thing is destroyed, or someone says something harmful, or our bank balance is negative, it becomes an instant validation of who we are and it is not so. Value yourself, your worth is not and should not be determined by an inanimate object or someone else.  Their inability to not see your worth is their issue and not one you should take on.

I’ll end with this, believe in yourself, begin where you are, use what you have and finally do not mock small beginnings.