Re-Post: Loving Yourself

In this age of plastic and cosmetic surgery, infomercials and self-help therapy it is a daily struggle for anyone to be satisfied with what they were born with, myself included. Last New Year's instead of resolutions I made commitments. To me this was a better way to work on some things and have room to make mistakes. If I messed up I could start over since I was committed to whatever task I assigned myself. This sounded much better than a resolution wherein if you messed up you were a complete failure. One of my commitments was to love myself more each day than I did the day before. Sounds easy; not necessarily. It seems the minute I said it, there were constant reminders of things to detest about myself so I was in a daily struggle. Sometimes I won...and sometimes I needed to go back to the drawing board! But I'll tell you, I wouldn't change that commitment for anything in the world. Embracing yourself for who you are is hard, because the world will tell you that something about you needs fixing. You're ugly. Fat. Stupid. Black. Your hair is nappy. You're too short. Your attitude is bad. You suck at your job. But...when you take the time to love yourself it is an empowering feeling. And I'm not just talking about vanity. What I'm talking about is ...acceptance. I had to say to myself everyday, "This is me. Like it or love it, these are the gifts God gave me and if I use them right, I can change the world." When I recognized that, it gave me courage and strength. Courage to try new and different things. Courage to make new friends. Courage to be myself. Courage to improve my health. The strength to say that I might need a new job. Strength to suffer through a budget and improve my credit. The strength to say no and eliminate some things in my life that needed to be removed. And now when I look back, these are all the things I would have made resolutions about anyway. True, I wish I could have done a better job on some of these things; but I did them nonetheless, and I surprised myself at how successful I really was. So this new year, I am committing to loving myself in 2006 more than I did in 2005, and I can't wait to see the result!!!

P.S. Written in 2006 but still true in 2013. Repost!