Find, be and love yourself

What does it actually mean to love yourself? Having a good opinion of yourself? Having faith in yourself? Feeling worthy of receiving good things? We hear quotes such as “don’t accept less than you deserve…” but what if you don’t know what you deserve???

You need to truly know yourself in order to love yourself so where do we begin? What is important to you? What makes you feel happy? What makes you feel upset or discouraged? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

Some people were practically born with a glowing, laminated C.V in their hands but for others, the idea of “selling themselves” can be a daunting task as we can often overlook the things we’re good at.

You could ask what I’m good at and I’ll tell you “not much” or “I don’t know?” But if I wrote down just half of the things I did in a day, that made a positive difference to someone else, I’d have a pretty good list:

Taking care of the children
Making sure we have a meal to eat each day
Trying to keep the house clean and in order
Keeping track of our income/expenditure
Making sure the bills are up to date

Hmm, that’s all I can think of at the moment and doesn’t sound overly impressive but, with a little tweaking, I’d say that’s slightly comparable to:

Good communicator
Cook/baker
Housekeeper/Cleaner
Secretary
Accountant/Book-keeper

Looks like we’re getting somewhere … and I didn’t even touch on the tasks I do for the business!

We have to choose to see the positives in all that we do, however menial it seems to be. Try to be your own biggest cheerleader, and not just your biggest critic! Don’t get me wrong, we do need to be aware of our flaws but we don’t need to dwell on them .. see them, note them, accept them, fix them and move on!

It is also important to surround yourself with the right people, those who continually push you to be better, do better, go further, aim higher! Those who will love you for who you are, flaws and all but will stand behind you, cheering you on from success to success 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

Fall in love with the process of becoming the very best version of yourself

Remember why you started

Starting something new can be both exciting and scary but no matter which emotion it evokes, there is always a reason behind the decision.

If you want to get fit, you decide to sign up to the gym but if you’re feeling a little body conscious, this could make you feel slightly apprehensive.

Maybe you want to go to university to get the degree you missed out on when you were younger. Being in a lecture theatre filled with teenagers can be quite a daunting thought, especially if you’ve been out of education for a very long time.

Whatever the situation is and regardless of how it makes you feel, your focus should remain on the reason WHY and not the excuses creeping in to change your mind…

Your reason behind wanting to get fitter could be based on health reasons. You may have been recently diagnosed with high blood pressure and really want to get back to good health. That should be enough to get you through any anxiety you may feel about how you look compared to others.

With regards to the degree, your career may depend on it and in order to succeed professionally, you have to achieve it so even if you are the oldest student in the room, that should not deter you from your goal.

When you remember the important things, it helps to motivate and push you forward. There will always be an excuse to try and put you off but your opportunity may only be a one time offer. If you want your goal badly enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to reach it and when you do get there … smash it!!!

You can have results or excuses … the choice is yours!

Slow and steady wins the race…

Where did the last week go?!

I’ve been moving so slowly recently because our family was suffering from a cold, all of us in different forms i.e. headaches, runny noses, coughs, sneezes etc. My husband and older son could look after themselves (to a point, at least!) but dealing with myself and the baby was really draining … I just could not get the energy to do any work so you can imagine how my to-do-list looked!

I know that there will always be an ‘unscheduled event’ that occurs throughout the day, week or month. For example, our little one is currently teething and it’s very hard work indeed – for both of us! This one is tooth no.7 so I know that there’s much, much more to come … and then some!!

To us adults, babies seem to develop rather quickly but for them, each step takes quite a long time to perfect. When learning to sit up, a baby will fall backwards or to the side many times before their little muscles are strengthened enough to hold them up in a seated position. Learning to walk consists of plenty of tumbles and bumps too, but they do not give up!

I should take an example from our little one because with each milestone he’s achieved, he slowly and steadily persevered to master it and I know he’ll slowly work out those first steps to begin walking and tick yet another box on the milestone list. And if he’s not stressed about his “to-do list”, why should I be?!

Although we’re all back to full health now, it’s still been hard to catch up with everything I lacked energy for last week! I was telling my husband how I was feeling and he simply said, ‘the tortoise won, didn’t he?!’ Which was his way of telling me to keep going! No matter what happens in our lives, endurance is key so even if the situation is difficult, we cannot give up!

“It doesn’t matter how slowly you go,
as long as you do not stop”