Inspire Yourself

I have attempted to write about this topic so many times in the most perfect way with the most perfectly witty title and perfectly constructed sentences.... but every time I try I just can’t convey the same message I want. That’s because emotions are messy and uneven and they like to color outside the lines. When the emotions are good they like to make you feel like you’re Elle Woods getting accepted into Harvard in Legally Blonde. When the emotions are bad, it makes you feel like Josie Grossy in Never Been Kissed when she got egged by her date on prom night.

The ones that make us feel particularly Josie Grossy are the self-inflicted negative feelings that have triggered us to think that we aren’t “good enough”.

Before I go any further, I want you to do something. I want you to make a list, mental or physical of five things that you love. Got it? I’m sure some of these things include your partner, your family, your job, lifting, movies, and anything else that makes us incredibly happy. But how many people wrote down themselves? Probably not many. If you did, you have a superpower that many people would love to have. When it comes to love, most of us forget to love ourselves. I am particularly guilty of this.

If I had to make an assumption of why this happens, I could come up with a number of reasons. We had a poor childhood, we had toxic relationship after toxic relationship, we compare our successes to everyone’s highlight reels on Instagram, the list could go on. I think those are all fine reasons, but they give us an excuse to wallow in self-pity instead of learning how to love every fiber of our beings.

I have done so many positive things for myself over the last year, yet I choose to fixate on all of the things that aren’t my favorite. I get caught up in bad days where I’m unhappy with one small thing and allow it to transcend into a larger problem than it actually is. For me, it easier to give myself a cop out in case I fail. In my brain, if I don’t focus on the success and I highlight what could go wrong instead, I won’t seem like such a failure if everything does go wrong.

This is so incredibly non-productive for me.

I know I am not the only one who says “I’m trying!” when someone gives a compliment, whether that compliment is “you’re strong” or “you’re killing it” or whatever else it could be. If everyone else can see the progress you’re making, you owe it to yourself to admit “yes, I am killing it, I’ve been working really hard to do so!”

Somewhere down the line, confidence and being proud of yourself has been transformed into appearing arrogant or cocky. It is not wrong to celebrate all of the good you are doing for yourself and anyone who makes you feel bad about celebrating your success is envious they haven’t found their own yet.

From this day forward I vow to celebrate all of my successes and small wins and to never feel guilty about achieving them.

My hope for everyone reading this is that you become proud of the person you are becoming and have become. Life is messy every single day, but when you learn to fall in love with the process and learn to fall in love with yourself it makes the journey worth it.

I hope you learn to be inspired by your own story instead of everyone else’s.