Love Yourself.
Posted on March 21, 2015 by Annie Ricci, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Want to improve your self esteem? Need ideas on how to love yourself? Check this out!
“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them — every day begin the task anew. "~Saint Francis de Sales
I like this quote because the words “self-esteem” are nowhere to be found, but it is all about self esteem. He tells how to love ourselves.
How often do you ‘consider your own imperfections’? How many times a day do you berate yourself for something? I think we do this so naturally that most of the time we don’t even know we are doing it. Ever hear that needling voice in your head say things like: What did I say THAT for? They will think that’s stupid. I can’t. I shouldn’t. And then there’s my favorite phrase, which I have personally used. It pretty much covers it all: “I suck.”
Sometimes, the negativity comes from the explicit and implicit messages we got when we were growing up. Let’s face it, even if we had ‘perfect’ childhoods, there’s still baggage we carry with us about ourselves based on what we experienced when we were younger. Sometimes we are successful at overcoming that stuff but a lot of times those messages are so engraved on our hearts and minds that we struggle to free ourselves. We struggle to love ourselves in all our imperfect glory.
We can have some stretches where we feel pretty good. Something trips us up and the sabotaging thoughts emerge and we start to lose our courage, our steadfastness in our abilities. We get caught up in the self-recriminations and start to internalize garbage. Sometimes we even start to question things about ourselves we never gave a thought about in the past. We start wondering where our self-esteem went. Have you caught yourself telling a friend, or the person in the mirror, “I just need better self-esteem?”
Maybe you are like me. I used to believe that there is some magic self-esteem level out there and if I just got to that level, I would finally be happy or people would treat me better. Or I would be a better leader, business owner, friend, spouse or parent.
This quote tells us that is not the case. First off St. Francis de Sales tells us to have patience with all things but most importantly with ourselves. We are not going to change overnight. You’ve had a lot of years to put yourself down. If you are reading this, though, you are ready to change that and are looking for some guidance from someone who has walked through that wilderness and come out on the other side. You are ready to love yourself.
St. Francis goes on to tell us not to lose courage when considering our own imperfections. Newsflash: We are not perfect and practically no one expects us to be (except, of course, ourselves). We all screw up. It is okay that you aren’t perfect and that you royally get it wrong sometimes. Note I said, sometimes. How often to you look at all the things you get right? There are more of those than you think. Have the courage to let go of your mistakes, because those don’t define you. Your strengths, your values and how you conduct yourself when those mistakes happen are what matter most – most of time.
Then there’s that part where de Sales says “set about remedying them.” I think also means accepting our imperfections even more than it means fix them. We can learn to have more patience with ourselves, our loved ones, and our colleagues. We can learn to let go of the garbage, the habits that no longer serve us. We can remedy all that, find the places in ourselves we love, celebrate where we shine.
Self-esteem is not a destination. It’s a journey. “Every day begin the task anew.” We get to start each day with a clean slate. It’s shiny, and fresh and full of opportunities to breathe deeply and do something differently than how we did it yesterday. We can stop beating ourselves up. We can bravely accept all our flaws and love ourselves anyway.
