The Way You Think About Yourself Is Crucial

This is no time to be humble.

It started with a random post on Facebook that recommended standing in front of a mirror every morning and saying one thing you love about yourself. What I love about myself is something I never considered. I spent decades hating myself worse than anybody else. That feeling stemmed from a lifetime of appalling decisions I’ve made in my past. The fact that I learned from each mistake didn’t mean I wanted to go through those bad times.

The fact that I once believed everyone in my life hated me made it hard to think of anything worthwhile about myself. It was the wrong thing to believe, even though some people really did hate me for the things I’d done. In the end, I became whatever another person thought of me, and it reflected in my behavior. I felt like the world’s biggest jerk who lied and manipulated to get what I wanted. Honestly, I didn’t think I was loved because I truly believed there was nothing lovable about me.

That Facebook post, as random as it was, made me really want to try talking to my mirror. I finally realized I was loved and that there were good things about me. That shift in thinking came with the revelation that there are things I like about myself. At first, I felt arrogant for thinking that way. Who was I to say what my positive attributes were? Maybe if I wrote them down or said them out loud, it wouldn’t be humble to brag about myself like that.

Then again, I should have been the most important person to tell myself who I was. Nobody else can answer that question but me. For far too long, I was steeped in so much self-hatred to even consider the good things about me. I should have been my biggest cheerleader all along. The things that make us feel good about ourselves seem so simple, yet they are delicate enough to be crushed by the slightest criticism. In the past, all somebody would have needed to say to me is “no, you’re not” to make me doubt myself. I gave all my power away to other people and their opinions. No more.

I wrote a list with two different columns, the things I like about myself, and the things I don’t like and want to change. I thought writing it down would make it more of a reality, who I really was that somebody else’s opinion of me could never undo. I want to share with you…

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