“I’m really happy.” “I like my outfit today.” “Wow that was a good workout.” All thoughts I’ve had to myself over the last week, but because of the nature of the world, all thoughts I soon took back because of comparison. I’ve noticed more lately than ever before how often I use others as the standard against which I compare myself. Anyone else fallen into this trap? The trap of grading your life, your happiness, and your success not against how far you’ve come personally, but instead, against everyone around you and where they are or seem to be.
Basically I’m here today to remind you that in addition to the self-love ideas that I talked about last week, it is important to recognize you for you. To applaud yourself when you’ve seen yourself make improvements in your life, to feel disappointment followed by self-driven desire to be better when you’re not happy with where you are, to recognize that just “making it” is sometimes all you could hope for for the day. But above all, don’t ever ever ever let anyone else have any control over your critique of you.
I know that we all are our own harshest critics, and sometimes our critiques of ourselves can be absolutely unapologetically ruthless, but I also know the benefit of honest self-reflection. I’ve found myself pushing myself to my limits socially, educationally, physically, and spiritually not because it was the easy thing to do, but because I took an honest look in the mirror (figuratively speaking), recognized what about me I wasn’t loving at the moment and made the decision to change it. The danger in this comes when our critiques aren’t honest, when we are making changes to “keep up with the Jones’s” or to elicit a certain reaction from someone else, or when we aren’t recognizing both our strengths and our weaknesses.
So do some self-reflection this week, compare your place in different aspects of your life against where you were a year ago- are you happy with what you see? If not, do something about it. But do something about it because YOU decide to take control of your own life not because you feel sub-par when you compare yourself to someone else.
SO, ya got it?
- Honest self-reflection is good for the soul
- Compare yourself with where you once were and where you want to be
- Never ever ever use others as the standard against which you compare yourself
- Kick booty 🙂
Simple enough, right?! Let’s kill it this week friends! Enjoy the 4th of July, stay safe, and don’t eat too many hot dogs ❤
P.S. Next week we’ll talk books, beauty, and beach essentials! Let me know if there’s anything specific you want info about and I’ll do my best to get it for ya!
xoShelby 