My good friend, Success Coach Dawn Nocera, teaches Self-Appreciation.
Taking it up means mindfully spending time daily appreciating everything about yourself, especially the struggling parts, the difficult parts, the things you’d like to ignore or keep at arm’s length. This is preferably done in writing. The tough part is staying present when the feelings get thick and heavy. But by staying with them, they morph and change and transform into something else—something lighter, generally graced with the silvered edge of self-acceptance.
When you are graced with self-acceptance, you make choices that support your life rather than making things harder for yourself.
Being a member of Toastmasters is one of the things I do as a gift to myself. While it challenges me, it also provides regular opportunity for positive feedback, and strokes for accomplishing things. By strokes, I mean I can strive and get rewarded (literally) for taking action and achieving things. I like getting certificates, pins, letters after my name. Sure, that sounds a bit ridiculous, maybe lacking in something substantive. But it’s not.
This is actually self-appreciation. I understand my design is an “ambitious” one. I choose to have a direction to be ambitious about, even as I make choices that look quite the opposite in other life arenas.
I am grateful to be at this stage of life where I can finally appreciate my complexities instead of constantly trying to change them!
You can learn more about Dawn and her work here.
Coach’s Challenge:
Sit with your journal today and practice Self-Appreciation — spend 15 minutes appreciating yourself on paper. You might feel silly or self-indulgent. It’s far from that—do it anyway. Acknowledge your infinite variety, and applaud yourself for making choices that allow this same variety to madly bloom. Maybe you’ll notice a place you can make an even better choice to appreciate your unique design. Do it! Make that choice!
