Are you proud of you?

No really, can you look at yourself and say that you are genuinely proud of yourself? If you had asked me this a year ago I probably would have given you the ol’ stank face and wondered what in the world you were blabbering on about. So I totally understand if that’s what you’re doing to me right now.

Did you know, that as much as you crave validation and positive and uplifting words from others, you also need that from you to yourself?

I struggle with being mean to myself. It’s all verbal now, which still isn’t good, but it’s better than what it was. I’ll catch myself calling myself names, criticizing myself in the mirror or comparing myself when I don’t measure up in the ways I feel I should. I’ve been pretty good at catching myself and cutting it off lately but honestly that isn’t enough.

I’ve recently started challenging myself to encourage myself. Some motivational and uplifting words from me to me in the morning when I wake up, when I see myself in the mirror throughout the day or when I’m tempted to compare myself to someone else. What we’re attempting to do here is to be intentional about rewriting that inner voice. The problem is that we have gotten so used to saying things like “wow I’m so stupid” or “jeeze bloated much” for example that these words become our innervoice to ourselves. It may not seem like a large problem, and I didnt really think so either until I realized how aggressivley I actually speak to myself. I wouldn’t dare let another human say those things to me, so why should I say those things to me.

So, a practical first step that I’ve started doing for myself that I want to share with you is this: tell yourself something you’re proud of you for each day. It can be at any point in the day, in the morning before heading off to work or at night before you go to bed. It can be something as small as “you did a really good job staying focused at work today”. It really doesn’t have to be big at all (some days I congratulate myself for taking a shower….it do be rough out here sometimes). After doing this for a little while I actually find myself doing it out of habit unconsciously. I’ll catch myself whisper “You’re doing a good job” to myself, which is quite funny to think of, but it happens and believe it or not, it makes me feel good.

It’s something small, but small steps make big moves and I want big moves for all of us out here.

Thanks for reading, talk soon!

I’m proud of you!

xx Nicole Eva

p.s. It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything on YouTube (because R E S T), but I just dropped my first video of the new year today and it goes a little deeper into what we were talking about above. So, if you’re interested, check it out here!