Love Who You Are, Be Who You Want To Be

I contend that the only way to become who you would like to be is to love who you currently are.  It is an irony that we find faults in ourselves and then decide we are going to change all our bad characteristics.  We are more likely to focus on fixing what is "wrong" with us, especially when we have others pointing it out to us, judging us.  It is easy to judge ourselves when we don't feel as though we are meeting some standard set by someone at sometime in our lives.  The extreme of this was one a young lady only in her twenties committed suicide after her husband criticized, bullied and harassed her day after day.  Instead of focusing on what was good about her and many loved her and thought highly of her, she focused on what her husband thought of her.  She ended her life with a note  that no family member was ever shown and that her husband will take to his grave.  This beautiful young lady did not think much of herself as she was.  The only thing that mattered to her was that the one person she loved with all her being thought her to be useless.

So how do we change who we are?  I say love the person you are now and think more about all the wonderful traits that you have.  Embrace how much you weigh, how tall you are, your skin color and even the stitches on your abdomen.  Before you change anything about yourself decide that you love the person you currently are and then with that loving thought in mind decide how you are going to be more of who you already are.  Decide there is nothing to get rid of and decide that you are loved just as you are.  Place a large piece of poster board and markers in front of you and write down all the great things that you are.  Write about ten things that you think of yourself and others think of you that is  positive and good.  Post that poster in your home wherever you like and look at it every day.

When you love who you are it is easier to be who you want to be.  It is much more helpful for you to detail the things that you are that you like about yourself.  It is not useful to spend a lot of time being critical of yourself.  In fact for most of us there will be people in our life who criticize and even abuse us.  There will be strangers who will give us a look as though they don't approve of us.  This is the very reason that we must love ourselves enough to work on the parts of us that need love, an application of compassion.  We must be ready for whatever journey we are to go on.  We must already love ourselves as we are.