Don't Be So Hard on Yourself

·        Lord, restore me to that perfection from which I emanated. Grant unto us at all times, no matter what is happening to us, the certainty that You are working all things together for good.

·        This is a call to arms! A call to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be generous with yourself. The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the story line that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world. ~Valerie Monroe

·        “Each body has its art."    — Gwendolyn Brooks 

·        To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now. And now is all we have, and love is who we are." — Anne Lamott

·        Stop worrying about your looks. Instead of obsessing over your own appearance, try noticing—and mentioning—beautiful things about everyone else. This will make people adore you, which, last time I checked, is what most of us are hoping to achieve by worrying about our looks in the first place. ~Martha Beck

·        We don't need great reasons to be happy; we're after any reasons at all.
In our pudginess, we must learn to value ourselves as sentient beings, not physical objects. We must learn humility and compassion, and activate courage just to show up at a high school reunion. Cellulite is a powerful spiritual teacher. Perfect! 

·        Feeling emotionally out of control is like having a fender bender: It teaches us to navigate cautiously, pull back before we hurt ourselves or others, and find the calmest aspect of the psyche so we are safer "drivers" in our relationships. What's more perfect?
Taking a jolly, forgiving approach to our failures puts us in precisely the place of kindness and acceptance where positive change is easiest. ~ Martha Beck 

·        It matters what people think of me, I said. A friend replied: “Wow, you have some painful fantasies about other people's fantasies about you." Yup, my anguish came from my hypothesis that other people's hypothetical hypotheses about me mattered. Ridiculous! Right now, imagine what you'd do if it absolutely didn't matter what people thought of you. Got it? Good. Never go back. ~Martha Beck 

·        The pretty girls get all the good stuff. Oh, God. So not true. I unlearned this after years of coaching beautiful clients. Yes, these lovelies get preferential treatment in most life scenarios, but there's a catch: While everyone's looking at them, virtually no one sees them. Almost every gorgeous client had a husband who'd married her breasts and jawline without ever noticing her soul. ~Martha Beck

·        The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.~ Martha Washington.

·        In the midst of negativity you should be able to realize "At this moment I am creating suffering for myself.~ Eckhart Tolle. 

·        The first form of happiness is sound health. One should partake of nutritious balanced food to keep the body healthy. It's essential to maintain the health of the mind and body simultaneously. When there is harmony between the mind, heart and resolution then nothing is impossible.~ Rig Veda

·        "Having it all" doesn't mean having everything, all at once, all the time. "Having it all" means taking yourself seriously. It means knowing yourself well enough to find your purpose in life. It means knowing what needs to change when you sense that you've lost that purpose. It means having the faith to believe that change is possible and having the courage to make those changes. It means drawing strength from the relationships in your life, and, if there's no strength to be drawn, knowing when to cut those relationships out of your life. It means mastering the skill of using life to fill you up. THAT IS ALL YOU CAN DO, AND IT IS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO DO. ~ Marcus Buckingham.

·        The world "out there" won't change until the world "in here" does.~ Deepak Chopra

·        Every setback contains its own reward. Self criticism never helps. It just makes you wretched and annoying. Relentless optimism does feel odd. But it also feels good, calm, kind. ~ Martha Beck.

·        Examine what you're telling yourself at times when you feel particularly anxious or stressed. Pay special attention to your use of the words "should," "must," "have to," "always," "never,", "all," or "none." ~The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook

·        Instead of fretting about getting everything done, why not simply accept that being alive means having things to do? Then drop into full engagement with whatever you're doing, and let the worry go. ~Martha Beck 

·        Stop worrying about staining, breaking, scratching etc. your property/ “stuff”. If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you. ~Martha Beck

·        Stop worrying about the past. The word worry comes from the Old English wyrgan, meaning "to strangle." When we fixate on something in the past, we grab our own histories by the throat, cutting off the flow of physical and emotional energy that keeps us fully alive. To start the flow again, look forward. Embracing the lesson always loosens the stranglehold of worry. ~Martha Beck

·        Stop worrying about what others think of you. Today, pretend you're a Martian gathering data on humans. As you notice what they do and say without focusing on your fear of their opinions, you'll feel less self-conscious, and they'll feel the nonjudgmental attention they've always wanted from you. Win-win. ~Martha Beck

·        Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
― Eckhart Tolle 

·        “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

·        Begin this morning to believe that what you have hoped for is going to happen, that good things are on their way. You may have all kinds of problems, and in the natural order, it doesn’t look as though anything is turning around. But don’t be discouraged. Look into that invisible world, and through your eyes of faith, see that situation turning around. See your joy and peace being restored. ~ Joel Osteen

·        "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all." — J.K. Rowling

·        There are very good reasons not to get bent out of shape over a lack of resolve. First, as you've probably heard, our brains are malleable. Repeated self-criticism can literally shape them into patterns that sustain negativity, while persistent self-acceptance can reinforce more felicitous neurological pathways. Second, whenever we go to war with any issue in our lives, the thing we're fighting has a way of fighting back. ~Martha Beck 

·        The "What Went Wrong?" Success
Hundreds of psychological studies have been done on this kind of achievement, and they all end up with the same findings: Much of success is dependent not on talent but on learning from your mistakes. ~Leigh Newman

·        Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor who gave the "Last Lecture" in 2007 while dying of pancreatic cancer, talked about how "brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

·        Another closely related study evaluated the grit of the Scripps National Spelling Bee competitors. Scientists were able to tell how far a speller would advance based only on their level of grit, mostly because gritty kids study harder. Which brings up an encouraging point for all adults: Grit is learned behavior. To increase it—and use it to propel you forward—all have to do to is try, try, try, try, try, try again. The tenacity you learn every time you fail will get you up and over that brick wall. ~ Leigh Newman

       Celebrate your life.  Be your own cheering squad!