Tag Archives: accept yourself

Know Your Own Value

Your value as a human being is determined by how you think about yourself and the choices of thought you entertain. We all accept from the world the importance we place on ourselves, our time, our talent, and our productivity. If you receive a specific salary for eight hours of your day, that is your value. You accept particular treatment from others because that is where you see your worth. Are you stuck in your self-worth, or can you improve? This writing wouldn’t be much of a thought piece if there were no hope for becoming more valuable to yourself and expecting appropriate treatment from the world to match it. Here are a few simple things to start raising your value now.

Belief Adjustment

The first step is learning the difference between random thoughts, opinions, and beliefs that run our lives. We are run by our subconscious mind most of the time, and our beliefs control that mechanism. Start to question your old ideas about yourself and how life is constructed and look to move beyond them. If you believe that people who have money are wrong, you will subconsciously create situations where cash is scarce. Look beyond. If you feel all members of the opposite sex are the same and will treat you poorly, that is precisely who you will end up in a relationship with. Look beyond and see your actual worth and believe it. Then see what types of money and people show up in your life. Your worth will increase about the time you start to value yourself.

Accept It All

We fight a constant battle in life between who we are and what we perceive the world wants us to be. Increasing your value will come when you start to accept all of the things about yourself you see as flaws. We all struggle to fit into the image we create in our minds of what we should be and how we should look based on media images we were exposed to. We are all trying to fit ourselves into a mold created by someone else of how to look, how to act, what to like, and what we think is entertainment. It is all a fantasy and impossible to attain. The worst part is there are great things about all people, and we allow these images to destroy our self-esteem and make us ashamed of who we are.

Accept your perceived flaws. Maybe it is your height, your hair color, or some other gift of birth. Accept it as a part of you and learn to value it. You will be surprised at how much your change of attitude will change how the world perceives you. Accept all of the old wounds from your past, allow yourself to feel them accept them, and move past them. Something that happened to you 35 years ago has as much bearing today as you will enable it to have. Move past it by practicing acceptance of who you are, what you have done, mistakes you have made, and things you didn’t do. How you see yourself and your power is a  choice. Choose wisely.

Practice Gratitude

If something is valuable in your life, take a moment to show appreciation for it: a possession, a person, an experience, or any part of your life. When you show gratitude, you increase your value, and guess what will start to show up? More of those things. Be grateful for something in your life because it has great power for you. You are taking things for granted, and showing and feeling ingratitude will bring less of those things into your life. How many great things are you taking for granted right now? You will not appreciate them until they are gone.

Learn to appreciate every little thing that comes into your existence. There is something positive about almost everything. Sometimes we are just too close to the fray to see it. But it is there when you pull back and allow your focus to come clear. Showing more appreciation for things naturally raises your value in the world. When you grow your worth, you increase your level of expectation, and your experience will become more abundant. Start a simple gratitude practice today by making a list of three things you are grateful for. You can do it at the beginning or end of the day, but the approach will change your focus and raise your value.

Find Connections and Pursue

There are things we do that bring us closer to who we are. For me, writing my thoughts down is one way I do this. Exercise is another. All people have different activities that allow them to connect to their inner selves, enabling you to do this and pursue them. All of those who stop you from this feeling, move away from them. Most people build addictions to things that are not healthy for us, from sugar to drugs to alcohol. Many addictive behaviors we fall into are not beneficial to our becoming our best selves. Put these things aside.

The connection to yourself will fill the holes you may feel in yourself. Your parents didn’t pay enough positive attention to you. You didn’t fit in at school. You were not popular. These things can be moved past because they have as much power as we choose to give them. All people have experienced this when you do things because you view it as a positive from your inner world. Rather than doing something because of how others view it, you will be much happier. And isn’t happiness the feeling we all want to feel? Please connect to the things which make you sing on the inside and do them. Your worth will increase.

Finally Creative

Being creative is one of the most powerful skills to pursue to raise your value. There is a well of creativity inside of you and ideas available to you on the outside. Our mental limits and perceptions stop many from finding their unlimited imagination. We believe in limiting things others have imposed on us, and they prevent us from making our lives the best they can be. We are so worried about fitting into the mold society has cast us in. Originality flies out the window.   You have an unlimited well of ideas inside you, and it just takes a little effort to draw them out. Once you bring them out, don’t let your mind talk you out of them. Being creative is one of the most powerful things you can do.

Increase your value by practicing creative thought daily in your work, play, and all aspects of your life. Creativity is the cure for all challenges. Use your power.

“Know your worth. Then add tax.” Anonymous

 “Never forget how rare you are.” Anonymous

“Things of value require sacrifice. If people are too hurt, too busy, or too damn stupid to see that you’re a blessing they’ve been asking for, just fall back. Know your worth.” Anonymous

“I don’t know why we all hang on to something we’re better off letting go of.” Meredith Grey

“When you start seeing your worth, you’ll find it harder to stay around people who don’t.” Anonymous

 

The Right Things

How often do people take action without really thinking about the consequences? I am sure that I am called on to take action, speak, or make some other behavioral choice thousands of times in my daily life.  It would be challenging to be fully conscious of all choices. From what to wear to how you get to work, our subconscious handles many decisions.  But too often, we allow interactions with others to occur without our conscious participation.  These actions can come off without any caring or concern for the feelings of others.  For us to be present in these interactions, we can follow a few points of focus to make sure we are entirely present in the moment and with people that matter.

Honoring Actions

Each action we take involving others is going to affect them. It doesn’t matter the scope and scale of your activity. It will have a positive or negative effect on those that you interact with. More importantly, each step you choose to take will affect you as well.  If you treat somebody poorly, for any reason, it resonates with you and will determine your energy and experience.

The focus of your conscious thought should be on honoring yourself.  In all that you do and think during the day, make the first choice to accept yourself.  Even if you believe someone else deserves your scorn or ridicule, it doesn’t do you any good to participate in this. Let it go and focus on the positive things in your life.  Putting others down puts you down.  Make choices honoring you, and the world will acknowledge you.  That is the benefit of focusing on creating honoring actions.

Release Judgment

It is a simple choice. The judgment of other’s personal lives, heritage, clothing, physical appearance, or any other thing is never going to end well for you.  Our instincts have developed over thousands of years, and we identify with people similar to ourselves because it is safe to do so. In our ancestral past, our survival depended on it.  But that is not the case today. We find others’ judgment is addictive to us and allow us to prop ourselves up in self-esteem in some way, on the backs of others.

Release judgment from your mind and learn to accept all of those who are different from you. Letting others live how they feel comfortable will allow you to live as you feel comfortable with yourself.  Make the conscious choice to respect others and live with a sense of compassion toward them.  Your actions will come back to you in the end. To live in judgment is to bring judgment upon you. Respect and kindness will also come back to you.  It is your choice which energy you release into the world and receives back from it.

Acceptance

The more you choose love for and the approval of others and their situations, the better energy your life will experience. By accepting this path, you are deciding against fear and all of its negative energies.  Whoever you hold negative feelings about, let them go.  Those from another region of the world practice a different religion, are economically challenged, addicted to drugs, or just making poor decisions. Let go of your judgment.

Choose to be more conscious of your thoughts and the right actions you can take daily to make the world a better place.  Let go of the vision that you are in competition with everyone else and choose to see the positive benefits of cooperation between all people. You can make all interactions a blessing to yourself with your attitude.  Acceptance of yourself and others as they are on the path to doing this.

Work for Today

So focus on your thoughts and actions today and see where they are going to lead you.  Are they taking you down a negative path or a positive one?  Are your choices making the world better or worse for someone else?  Are your options honoring yourself? This action is the beginning of being more conscious about your effect on the planet and taking responsibility for that experience.

 

Enemy

know-your-enemy3Today I fought my greatest enemy.  They seemed to be following me throughout my day and gleefully took each opportunity to point out my apparent shortcomings. My enemy spoke against me of decisions made in the past. Then I was inundated with their worry about the future. It was a non-stop assault that had its desired effect on me, I felt let down, angry, upset, and wanted to fight back.  So I engaged my greatest enemy with the truth, which always seems to be the best weapon. My thoughts are the enemy. My mind continually provides negative ones if I let it.  But pushed in the right direction, a positive reward can be found. Here are some truths which build the positive.  Look at your life.

The Past Doesn’t Matter.

I calmly explained that the past is an illusion that we all choose to remember our way. All people tend to have selective and prejudice memories about the events of their lives. Sometimes making them leave the pastmore prominent and more terrifying than they were to justify our behavior today or use them as motivation. Sometimes we tend to wax nostalgic about the past and make people and moments more significant than they were. Our attachment is due to our emotional behavior at the time or a wish to experience it again today. Our memories are not entirely true. The past is a game of the mind, and you remember most of it exactly how you want to.

As I explained this to the enemy, there was a quick recap of the events he perceived as mistakes in my life. All brought one thought of truth.
“Accurate or not, there is no way a thing can be changed today.”  It is all history, and it is done and over. The best any of us can do with our past is to learn the lessons it teaches, then put it away and move forward with an optimistic outlook on the potential that each new day brings to us.

The Future is Never Known

Then almost immediately defeated in bringing up the futurepast, the enemy moved to worry about the future. Throwing all catastrophic scenarios that may occur if I didn’t start to take some specific action that the enemy condescendingly called “Common Sense.” Yet, I was able to fight this battle with thoughts about the future. Nothing has been written in stone. All things are continuously changing, and no matter how much detail you plan something with, the results may be different from what you ever expected. Worrying about the future is taking away the capability for happiness today. It robs you of the ability to enjoy the moment. My enemy revels in this type of victory, but today was not his day. I was resolute in my convictions. Plan for tomorrow as best you can, and let tomorrow take care of itself because, in the end, it always will.

The Victory is In Today

So as my enemy, frustrated and angry at not being able to raise my anger, I silently questioned himself. I started only nowto think about the only thing left, and that is this moment right now. Sitting here, typing this, right here and right now. Not even my greatest enemy can disturb the truth and wonder that this moment contains. As I breathe in and out and contemplate the moment, I realize that the enemy is gone.

You won the game for the day, but there will be more struggles in the future because the most significant enemy lives, smugly, arrogantly, and entirely within me.  Waiting to remind me to: Accept the past, don’t worry about the future, and live in the moment. To do anything else seems like a losing battle.