Ever get discouraged and feel like you just can’t count on others? You’re not alone. It’s very common for us to look outside ourselves for approval, acceptance and love. It’s equally common to discover that what we seek can’t be found outside ourselves. What we are seeking is only found by looking within.
It all starts with you—your relationship with yourself. When you are an unconditionally loving and affirming friend to yourself—NO MATTER WHAT—you foster strong self-esteem. External validation is nice to receive, but it can’t be depended on and often doesn’t last.
The only thing you can control in this life is your response to it. However you may be choosing to show up at the moment—calm as the proverbial cucumber or in the grips of a grand mal emotional meltdown—bolster your self-esteem by always responding to yourself with unconditional love, respect, curiosity, compassion and gratitude.
Here are three simple practices to increase your flow of self-love:
- What are you good at? Look yourself in the mirror each morning and tell yourself, OUT LOUD, one thing that makes you distinctly and delightfully who you are. Then affirm and acknowledge your uniqueness with unconditional love and total acceptance. Whatever your circumstances, you are a unique cocreative expression of the Divine. How could that ever not be enough!
- Cut yourself a break! Nobody’s perfect—and that’s the good news. The next time things don’t go exactly as you’d planned, instead of beating yourself upside the head with what a mess you always make of things, take a deep breath, give yourself some grace, forgive all involved, appreciate what you’ve learned, detach and move on. Remember, in each moment, Universal love is unfolding the highest good for all, in all, through all. Everything that’s happening, no matter how painful or frustrating it feels, carries within it the seeds of opportunity. Look for the silver lining and leverage the heck out of it!
- Ban negative talk. That starts with how you talk to yourself and extends out to how you allow others to talk to you. Avoid people who are unkind, ungrateful, critical or unsupportive. Surround yourself with people who love, support and affirm you. You deserve to be appreciated as the delightful expression of the Divine that you are, warts and all.
Strong self-esteem is grounded in acknowledging, affirming and accepting ALL of yourself, even the attributes that frustrate you and everyone who knows you. When you practice accepting yourself, the world will take note and follow your lead. When you commit to always nurturing, encouraging and delighting yourself in healthy ways, you help others do so as well. In this way, you become the change you wish to see in your world.
© Copyright 2014 DJW Life Coach LLC. All rights reserved.
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About djwlifecoach
I am retired from 40+ years of helping individuals and teams build lives and organizations they love. One of the great joys of my retirement from professional practice is having greater bandwidth to donate my professional and creative talents to support and promote animal and social welfare charities.
During my 30 years as an organization transformation consultant, I served as a senior partner in four of the world’s largest, most prestigious global professional services firms. In 2005, I took a five-year sabbatical to find healing and peace because non-stop work had taken its toll.
My recovery from burnout led to finding my purpose guiding others on their journeys. As a board-certified coach, author, consultant, radio host, Reiki Master and EFT/tapping practitioner, I share hope, possibilities and empowerment with the world.
111419 DJW Sid CH Pet Corner Photo ShootI help clients achieve rapid, extraordinary, sustainable results by connecting who they are with what they do, a connection often lost through stress and the sheer busy-ness of daily life. Courageous self-awareness and unconditional self-love lead to honest choices based on priorities that nurture you and those around you on a journey to wholeness.
Decades in coaching, consulting, change management, organization development, human resources and mixed media artistic expression honed my business sense, professionalism, creativity, intuition, leadership and communication skills. The result? Practical tools that help you become more insightful, creative, committed, productive and fulfilled.
Even the most dedicated and hard-working individuals can shift from frustration to a sense of futility when their values, passion, work, and lives become disconnected. One of the problems with not taking care of our health is that the effects of ignoring it are often slow to show up. We continue to juggle family responsibilities, work and finances until we lose ourselves, waking up one day 50 pounds heavier in body and soul—no good to ourselves or anyone else.
I love working with people who are ready to take life-changing action to make their dreams a reality. At each moment, you have inside you all the wisdom you seek to choose your life and your way of showing up. Limiting thoughts, beliefs and feelings can block you from moving forward. An absence of love and concern for yourself can result in negative head talk that holds you back with discouraging messages about who you are and what you can do.
By listening and caring deeply, I guide you in connecting with your own inner wisdom. We identify the way you’d like to live. We determine what’s blocking you and release you from the hold those blocks have over you—unleashing the positive energy that will fuel you forward. Together we develop a plan to move you closer to your heart’s desire.
My books, blog, radio show and signature coaching programs help individuals and organizations harness the transformative energy of love to turn unexplored possibilities into fulfilling realities and step into their greatness. What’s love got to do with it? Everything! My book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! (Hay House/ Balboa Press 2013) shares my story and the stories of 10 of my clients along with my signature Discovery Framework.
For fun, I love reading, sewing, knitting, yin yoga, afternoon tea, opera and movies. I live in Williamsburg, Virginia with my spouse, Wilson Abney, and the cat who runs our life, Maisy Jane.
Ever get discouraged and feel like you just can’t count on others? You’re not alone. It’s very common for us to look outside ourselves for approval, acceptance and love. It’s equally common to discover that what we seek can’t be found outside ourselves. What we are seeking is only found by looking within.
Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! 