I can’t believe that the first two weeks of the year is already over. It’s been a blur. It seems like the longer I’m alive, the faster time passes. It could be because I have so many children, and they make time fly because we’re always having fun. Or something like that.
At the beginning of every year I’m always reminded of the importance of setting goals—not just because I do this pretty obsessively with my business goals but because I do it with every part of my life. In the last two weeks of every year, Husband and I sit together and discuss the things we’d like to do in our business, the things we’d like to do as a family, the things we’d like to accomplish as a couple and the things we’d like to do in our own individual lives.
Some of those things, this year, include taking at least one family trip together outside of Texas, spending at least two kid-less weekends together as a couple, and, for me personally, looking at myself in a mirror without immediately looking away.
That last one is a little weird, right? That’s probably because not all of us struggle with looking at ourselves in the mirror and then immediately looking away. I have a hard time looking in a mirror and believing that what I see is beautiful, so I just choose to look away from the image reflected back at me.
But even if you don’t struggle with that particular thing, there are millions of other individual struggles. Some of us can’t bear to go out in public looking like our world chaotically exploded this morning. Some of us can’t stomach admitting that we’re sort of falling apart right now. Some of us give so much of ourselves away to other people in our lives that we have nothing left for ourselves, and we’re feeling it a little (we’ll feel it more if we keep it up). Some of us hate our hangups—the anxiety, the depression, the manic vacillation between highs and lows. Some of us don’t want to get help, because we think it means we’re a failure.
This year, by making one of my personal goals to look in a mirror without immediately glancing away, I have taken a drastic step to say that loving myself is important. I have never loved my reflection. I have never been comfortable in my own body. I have spent a lifetime trying to attain some idea of perfection in the face and flesh I carry out into the world. I have spent far too much time avoiding my reflection and believing this was perfectly okay.
Loving ourselves is important. It extends to every part of our life. If we learn to love ourselves, we begin to love the people in our lives better. If we learn to love ourselves, we begin to love even the people we’ve never met. Loving ourselves is a force of good in the world. I want to embrace that force and carry it like an enormous blanket of acceptance wherever I move in the world.
But it has to start with me. It has to start with you.
[Tweet “Love starts with me. It starts with you. It starts with loving ourselves.”]
None of us is perfect. We all have pieces of ourselves we’d like to change. But this year, I want to make it my goal to love those unlovable pieces of myself. I want you to make it your goal to love your own unlovable pieces, whatever that looks like for you.
Maybe it means dropping off your kids at school with crazy eyes and ratty hair, because you just walked through the tornado of a morning with children. There is no shame in your mess. Maybe it means taking a good, long, well deserved bath and reading a book without interruption for once. There is no shame in this luxury. Maybe it means calling that therapist your friend recommended. There is no shame in that call.
[Tweet “We’re all worthy of love. We accept that worth by loving ourselves.”]
We are all worthy of love. I know that life doesn’t always make this clear to us or easy to believe, but we are. I am. You are. And sometimes the best thing we can do in this journey to self-acceptance is to make it our goal to love ourselves for 365 days until we can finally look into the eyes of the person staring back at us from the mirror and say, “Yes. She is beautiful, isn’t she?”
I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at my life and my perspective on loving yourself. Every Friday, I publish a short personal essay that includes a valuable takeaway. For more of my essays and memoir writings, visit Wing Chair Musings.
