With so much emphasis on gratitude and how it positively affect our lives, I would like to focus on self-gratitude. When we have self-gratitude, we can appreciate ourselves without any outside influence. It can be difficult to do, but it is one of the most powerful things we will ever do.
There are so many wonderful books and articles that focus on self-improvement. There is only one thing that makes the advice and tools work or not – the user. It’s how the user feels about themself that will determine if the self-improvement technique will work. That is the key to positive change. Gratitude is a powerful attitude that will bring results and self-gratitude can change everything about your life.
We all play the “lets beat ourselves up” game. We replay over in our heads the mistakes we made, regrets we have. We tell ourselves we’re not good enough. It is a self-defeating cycle that is heart breaking. So learning self-gratitude requires that we begin to appreciate ourselves where we are less than satisfied with our choices. It’s time to give ourselves a break already.
One way to do that is to write out a done list. Not the things we need to do, but have already done for ourselves. We are the most important person in our lives. If we fail to recognize the things we do for ourselves, we will be discounting our value.
Always start by being grateful for what is. If we make ourselves a delicious breakfast, acknowledge and feel the gratitude. Write down everything on the list that we’ve done for ourselves, even if it’s finishing the laundry. Also the needed time to refocus and recharge and let the gratitude felt, spread to the other things we do.
Eventually we’ll see our done lists get longer and longer. The magic that happens from having self-gratitude is we will find that we get better at the things we do. As we start to have more appreciation for ourselves there will be less and less beating ourselves up.
As we write our life done list and our daily done list we can get creative and even crazy. No one else needs to see the lists. We will shine in our own excellence.
The Reflective Self 