Your year of amazing!
Happy new year everyone! Did you have a fabulous holiday break? We’ve had lots and lots of snow. I’m sure not as bad as back east, but with snow continually on the sidewalks my poor dog, Leila, gets frostbite on her two back paws right about the time we hit the half mile mark in our morning walks. She just starts to look at me funny and then hobbles and eventually sits down in the snow and starts licking her paws. Now she looks at me funny and since that could mean a couple things I wait for the hobble before I pick her up and hold her back paws in my gloves to thaw them out. I never knew that dogs could get frostbite. I’m always learning!
It’s so good to learn new things all the time. Our brains love it. Our brains, love progress. Right now is the most common time of the year when we all think about what improvements we’d like to make in our lives. what if you decided that even if you didn’t change a single thing this year, you’d still be amazing! You’d still be a whole and complete person full of worth just as you are, no improvements necessary. No, losing the last 10, 20, 30 pounds, won’t give you more worth as a human. Finding the love of your life won’t make you more complete. Learning an instrument won’t make you a better person. Being more beautiful, won’t make you more worthy to be loved. So what if you talk too much, it’s okay if you’re insecure, no biggie that your scatterbrained.
Will you take a moment and consider if you’re allowing your desire to progress, mean that there’s something wrong with you? Or that you’re not enough, just the way you are? I never really thought about it this way before, but as I think about my past, a lot of my “resolutions” were because I wasn’t feeling like I was enough. I needed to be more, to feel better about myself. Most of my resolutions weren’t coming from a place of, “you know what, I’m amazing and how fun would it be to see where I could take my potential!”
So I’d start the year and hit it strong in January feeling so good about myself because I was sticking to it, but because I was doing it from a place of low self-worth, I’d not see the progress I wanted fast enough, not meet my own expectations and by February, I was feeling worthless because I failed. In fact, feeling even more worthless because I couldn’t just stick to it and do what looked like was so easy for so many others.
I remember one year I thought I’d be funny and say, this year I resolve to do nothing. I never succeed at them anyways so this way I can guarantee I won’t fail. Now, of course I said this with a hint of shame because I was tired of failing and why set myself up for feeling crappy again. What ultimate results do we get when our actions are being driving by feelings of worthlessness?
If you are someone who thinks when you accomplish something that’ll make you more worthy, please allow me to say with the most sincerity that you are already amazing! Nothing you can do, can change how amazing you are. We all are amazing!
What if all you did this year was realized how amazing you are and how much you have to offer just as you are? How would that change you? How would that change how you think about yourself?
At the very core of each human being is a soul that is priceless. It’s a soul that was created from a higher being out of pure love and connection and that is what makes each one of us amazing! You know how when Oprah does her episode of her favorite things and she shows the product to the audience, and then tells them each that they get one?
I kind of feel like Oprah when I say this, but you get to be amazing, you get to be amazing, and you get to be amazing! You all get to be amazing!
Ok, that was fun! now I see why she does it.
What if your New Year’s resolution was to find all the ways that you are amazing? How do you think that would change how you feel? What kind of crazy positive energy do you think you could top out at? Because all our feelings drive what we do, can you imagine the incredible things you’d do? Again, not to make you a more pure, complete person.
Do you believe that your potential is only limited by your capacity to believe in yourself. I hope you do. A lot of people don’t realize this, but the first relationship that we need to work on in order to show up the way we want is the relationship that we have with ourselves.
Brené Brown says that to feel truly connected we have to feel seen, heard, and valued.
Here’s a question you may have never asked yourself. Do I feel seen, heard and valued from myself? Do you listen to yourself and how you talk to yourself?
How well do you see yourself?
If the opposite of feeling seen means that we feel invisible, unheard and neglected, are you seeing yourself the way that you need to in order to feel connected to yourself? Do you feel like you matter to yourself? What ways do you show yourself that you matter?
How well do you hear yourself?
Do you listen to your wants? To your deepest desires? When you have dreams and desires, do you justify why you can’t do it yet or do you figure out how to make them happen?
How much do you value yourself? Do you value your own opinions or are you possibly more caught up in pleasing others, sacrificing your own well-being because they run right over your own needs or opinions? What you have to say matters. Sometimes we allow someone else’s opinion to be more important than ours because we’re afraid of rejection by them. And it’s possible that could happen. That’s a very human tendency to think that. But when you don’t value your opinion then aren’t you rejecting yourself? Are you being intentional, purposely compassionate, and understanding of what you want your opinion about yourself to be?
What happens when you don’t believe in your amazingness? You don’t fully realize the capacity you have to create a brilliant life. What are your current thoughts about you? Did you know that you get to decide whatever you want to think about yourself? Maybe you think the thoughts you want to think are too much of a stretch. Like you want to think that you’re an awesome, lovable person, but you’ve found too much proof to believe otherwise.
Here’s what you can do: take the thought that you are currently believing in yourself and tweak it just a little bit so it’s easier for your brain to believe. Work on fully believing that and then tweak it again. If the thought you’re thinking about yourself right now is
I hate myself, it would be a stretch for your brain to go to I am worthy of compassion for myself. So we tweak it a little to something that’s believable like:
I am a human.
If we believe that, then we move to
Humans are worthy of compassion.
Maybe I’m worthy of compassion.
I’m considering that I’m worthy of compassion just because I’m human.
I’m worthy of compassion for myself.
Tweaking what you believe just 10% can help your mind on the road to believing new thoughts about yourself. It’s possible you’ve spent many years believing what you do so you just think it’s true. That it’s a fact that you just have to live with. But it’s not true. If you go to the doctors and say, I know I talk too much, the doctor can’t do a blood test and say, Oh, gosh, your suspicions were correct. You’ve tested positive for overtalking. I know, it sounds silly, but we do this do ourselves. Maybe more than one person has told you something about yourself that you don’t like and you take it to mean it’s just a fact. But it’s not, it’s their thoughts that they shared about you.
Have you ever gone to the doctors and they say your overweight? Did you know that that’s also just an opinion. It was a conclusion made by people based on what they thought how much fat is okay to be healthy. Did you know that changes based on what country you live in. And even in my lifetime, in my own country the opinions have changed more than once on what’s healthy and what’s not. If it was a fact, everyone would agree on it.
I’m not saying that doctors don’t have value. They absolutely do! What I’m saying is there’s no upside to believing something that we think is true when it causes us to question if there’s something wrong with us. If it causes us to live into our future fueled by thoughts of inadequacy.
The best question you can ask yourself is, how is that thought making me feel. If you don’t like yourself, whatever the reason, you won’t feel good about yourself. What happens is we don’t act in a loving way and move into our capacity out of love for ourselves. We usually are driven by fuel that holds us back.
Remembering that all your thoughts are optional is where you’ll get the leverage to start living into the next best version of yourself. Not a version that’s more pure or whole or more worthy, just a version that’s like Amber 2.0. Amber is who I am, who I’ve always been at the core, Amber 2.0 is just further refined, living into my potential and realizing how capable I truly am.
My friends. If all you change this year is to start believing that you’re amazing, I promise you, this will be a great year full of amazing new surprises. Your potential is only limited by your capacity to believe in yourself. My hope for you is you truly believe that you are amazing. We’ll see you next time. Remember, my friend, you are loved.
Bye!
