Tag: self acceptance

The Surprising Benefits Of Staring At The Sun

The Surprising Benefits Of Staring At The Sun

Cranes from dollar bills. Flowers from straw wrappers. Give my daughter something to fold and she probably will. It’s quite a joy watching her create something beautiful from something ordinary.

My origami skills, I’m afraid, leave a great deal to be desired. Although I do feel like I’ve been the one who has been folded.

Life has a way of doing that to us, it’s own version of origami, often folding us without us even being aware we’re being folded. Folded by the critical comments, unhealthy actions, and toxic opinions of others, especially in the formative years of our own self identity. Such folding impacts our experience and expectations, time often turning those folds into deep creases, continuously pressed even deeper into our psyche, reinforcing who it is we tell ourselves we are.

I’ve been folded and contorted into neither a crane nor a flower. I am just me, my final shape yet to be clearly defined. But folding is always a part of our evolution.

My journey into better understanding life and, in particular, my life has been a meandering maze of diving more deeply into me. Yes, I’ve been folded and molded and shaped into who I am today. But is who I am today who I was actually created to be? Like, are the labels and traditions and limitations I’ve accepted as true not actually the truth inherent with my creation?

Questioning something as significant as your identity involves a process of self awareness and examination. Sort of origami in Continue reading “The Surprising Benefits Of Staring At The Sun” →

The Most Important Valentine Of All

The Most Important Valentine Of All

It probably would never work.

My idea for a new holiday.

It would be like Valentine’s Day, but the focus wouldn’t be on expressing our love towards a significant other.

It would be on expressing our love towards our significant self.

It often feels so much easier to extend love outward than it does inward, doesn’t it? To shower others with the cards and the candy and the flowers and the fancy dinners. But to shower our self with such objects of affection?

Probably not.

It’s too bad. Because we are equally worthy to receive from ourself the same love we are far more comfortable giving to others.

Perhaps when asking others to be your Valentine, maybe you could ask yourself as well?

Self love is never optional.

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

Mona Lisa and the Defective Twinkies

Mona Lisa and the Defective Twinkies

All my life they’ve been perfect. Every single one of them. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the package and I saw something I had never seen before.

A defective Twinkie.

Yup.

It was still a Twinkie, but it was a bit misshaped, as if something happened during the baking process and wasn’t noticed by the quality control people. 

How did I know it was defective? Because I know what Twinkies are supposed to look like. I’ve been eating them all my life. This basis of comparison told me this one just wasn’t what it was supposed to be.

Flawed.

Comparison is a necessary component providing a standard by which all others will be judged. It works perfectly well for Twinkies. 

But not so much for humans.

Us humans tend to be surrounded by countless opportunities to compare ourselves to everyone around us, aren’t we? And what we see or think we see has the ability to impact us greatly if we decide to let it.

We are not Twinkies.

Each year over 400 million perfect Twinkies are produced, but there is and will only ever be just one of each of us. Since there is only one of us, each divinely unique, there can’t be another “perfect” version of us out there to compare ourselves to. With that, there is no legitimate basis of comparison between humans simply because another one of us could never exist. Each of us are a singular once-in-forever expression of our Creation. Defects and flaws, logically, can’t ever exist in a human since each of us are the original masterpiece, the one and the only you. There are no defects or flaws in da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” simply because there is only one Mona Lisa. Only one. 

Just like you.

Perfect exactly as you were created to be.

Sure, we all have things we’d like to improve about ourselves. I have quite the list of things I am working on. That doesn’t make us defective or flawed; it simply means we’re evolving and growing.

Growing more into who only we were created to become.

Perfectly.

What A Tomato Can Teach You About Loving Yourself

What A Tomato Can Teach You About Loving Yourself

“Dude…they look weird!”

On a recent trip to Whole Foods I was intrigued by the conflicting comments of two young teens. They had just stopped to look at a display of heirloom tomatoes. One offered his “they look weird” opinion while the other thought they looked “pretty cool”. Funny how two people can look at the exact same tomatoes and see two completely different things.

Which made me wonder…Is there a correlation between what you see when you look at heirloom tomatoes and how you see yourself?

Heirloom tomatoes look dramatically different than what we’ve come to know as traditional tomatoes. Traditional tomatoes are engineered for consistency of size, shape, color, and texture, mass produced to meet the needs of millions. Heirlooms are far more individually Continue reading “What A Tomato Can Teach You About Loving Yourself” →