How to Start Celebrating Yourself Every day
Dear friends,
Happy International Women’s Day!
While this is a beautiful day for celebrating women worldwide, we tend to overlook something very important: celebrating ourselves!
Celebrating yourself can be as elaborate as you want it to be or as simple as this life-changing self-gratitude practice: take two minutes to write down three things you appreciate about yourself (e.g. your abilities, skills, talents, personality traits, perspectives, and behaviors).
In fact, this is a practice that I would encourage you to incorporate into your daily routine.
We all know how powerful practicing gratitude can be (it improves well-being, life-satisfaction, reduces stress, and builds resilience). I’ve found that practicing self-gratitude can also help transform our relationship with ourselves and boost our confidence.
This doesn’t mean that you avoid your areas of growth or stop growing. On the contrary, it can help you appreciate your growth, celebrate your small wins along the way, and make more sustainable changes.
But practicing self-gratitude can be a bit challenging in the beginning.
We generally have no problem pointing out all of our weaknesses and imperfections, but when it comes to identifying our strengths and qualities that we can appreciate about ourselves, we may feel silly and uncomfortable. Some of us may find it even difficult to come up with just one thing that we can appreciate about ourselves. If this is you, please be patient and kind to yourself. This is all simply because we haven’t trained our minds to look at ourselves in this way.
We can change this, starting today!
If you are already keeping a gratitude journal, I invite you to make the following additions/modifications to your practice, and if you are new to this, here is a great place to start your daily entry:
Three things I feel grateful for in my life today are…
Three things I appreciate about myself today are…
Today, I choose to lovingly show up for myself by…
The third prompt in the journal entry is to remind you to practice connecting with your needs and honoring them on a daily basis (feel free to review this previous letter for a simple guide).
You may even want to start by listing just one thing you feel grateful for about your life and yourself and build up from there. For example:
One thing I appreciate about my life today is that I have the privilege of connecting with you all
One thing that I appreciate about myself today is my positive outlook on life
Today, I choose to lovingly show up for myself by giving myself some space to unplug and enjoy a long walk on the beach
With every entry, you are building new neural pathways, retraining your mind, and improving how you see and feel about yourself. Remember that the key is consistency. And the more you fill yourself up with self-gratitude and loving-kindness, the more you’ll be able to authentically share and give to others.
I really hope you celebrate, appreciate, and lovingly show up for yourself today and every day.
And please share this reminder with all the fabulous women in your life.
Happy International Women’s Day everyone!
Sending you so much love,
Maliheh