New Year, new me?

 I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say it will be a new me. I’m the same old me but I do have some things I want to continue to work on, like listening more, but I have made lots of progress over the past year.  Julie Ledbetter posed a question last year in her podcast #EmbraceYourReal that really made me think long and hard. What would you do or be if you loved yourself?  I couldn’t even contemplate that question at first. I was at a complete loss. I had never in my life loved myself. I didn’t know what that even LOOKED like let alone felt like. I struggled for the longest time even wrapping my brain around that question. 

I decided to start by asking myself why I didn’t love myself. I had quite a list. All of my flaws and shortcomings laid bare. But these were shortcomings and flaws I thought I had. If I had asked even one person to list my flaws the list probably wouldn’t have been nearly as long. So why did I have all of these flaws on my list?  Most of those things only mattered to me.

At the end of the day I have a husband who loves me, family and friends who care about me, a job I love and that I’m good at and coworkers and students who depend on me. So why couldn’t I love myself and what would I do or be if I loved myself?  I was making progress but I wasn’t quite there yet. Why do I have all of the above things. What are others seeing in me that I’m not?  At first I thought that they just weren’t seeing my flaws but when you spend 10 months with the same people they see your flaws, trust me. So if they saw my flaws, how could they still love and care about me.  I was perplexed. 

Is it possible that they saw the flaws but didn’t focus on them?  I on the other hand, spent every waking minute focusing on them.  Is the key to loving yourself knowing that you have flaws but not being fixated on them?  If you love yourself does that mean you can’t keep working to make yourself better?  Deep thoughts.  Questions I pondered for at least the last half of the year.  So, on January 1st, I looked myself in the mirror and I said, “I have flaws.  I’m going to continue to work on those flaws so that every day I can be a better version of me than I was the day before.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t love the me that I am today.”

A strange thing happened.  No my heart didn’t grow three sizes that day but as I stared myself down in the mirror I had a strange feeling.  Something that I’ve never felt before.  I had confidence.  I felt confident.  What would I do/be if I loved myself? I’d be confident. After long last I had the answer to the question. I’m not saying that I will have that feeling every day but it is one small building block.  If I keep adding those blocks I’ll really be building something!