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You want to hear words of love, of affirmation, of caring, of pride in you and your accomplishments. It’s wonderful when other people give them to us, but I want you to start giving them to yourself.
I can hear you now, What??? Why??? This sounds weird and maybe a little disturbing. Where’s that unsubscribe button?
Give me a minute here. Because as you give these words and thoughts to yourself you will become less dependent on what others think about you, the good and bad stuff. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do is worry less about what other people think?? Give it a shot, I think you may find that you really actually like it.
I know that love letters have romantic or even sexual connotations, but they don’t need to be. But you definitely need to be in a love affair with yourself. A self-love affair.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.
Oscar Wilde
Use your journal to write a love letter to yourself
This is where journaling is so helpful. I hope that you already have a journaling practice. If you don’t I heartily encourage you to start one. It’s okay to start small, maybe 5 minutes a day. But please start. I like to spend some time first thing in the morning and just write kind of a stream of consciousness before I am even all the way awake and all my filters go up. My goal is to not let my pen stop moving for 30 minutes.
But a couple of times a month, during my morning journaling time I will write a love letter to myself. I compliment myself on my brains, my looks, my hopes, and dreams, how I am not in the least bit practical and am always dreaming up some new project to try or a plot for a book I don’t ever really intend to write. All of the things that I love, but that seem like liabilities to the rest of the world, ahem, the real world if you will.
Save this love letter and reread it to yourself when you need to feel affirmed. Do it every so often and see how your love affair with yourself changes over time. Once you start getting confident in noticing how amazing you are in the privacy of a love letter, start letting the people around you know of your accomplishments. Teach them how to treat you, how to praise you. “I really rocked tonight’s lasagna and it’s the first time I’ve made one.”
Your confidence will grow, and the people in your life will enjoy being around you more. I mean I think we all enjoy being around that supremely confident person who just glows. They enter a room and everyone else feels elevated just be being near that person. You can be that person!!!
Confidence: the key to success
It will be great to have your friends and family notice the new, amazing you. But you will know the key to your success is that you do not need validation outside yourself. You don’t need it because you are giving it to yourself in wave after wave of self-love and it all starts with an early morning love letter:
Dear Me…
