Acceptance

As the year draws to an end we all start thinking about new beginnings and resolve to make change in our lives. Many of us will set goals for the coming year, unreasonable goals. Goals are a great thing and I am not against making our lives better but what I think many of us do is pressure ourselves and when we fail we feel even worse. No matter if you want to take off those extra pounds or read a grocery-list of books you have to be realistic in order to succeed. Accepting and loving who you are is a great way to start.

With TV, movies and the internet we are bombarded with images that have the ability to make us feel physically inadequate if we feel a few pounds heavier than those images. Many of us have felt ‘unpretty’ at least once in our lives, how can we learn to be happy with who we are and excited about the person we look at in the mirror everyday?

• What IS pretty? Is pretty an image in the mirror or our inner character? I believe the latter is the correct choice. We live in a world that can be so ugly at times and making the world a better place by raising children who are quality people is a beautiful thing. We should focus our attention on our inner workings rather than worry if we will fit into our size 8 jeans—or whatever your ideal size might be.

• Learning to Love. Learning to love the person inside is easy to say but harder to do when you have spent years hating your image. After I had my 2nd child I had gained more weight than I might have wanted. Getting it off was impossible because I was working full-time while trying to be a wife and mother. Gym-time was the farthest thing from my mind.

What is your ‘yardstick’ that you measure yourself against? Are you looking at images on TV? Magazines? Or are you looking at the quality of your life? Do you measure yourself by the ‘stuff’ in your life or by the ‘stuff’ inside of your skin? How are the relationships in your life? Do you measure your worth by how many friends you have or by the quality of the friends that are in your life? What will be your heritage when you’re no longer on this earth? Will you leave behind a lot of meaningless clutter or will you leave behind character and integrity that others will want to follow?

This year resolve to accept yourself for who you are and love that person within before you set-out to do anything else. Try to wake up every morning and learn something new. Try to be a better person everyday and live your life from the inside out.