.: Falling in love with myself :.

Sometimes when we are on a journey we experience pain. It comes in many different ways. Physical. Emotional. Psychological. And the worst part is that it will undoubtedly come at you from the middle of nowhere.

This past week I have been dealing with a few different kinds of pain. I have been trying so hard to eat right an exercise and I have been doing very well. I even lost 1 pound so far.. I know.. 1 pound seems like nothing to some of you but 1 pound gone is one step closer to my overall goal of being healthy. Unfortunately I have had a major setback with an injury from my Pilates class.. It caused severe pain from my hip to my foot and felt like a numb burning sensation (like when your foot falls asleep) all the way down my leg for about 2 1/2 days. I am still babying it but it IS getting better.

Somethings that I have learned from this is that I am not as tough as I think I am and that I have to take this journey at a slower, healthier rate. I can't push myself beyond my own physical limitations. I also learned that I set so many unrealistic expectations for myself. I am extremely hard on myself when I can't do something. Recently I was reading in a magazine about living with your whole heart. It really struck a chord with me. Have I been living with my WHOLE heart? and what does that even mean? A couple of quotes that have stuck out to me from that article are:

"no matter what gets done and what gets left undone, I AM ENOUGH!"

" I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am BRAVE and WORTHY of LOVE and BELONGING!"

One concept that I had never thought of before is SELF COMPASSION!

Self compassion basically means that you are as compassionate with yourself as you are with other people. You would never tell someone that they suck or that they are ugly or imperfect. You would never dare tell someone that they are a failure just because they couldn't do something. So why one earth is it OK to tell yourself that? It's not!!! I have decided that I am going to be more compassionate towards myself and strive to fall in love with myself again. There have been glimpses of true love of self before. Like when I was on my mission. I felt like I could do anything. Be anything. I felt good about who I was and what I was doing. I want to get back to that kind of confidence. I will get back there. So this journey is more of self discovery than anything else. Care to join me? Let's fall in love with ourselves and be proud of the women (and men) that we were created to be.