Loving Yourself: 3 Ways to Love Your Flaws and Take On the World

You wake up in the morning, stumble out of bed, and go to the bathroom. Wiping the sleep from your eyes, you look in the mirror. “My God! I am gorgeous!” you say to yourself. “Wow! I’m practically a movie star!”  

Doesn’t happen this way, you say? Don’t worry, you aren’t alone. 

While I am being somewhat silly about the positive feelings you should have toward yourself, I am completely serious about learning to love the body you are in. Sure, you may want to change some aspects of yourself, but you can decide to love them even while you are changing them. 

In fact, I wouldn’t just say that you can decide to love them, but that you need to.

By loving what you are at the moment, you begin a process of holistic change. You send out a more positive energy to all around you, which allows you to attract better people to your life. You gain confidence in yourself, which allows you to accomplish more and to stand up for yourself when you should. 

In effect, loving yourself as you are at the moment is the key to changing yourself into all that you dream to be. 

If you find that difficult - or practically impossible - to imagine, try these simple exercises to begin flexing that “self-love” muscle:

1. Look yourself in the eye in the mirror and say, “I love you.” 

Now, this does seem easy, but it can be a horribly difficult task for some. Go easy on yourself. If, as you try this, you feel like running away or breaking the mirror, take a deep breath. Walk away from the mirror. Calm yourself for a moment. Come back. Look in your eyes again, and try, “I am okay with myself.” Once you are okay with being okay, try moving to, “I like myself.” Work on that for a bit. Finally, move to “I love myself.” 

2. Change negative self-talk to positive self-talk.

Focus on how you talk about yourself throughout the day. Do you comment on your “love handles” or joke about your “batwings?” How often do you put yourself down during the day?  

Don’t finish a negative or self-deprecating comment. Instead, stop yourself and change the comment to a positive one - or, at the very least, a neutral one. 

Bringing your awareness to the hate you direct at yourself is a critical (and often surprising) step in developing self-love and a positive body image.

3. Dress in a way that makes you feel good.

Do you find yourself stuck in a rut of dressing in yoga pants or sweatshirts? Has it been a long time since you put any care into how you look?  

If so, you are only reinforcing a negative feeling about yourself. By changing the way you dress and taking some time to look good, you will begin to take more pride in yourself. 

It’s just about an instant cure to a negative body image.

Find clothes that make you feel good. Iron that shirt you love or put on those terrific heels - even if you don’t have anywhere particularly important to go. Take a few minutes to dab on cologne, put on make up, or do your hair. 

It is amazing how much better you will begin to feel, and even more importantly, when you take care of yourself, you send a signal out that you are worthy of even better from life. This begins a cycle that allows you to develop a better sense of self.

Who knew that clothes had such power? 

Go out and love yourself today. You are one of a kind! 

Financially Stuck: Are Old Beliefs Keeping You Poor?

Are you truly open to allowing money to come to you?

While you may be screaming “yes!”, hold your horses. Just like any relationship, you have a personal relationship with money, and so, you have a power balance going on: money can control you, you can control money, or you can have a balanced and flowing relationship with it, allowing it to come in and out of your life with love and trust. 

So, while you may say that you are absolutely open to having money, your beliefs about money may tell a very different story. In fact, you may have an internal conflict raging within you—on one hand, seeing money as evil or bad, and on the other, seeing it as your very life-blood to achieve what you desire in life. You fear both having too much, believing that you must do something unethical to earn it—or having too little, fearing an unfulfilling, impoverished existence. It really is a mess—and it absolutely blocks your ability to allow money to flow to you easily. 

Answer the questions below to help you to learn how to create more balance and joy in your relationship with money. By opening yourself to a healthier experience of your finances, you can also open yourself to a better, more fulfilling, more supported life. 

The You Whisperer Questions: 

1. Do you see money as evil or bad? Were you told that “rich people must be bad or unethical?” How do you think this affects your relationship with money?
2. Do you not feel like you deserve money? Do you feel that a spiritual or good person doesn’t need financial wealth? Where does this belief come from?
3. Have you ever been able to do something good with your money? For instance, have you given to a homeless shelter, saved a dog from a pound, or given to a charity that helps starving children? How did that make you feel about the power of money? 

How to Feel Safe: Dealing With Anxiety by Creating Your Own Security and Peace of Mind

Perhaps the greatest stress that you will ever face is the impression that you cannot protect yourself from life itself.

I have certainly had moments like this. A few years ago my husband and I went through two hurricanes, completing renovations on our house, putting it on the market, a cross-country move, and the death of my beloved grandmother all in a four week period (actually, all but one hurricane happened in one week). I have never been so stressed out in my life, and I began to notice that I was constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next disaster to happen. 

To top it off, I found I had gained about ten pounds in a week, although I hadn’t eaten a thing in days.

I felt exposed and unable to protect myself, and this frequency began to create the physical reactions that I was having. My fight or flight response was so overstimulated that my adrenal glands burned out. My mind was saturated with the idea that life was unsafe, so I manifested padding all over my body to at least soften the energetic blows.

If you carry excess weight in your mid-section, ask yourself why you feel unsafe. Very often, you will feel the answer in your gut immediately. Perhaps you have been hurt by someone close to you, and you are afraid of being hurt again. Maybe you are afraid of being rejected for who you are. Or, perhaps you are at a point of chaos in your life, and you feel that the blows will never stop. Any threat against your physical, emotional, or spiritual self can trigger an imbalance in the core of your body.

While you may feel that you cannot protect yourself, this is never true. As the co-creator of your life, you have the ability to create your own security and your own safe space, even in threatening situations. After all, the more that you identify a particular situation (or all of life) with the expectation, “I am not safe,” the more that you will trigger a fight or flight response in your body. 

Instead, when you find yourself feeling that you are being threatened in any way, bring your awareness to your breath. You will likely notice that you are either holding your breath or it is speeding up, so choose instead to take deep, slow breaths. Breathe in to the count of 5; breathe out to the count of 7. By doing this, you communicate to your mind that you are calm—and your body remains calm. Then, in this calm state, repeat to yourself the new expectation, “I create my own security. I am safe. I am protected.” If you would like to, you can place your hand over your stomach as you do this, further reprogramming your mind to connect your physical state with your mental reality. 

The more you practice this, the more you create new neural programming that you really are safe and that you are able to protect yourself. It also sends out an important message to life itself that you are empowering yourself to choose better, safer, and happier experiences for you. 

Remember, you DO have the power to change your anxious, scared reactions to life, and by so doing, to change the kind of life you have. 

The Flow Method Questions and Actions:

1. Can you remember when you began feeling anxious? Was it during a particularly stressful time, or was it due to a traumatic event?

2. In what situations do you feel most unsafe or anxious? When you are in those situation (or just before), remember to use the calming breath above. Then, in a calm state, repeat to yourself, “I am safe. I create my own security.” If you get anxious during the event, remember to go back to the calm breath. Again, putting your hand over your stomach helps to ground your mind and your body and makes an important connection for retuning your reaction in these situations.

Make sure to get your free 35 minute Healing and Transformation Meditation and free Healing Light Meditation for use during chemotherapy by signing up below!

Do your good deed today! Share this article with those it can help (and thank you in advance for doing so!) 

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness, But Happiness Might Buy Money: 3 Ways to Be Happy and Prosper

You may have heard the phrase “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” 

Of course, when you are in a job that you hate or are just barely struggling to keep food on the table, this seems like an impossibility. How in the world are you supposed to do what you love, when you would risk everything to do so? After all, you have so little now!  

I know it is scary, but there are ways to make a transition to loving your work and making more money an easy and painless process.  

A major roadblock to doing what you love is the common belief that work should be hard and dissatisfying. After all, if you hate your job, it makes it okay to be paid well for it, right?  

Wrong. You can love your work and make a good living doing so—in fact, you should be doing this. Best of all, you can start this process now with your current job, and then allow yourself to easily flow into a new job, if that is what you desire. 

To do so, follow these 3 steps:

1. Imagine the kind of day you would like to have. 

First, start to see your current job as what you make of it. 

Do you go to work each day expecting to have an awful day with a terrible boss and horrible customers? Most of us do, but this is obviously not going to create a job that is even mildly enjoyable for you. Instead, I would like you to use visualization each morning to imagine the kind of day that you would like to have. Imagine what the day would be like if you had an absolutely amazing, fulfilling day.  

How different do you feel at that moment, in that kind of day, than you normally do? Connect with this positive feeling, and stay with it all day.  

If you begin to find yourself falling back into your old way of feeling about work, take a minute or two to close your eyes and reconnect with the positive feeling. You will be literally amazed at how much better your day will be if you begin to cultivate this little practice each morning. You might just find that while it may not be the job of your dreams, it is a job that you can enjoy.   

2. Create the positive work (and money) experience you desire. 

Now that you have a positive feeling about work, begin to take a real look at your options with this particular job, and what you truly want to do in life. To your surprise, you may have found that when you change your expectations about your current job, you actually have such a positive experience during work that you truly do love it. If so, you can make the decision to stay—you are in a good situation that is fulfilling to you. You will likely begin to have more and more positive experiences that will bring you all that you desire from your work, including more money and even promotions, if that is what you desire. 

However, you may have found that this job just truly does not fit either who you are as a human being, or your dreams and desires for yourself. By observing this job from a new attitude, you may have realized that you are compromising yourself and your beliefs by doing the work that you do. At this point, it is time to leave this job. Remember, if you live to 80 years of age, you only live 29,200 days. Why waste any more of them in a job that you hate? 

Of course, you certainly can make the decision to stay, but you will likely be doing so out of fear or obligation, and that will repetitively send a signal to your mind that you are expecting more of the same—and more of the same will flow to you, depleting both your energy and your creative self. 

You truly do deserve better. I know that the immediate response might be fear—fear of the unknown, fear of how to get a better job, fear of the effect that this decision will have on others. Just put that aside for a moment. 

Ask yourself: What kind of job have you always dreamed of? What kind of job has called to you? What do you love doing? Put together a clear picture of what you think that you would like to do for work. Just like creating a perfect partner, write down a list of what would make a perfect job for you, and believe that you can bring that job into being. As always, refuse to settle for less than what you truly desire. 

How would you feel each day if you had a job that fulfilled you like this? Connect with that feeling, and know that a job matching this feeling is flowing to you now, and with it, all the money that you desire.   

3.  Take action to make your dream a reality. 

Visualization and meditation is a wonderful tool to connect you with the job - and prosperity - of your dreams, but do remember that you also need to take action to create opportunities for yourself as well. Reach out to people that might be able to help you. Research job openings. Apply for work. Begin writing your book or creating that business if that’s what you dream of.  

Whatever it is, get going. I could dream of writing this article all day long, but without actually pulling out my computer and typing, it would not come into reality.

Align your thoughts, words, and actions to be happy and prosperous!