Loving YOU

 "Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen."

- Robert Bresson

"To love yourself right now, just as you are, is to give yourself heaven. Don't wait until you die. If you wait, you die now. If you love, you live now."

- Alan Cohen

"The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don't let them put you in that position."

- Leo Buscagli

We all of issues with ourselves...I know I do. You know, the old, "Ugh I wish that I could have hair like hers," or "I'm not smart enough," or "Coach doesn't think I'm good enough" or "I don't have what it takes..." and "I used to be good but not anymore."

Yes, there are too many times where we are down on ourselves- where we come to treat ourselves like an enemy rather than a friend. But as the sayings all point out above, this is YOUR life- not anyone else's. This is YOUR chance to do something great NOT to impress anyone else or make anyone else happy but to do what you enjoy and making a DIFFERENCE in the world.

Too many people go about living to get fame- be the fastest, the smartest, the prettiest, the most popular, etc living for these types of reasons will ALWAYS cause you to, somewhere down the road, not like yourself- You will hit rock bottom because this is living in expectations and expectations can never always be met; therefore, you will be disappointed.

But if you live for the right things than I think you will come to love yourself (not in an egotistical way) and truly be able to shine and help others around you. YOU choose happiness, it does not choose you. Love yourself and appreciate you for you. If you need to make changes to become a better person than do them...but don't be so hard on yourself. If you don't love yourself and enjoy who you are and what you can bring to the table how can you expect anyone else to?

So yesterday was one of the biggest eye openers ever...one of my closest co-worker friends finally opened up to me that she had cancer and that she does not have very much time left. I had NO IDEA that she even had cancer because she hid it so well. She lives her life with such grace and such happiness that I would never ever have guessed it.

When she told me that she may not be able to come to work anymore starting next month it broke my heart- she stated that she regrets the days she worried about what to wear, getting a document in on time, what people thought, how to get thinner, how to get a guy etc. She told me that now she worries about leaving her grandchild who desperately needs a mother. It made me realize that the things I currently fret and worry about are nothing compared to what she has to worry about.

Conversing with her also made me think about how I want to live my life...We are ALL going through pain and we can all think that our life sucks if it is not going the way we had planned but in reality this current situation is all we have right here...right now and we are ALIVE. We are ALIVE and we have a duty to use this livliness to benefit ourselves and others around us. By this I mean that we take on the daily challenge of not wishing for something else but embracing where we are at in life and using every opportunity to learn more about ourselves and others. To discover weaknesses and turn them into strengths, to encounter new dreams and dispose of the old that are no longer working, to grasp a person walking by to tell them that they are beautiful.

We only get one chance to live- We all know that but how soon do we forget every day to actually live? There is a song out there with the line of "Everybody dies but not everybody lives." I love this because even though you are alive are you really living? Are you taking every chance you can to experience this gift or are you wasting it away with worry, anxiety, selfishness, or depression? If you feel like your life sucks GET UP and MOVE ON- Because your life may be challenging but it does not suck- for the sake of yourself and everyone else around you make a mental and emotional change to get out of self pity and LIVE.