I feel inspired again and couldn’t wait to get on here to write. It’s been such a great morning. The first thing I noticed when I woke up was this great burst of light coming through the bedroom window, and you know what that means. It’s going to be a bright sunny day in California! The first thing I did, after putting on my glasses of course because I can’t see a thing without them, was grab my phone and go to wordpress.com. I wanted to see what the new post was, if there was one, from A Daily Challenge Blog. To my delight she had posted something, and it was exactly what I needed to hear.

Her challenge for today was to stop the self criticism and instead replace that thought by a compliment. This was meant exactly for me! My post yesterday was all about the self criticism I was feeling, although I hid it very well with the right words. I have to be honest with myself and recognize the reason I didn’t want to write or wasn’t in the mood is because I was being self critical of my writing which made me doubt about posting. But at the same time I didn’t want to avoid posting all together because I made a commitment to myself to the challenge of posting once a day, but my self criticism was making it very hard for me to break through that wall. I realized that I may not always have great writing days and feel inspired, and that isn’t the point of why I’m doing this blog. The point is to share the thoughts in my heart, to communicate through my writing what I’m feeling, thinking, or experiencing, and to practice, because the more I do all that the more positive I’ll feel. And like everything in life it takes time, love, commitment, and effort. All good things take work, it’s up to us to want to put that effort in.

So today I am taking that challenge and when I feel I’m beginning to criticize myself for something, whatever it may be, I’m going to be mindful of the negativity I’m putting on myself and instead replace it with a positive thought or compliment. I’m going to keep this in mind every day, and it doesn’t mean it’ll be easy and I won’t fall victim to my own thoughts at times, but being more aware and mindful will help me. Plus I can’t help and smile when I think of the very true statement that was on A Daily Challenge Blog, that sometimes the very thing we criticize about ourselves is something that another person loves. With that in mind, I’m going to remember to be kind to myself. It comes like second nature to be kind to others and yet I can sometimes forget to apply that same kindness to myself and I become my own harshest critic.

I hope you all have a beautiful day and remember to be kind to yourselves!