In my career as a Continuous Improvement leader, I always saw gaps and opportunities to improve. That's what I was paid for. I focused on seeing problems, proving they were indeed problems and leading teams to find solutions, and we would create a new process that fixed the gap.
I was good at what I did because it came naturally. I was raised with high expectations for outcomes, and it came in the form of how to eat properly, how to dress, how to wear my hair, what games I could play, how long I could play, who I could play with., how to think and behave ... At one point in my life, that was too much control and not enough freedom to be me. I played the victim of this controlled upbringing, but I later realized I had strengths from this.
Instead of criticizing myself and feeling not good enough, I shifted from victimhood to empowerment. I didn't realize this overnight, but once I decided to turn my pains into strengths, my perspective changed, and I became aware of what I loved most about myself.
I was listening to a radio interview when driving the other day, and this young woman was talking about how she used her technological knowledge and her artistic side and create an AI version of herself as an eight-year-old. She was motivated to do this as she was working on her inner child. It was fabulous, the beautiful things she was saying about herself. In listening to this, I was motivated to write about how we need to take the time to identify what we love about ourselves and celebrate us.
Horses have an accurate understanding of who we truly are. They never judge, and they help us find the best of ourselves through their Medicine. It truly is magical to witness their work and to be their partner. See yourself through the eyes of a horse. These divinely created beings have an awareness of life most people don't have. And we think we are the higher beings?
Take a sheet of paper or write in your journal everything you love about yourself. Stretch to go into the criticisms you say to yourself and turn those into compliments, turn those into empowerment statements. If this helped, think about how the people who love you would describe you as. Or go to a mirror and look at yourself as an eight-year-old. What words of love would you say to yourself? Write it all down.
Then pick a way for you to celebrate your greatness. Something you would love to offer yourself as a gift. It could be a long bath with oils, candles, soft music. It could be a drive to the river or lake side with a small picnic. It could be as big or as small ... it doesn't matter the size, it is about doing something for yourself that will highlight YOU.
Make it a practice to have self-compassion, self-love, and have an internal language that supports this. Bring awareness of your self-talk, a make a decision to speak with love and kindness to yourself. This will create higher vibrational frequencies and your outer world will start matching this vibration.
Love, Light & Blessings
Frannie Chara & The BWH Herd