I am strong.

I am intelligent.

I am beautiful.

I am confident.

I am fun.

I am kind.

I am brave.

I am important.

Let’s face it I’m simply amazing!

How often do you speak to yourself this way? How often do you feel really great about who you are? We often find it a lot easier to dish out these words to a friend. When a friend looks great do you tell her? If your partner is putting themselves down do you give them a pep talk? I know I do. If I think one of my friends looks beautiful I don’t hesitate to tell her. When my friends do something really kind or achieve something great I will let them know how kind, smart, clever they are!

The thing is when it comes to giving ourselves compliments it can feel a little weird, fake, silly or just undeserved. But don’t we all have great qualities that deserve complimenting? How hard would you find it to say,

“let’s face it I’m simply amazing?”

I know for me, even writing it as the title of this blog felt a little strange. For the longest time I found it almost impossible to compliment myself. Even after receiving a university degree I felt like a fraud! I knew I had passed and I knew that I had actually done exceptionally well, but I couldn’t admit that to myself. I was chatting to a lady one day who commented on how intelligent I was and I actually told her she was wrong. She then questioned me saying, “but don’t you have a degree?” I had to answer yes, but I actually felt uncomfortable admitting it. She was blown away by how hard it was for me to take a compliment.

It was a pivotal moment for me, I realised how hard I was on myself, and decided I needed to start accepting that I am smart. It isn’t easy to believe positive things about yourself when you have been feeding negative statements to yourself for years, sometimes a lifetime, but it is possible with time, effort and adjustment. Trust me if I can say “I am smart”, then you can change your negative thoughts around too!

Whether it is your looks, weight, body image, intelligence, how fun you are to be around, or how loveable you are, you can change your negative beliefs into positive ones!

How? With patience, time and persistence. Baby steps are fine. You are not going to read this, say a positive affirmation and wake up tomorrow feeling like the most confident woman in the world, but you can do this!

Make a list, write down some of your core beliefs about yourself. Positive and negative. Positives may be,

  • I have gorgeous eyes
  • I cooked that amazing meal that everyone loved
  • I am good at drawing (writing, gardening, sport etc)
  • people often laugh when I tell them a joke
  • I’m good at my job.

Then list some negative things you tell yourself.

  • my thighs are too wide
  • I’m too skinny
  • I am not intelligent enough
  • no one finds me interesting
  • I have nothing to offer those people

Start by repeating the  list of positives you have written down out loud to yourself once a day. Each day add an extra positive to your list, and look at your negatives and take one off your list. Be honest with yourself, admit if it is difficult, but keep working at it. Keep a journal, or some kind of record of your changing list. 

I challenge you to once  day say to yourself these two statements

“I deserve to love myself”

and

“I matter, I am important, and I will be kind to myself today”

I want you to say these statements every day, write them down next to your bed, on the fridge, keep them at your desk, or on the bathroom mirror. Somewhere you will see them daily. Do this every day for two weeks! Commit to this and see how much easier you find it after a week, then two weeks. Try complimenting yourself when you catch yourself doing something nice for yourself, or when you are feeling good about yourself. And try giving more compliments to others as this will make it easier to not only feel good about who you are, but also it will make it easier to receive  a compliment yourself.

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Love-yourself-first

You deserve to feel smart, confident, brave, sexy, empowered and strong. So why not accept my challenge and take a step to becoming the amazing you that you are meant to be!

Thanks for joining me, love Mackenzie xx

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