Driving with my Hand Brake on...

“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.” I came across this quote this morning and it really stuck out to me. It is so true that being hard on yourself can really weigh you down. It really does feel like driving with the hand-break on. I have been so rotten to myself lately I have exhausted myself. It seems as though every mistake I make I just rake myself over the coals all day long. "Why is my house still messy?", "Why did I eat that?", " Why am I such a bad mom" and so on and on and on and on. Do you ever just need a break from yourself? I have been pretty miserable to be around. I could blame it on lot of things, not enough exercise, eating the wrong stuff, hormones, not enough or too much sleep. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter why, all I know is it has to stop. Whenever I am down on myself my husband always says in a very serious tone, "be nice, that is my wife you are talking about!". He really has a good point. What value do we actually give ourselves? Why are we so afraid to truly love and appreciate who we are. And love us just the way we are. By always trashing on myself I am telling my husband that he made a poor choice in a spouse. I am teaching my children how to treat themselves. I always remember telling my friends " be nice to your person". I have forgotton to follow my own advice.

So this morning instead of laying in bed till 9 or 10 and letting my kids fend for themselves, I decided enough is enough. I pulled my hiney ( not going to remark on how big I think it is,) I pulled my very cute hiney out of bed at 6:30 and got on the treadmill. Did I run my expected five miles? No I did a very good hearted one mile. And I am very proud of that one mile because it broke a week long stretch of putting myself last and laying around all hours of the day. Now I am up, and ready to be a mom. It is amazing how quickly negative thoughts can become such a hard habit to break. And how contagious they are! It also amazes me how much effort and energy I have been putting into feeling down. We should be proud of who we are. A mother or a wife or who ever it is that you are is a precious, often overlooked gift that needs a lot more credit. And I am not talking about credit from the world, I am talking about credit from ourselves!

So today when I get ready for the day, instead of nit picking all my "imperfections", I will simply look at my wonderful self and say a long over due "I love you". And as tempted as I am to apologize for my cheesiness right now, I am not going to. I hope all who reads this takes a moment to appreciate how wonderful you really are and enjoy being you for the day. Try so hard not to compare yourself to anyone else because after all “Why compare yourself with others? No one in the entire world can do a better job of being you than you.” Isn't that the truth? If we spend all our time trying to be like everyone else, we are robbing the world of that one unique you. I am not saying that I wont have more hard days or that I wont catch myself longing for a smaller size or a cleaner house, but I am glad that even if it is just for today, I slapped myself in the face and said "snap out of it!" Love to all, and love to myself!