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With Valentine’s Day nearing, you may be thinking about how to make someone in your life feel loved. While you decorate with your kids or fill out cards to send your sibling or pick out a gift for your partner, I hope you’ll add one more person to that “TO CELEBRATE” list:: you.

Each Monday this month, we’re going to look at some ways to improve the most important relationship in your life—the one you have with yourself. Today, we are getting started with some foundation work.

Understand self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is your decision to not have an adversarial relationship with yourself. It is deciding to interact with yourself not from judgment but from a position of, at least neutrality, and, ideally, support. If you do something that maybe doesn’t turn out the way that you had hoped, the first place you go to in your mind if you are operating from a place of self-acceptance isn’t one of criticism but one of celebration for trying and then of reflection to gather insight. You think, “what can I learn from this”; not “I am so dumb!”

When we start operating from a place of self-acceptance, we become empowered. The irony is that when we have a more negative view of ourselves, it becomes a self-defeating prophesy, we are less successful and happy because we don’t believe that we can be successful or deserve to be happy. When we shift our mindset to self-acceptance, we become more empowered because we have a greater belief in our abilities and we lose the paralysis over what happens if it doesn’t work out. Here is the reality: if something that you do doesn’t work out the way that you thought it would, nothing about you changes. You gain information about that thing and maybe even how you should approach things like that. But who YOU are?  Still just as valuable, important, and worthy.

Decide. The first step in your self-acceptance journey is making the decision to have a healthier relationship with yourself.  “I have decided to have a healthier relationship with myself” is one of the most powerful mindsets you can embrace because it means you are ready to notice what you are doing that is not healthy and call yourself on it. In order to really claim that you are going to make a shift, I encourage people to sit down and first start by writing that statement at the top- I have decided to have a healthier relationship with myself. Now, reflect on what practicing self-acceptance will provide for you—because that is where the motivation comes from, from realizing that a different way of relating to yourself might really have some incredible things to offer you.

Here are some questions you can answer:

If I were more self-accepting, I would…

Self-acceptance is an opportunity to…

When I think about being more self-accepting, I am most excited about…

I want to be more self-accepting because…

Break up with your frenemy. So many of us have that internal voice in our head that provides a running commentary on everything we are doing wrong. And that voice really does become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we cling to that voice because of fear, because of a lack of confidence, because we think it will eventually motivating. But if you take an honest look at the situation, the voice is not serving you. It has done nothing to help you so far. Why do you think it will start now?

Letting that critical voice go takes practice. When the voice says its awful thing, I want you to respond, “I am not talking that way to myself anymore” and then counter it with a positive thought.

Breaking up with this voice means not just breaking up with it when it’s in your head but also stopping those things you say out loud like, “Do I look fat in this?”, “I need to lose 10 pounds” or sitting down with your girlfriends and picking everything apart. You have to stop all of the critical conversations that are going on in your life from the ones in your head to the words you speak. Negativity never serves us.

Pay attention to how your body feels not looks. Sometimes people wonder if practicing self-acceptance is a free pass to not take care of yourself and that’s not it at all. Your body is your vehicle for this life. It is what allows you to experience joy and love and every good thing you have had in your life. Moreover, you have a gift that you are meant to give this world and though it has nothing to do with how your body looks, your body is what will allow you to deliver that gift to the world in some way. So you have to take care of it—by giving it the water, movement, sleep, self-care, stress relief, and nutrients it needs. Practice healthy self-care not because it might change the way your body looks but because it allows your body to serve you better.

Ignite yourself. Now that you have really diminished your self-criticism and are embracing some well rounded self-care, it is time to start thinking about what you are passionate about and how to be on purpose because the reality is that you won’t have time to be consumed with your body when you are consumed with what you want to offer the world. So, if you already have a passion, really immerse yourself in it and figure out if there is a way you are meant to offer it to the world. If you don’t, begin to look for one. Ask friends if you can join them as they do something they love. Recall what you loved at other points in your life and reengage in those passions. Pay attention to find the activities where time slips away and create an emphasis on that in your life.

Want even more support for your journey?  Seal Press is offering the e-book version of Beautiful You for $2.99 until 2/6 (along with 4 other great books). This daily practice will open your heart to yourself.  

We begin with an idea.

A little shimmer of a thing.  A hunch that maybe if we try X or Y or Z it will have meaning for us.  It will help us transcend or get to know ourselves or blossom.

We stretch out to it, awkward and unsure and shaky.  So shaky.  And in that stretching it might feel like something vaguely familiar.  Like something we are supposed to know or do or try or consider.  It might feel like it could be home for us if we just keep reaching for it.

So we decide to practice it.  To keep reaching for it.  To be open for what it offers.

Sometimes, we are only open to part of what it has to offer when we start.

Like when we take up yoga and we want the stretch and strength from it but maybe we aren’t yet ready for it to stretch our brain, for it to change how we show up in the world.  Maybe we aren’t yet ready for it to transcend us.  And then days or weeks or years later, we become open not just to what pigeon pose can do for us but what yoga can do for us.  We embrace the totality of the practice.  Yoga becomes how we live rather than just something that we do.

It can be like that with anything we practice—yoga, lovingkindness, running, openness, hope, engagement, community, commitment, wholeheartedness, presence, cycling, art, love.

And the idea with practice, for me, is that it is a consistent state, not a destination.  With everything, motherhood, writing, teaching, running, yoga, barre, cooking, being community, leading, creating, being in a relationship- EVERYTHING, I feel like I am still practicing.  Like there is still so much to learn, to consider, to tweak, to receive.

And so I keep practicing. I identify new practices.  I put my whole heart into exploring even while evaluating which practices are working for me and which ones aren’t.

Today, I am looking at my very best practices from 2014, ones that fed my well in some way and helped me operate from a more whole, happy, healthy place.  Next week, I’ll share what I am choosing to practice in 2015.

Embracing presence over productivity.  You might recall that this was something I really identified as a shift that I wanted to see for myself mid-way through 2014.  I was tired of ALL of the doing and just wanted to be more, especially because the me I most appreciate is the one who is present with and for people and experiences and not hyper-productive.  Just making this choice really shifted my mindset and made me linger with an idea rather than just barreling through because I had it (I am never short on ideas which means that I could technically never be done with crossing things off my list).

Stopping the work bleed.  Often, I ended the day with my laptop in my lap in bed and I started my day the same way.  When I decided to focus on presence rather than productivity, I let that go for the most part (with the very rare exception—like deadline work).

Morning workouts.  Stopping the early morning work sessions means that I don’t bag my morning workouts anymore.  Instead, I start my day with some awesome self-care—a workout, some tea, breakfast in the quiet of the day.  It is so much better for all of me.

Pure Barre.  One of those common early morning workouts is a barre class.  I would never have thought to sign up for it on my own but when I won a one month pass in a charity auction, I decided that I would go full tilt that month.  And I like it a lot—I love that it is no impact, that it is always a challenge, that it occupies my whole brain so I can’t be off in lala land while I am working out, and that it is total body.  It’s also so different from everything else I have ever done that it remains a novelty which is fun.  I don’t think there will ever be a class where my form doesn’t need to be corrected but I always leave there feeling really proud and satisfied.

Unscheduled Mondays.  This is really a continued practice from 2013, but it is absolutely my second best professional habit after my weekly review so I want to celebrate continuing it.  Not scheduling meetings on Mondays has really made sure that I feel in control and prepare every week rather than reactive and behind.  I get the most urgent things done every Monday and then anything else that week is gravy (in case things hit the fan).  It also lets me hang out in my workout clothes for the whole day which never gets on my nerves.

Tackling my sinus health.  It is terribly ironic that I am writing this while on antibiotics for a sinus infection but, to be fair, I really do have less sinus infections then I used to have.  Before last year, I had a raging sinus infection every 6 weeks.  Years ago, when I had my tonsils out, my surgeon suggested that I also have my sinus cavities shaved (that wasn’t the word he used but it is how I heard it and, hence, why I didn’t do it—BIG MISTAKE) because they are shaped in a way that invites infection.  My chronic allergies + unfortunately shaped sinuses meant constant sinus infections.  That is far more than you want to know about my sinuses, so now I’ll be brief.  I decided to tackle my sinus issues (as much as I have control over) in 2014.  I started oil pulling (basically swishing coconut oil), taking allergy medicine again, decreasing my dairy intake, etc.  Overall, I think I was down to 3-4 sinus infections last year from about 10 the previous year.  Hooray!

Saying hard things.  This year was peppered with super hard, make me slightly sick to my stomach hard conversations.  A lot of times we think it is just easier to let things go unsaid but that is only “true” until the things that go unsaid become too painful to live with in your daily life.  This year, I tried to really have the necessary hard conversations earlier.  Having the conversations didn’t get easier but living life after them sure did.

Audiobooks.  I have loved audiobooks for my time in the car, but got away from them at the end of 2013.  I got back into them in 2014 and “read” so many more books that I wouldn’t have come across otherwise.

 ♦

What were some of your best practices in 2014?