Top 10 Ways to Feel Beautiful Today

Having a hard time in life?  Me to!  Lately I have been depressed and worse…I have also been ecstatic with joy…Neither one is who I am, or is more valid.  Today I want to stack the deck in favor of the joyful, so I will use the following list as my guide.

1. When I second guess myself, I will stick with the initial instinct and tell the second guesser, thanks for trying to protect me, but there is no danger here.

2.  When I have the tiniest of a good feeling I will jump up and down to acknowledge it and feed into it, ask it what it needs to get bigger and to stay around

3.  When I feel anger I will breathe slowly several times and say “I am completely stopping”, “I expect nothing”  “I now focus on____(and name the task)” and “I trust my inner resources”, “I embrace the here and now”

4.  When I begin to slip into time gobblers, or what i call Time-Sucks,  that divert me from my art and important things, I will stop and say “Time-sucks, you suck, I don’t want you yucky yuk” (i.e. Facebook, multiple You Tube videos, trolling on Netflix for that great show I never seem to find…)

5.  When I begin to berate myself for not having gotten farther in my goal (in my case guitar playing) I will think back to where I was 6 months and 1 month ago and be awed by how much better i have become, then continue to practice with loving acceptance of where I am now

6.  I will notice each time I use “either-or” thinking:  Whenever I feel stress, I will ask, what am I thinking now that is forcing me to take one side or the other…and then I will say, there is no black/white, I don’t have to choose this or that, I can rise above both choices unto a higher purpose, that of loving kindness in the here and now.  For me, stress caused by a nagging need to take a side on something is really anxiety about the future, and makes me miss the present moment entirely. I relinquish anxiety about the future

7.  I will let go of the past:  Pictures of things that happened long ago, whether happy or not,  will be swallowed up in the river of now,  will float down the stream with the flotsam and jetsam of all that is, which I call Siddhartha’s river – I have a prior post about this.

8.  I will gently contemplate as the spirit moves me, about what to write in tomorrow’s post, knowing that starting my day writing a post helps me to embrace my inner knowing and that writing these posts is one way I can add more love to the world

9. I will take a pause before eating or drinking anything and ask, is this choice going to make me feel good, while I consume it, and directly after, and an hour later (for me many foods cause me to have pains and such so this is important for me).

10.  I will begin my practice by watching and listening to the masters (my one allowance in the you-tube zone) and embrace this:  When I see great art/music and hear it, the part of me that can enjoy it is also the part that can create it.

I hope some of these resonate with you, readers. If so, share a comment or 2 and thanks for stopping by.