It's hard to live a healthy life if you don't like yourself. You can never be anybody else, half as well as you can be you. If you want to tap your ultimate potential and live a life filled with passion and purpose, learn to succeed at being YOU!
5 Things You Can Do To Succeed At Being You
1. Stop saying or thinking negative things about yourself.
No really just stop it. And if you do, counter it with a positive, not just one positive, but several. The reason for this, is our brain processes negative and positive information differently. We seem to hold onto the negative stuff and forget the positive.
In the book How Full is Your Bucket, the authors use the theory of the dipper and the bucket. It goes something like this… Each of us has a bucket that is constantly emptied or filled, depending not only on what others say or do to us, but what we we say and do to ourselves. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it's empty, we feel awful. Every time we say or think negative thoughts about ourselves (or about others — yes others) we empty a little from our bucket.
Like a cup that runneth over, a full bucket gives us an optimistic outlook and healthy energy.
2. Don't compare yourself with other people.
Pastor Steven Furtick puts it this way, “one reason we struggle with insecurity…we're comparing our behind the scenes to everyone else's highlight reel.”
There is not another YOU in this whole wide world. Embrace who you are. While learning from others' success and failures can help one succeed, comparing ourselves tends to only reinforce a negative self-image.
3. Find something you like to do and do it over and over.
Each and every one of us has something we like to do. What is it that makes you happy when you do it? Identify the things you enjoy and make time to do them. Over and over.
4. Have the courage to be different and deal with criticism.
Be your authentic self instead of a people-pleaser. There are always going to be critics, instead of letting criticism drag you down, use it to fuel your convictions.
I personally have found life to be much easier knowing and accepting not everyone is going to like me or agree with me.
5. Don't let the way another person treats you determine your worth.
Dr. Phil was famous for saying “we teach people how to treat us”. If the people in your life treat you in an undesirable way, figure out what you are doing to reinforce, elicit or allow that treatment. Then set up some boundaries and enforce them.
“The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself.”
~Diane Von Furstenburg
