Self-love. Patience. Trust. Forgiveness. Gratitude.

Every morning, without fail, for roughly the last five years, I have written down my goals (long-term, short-term, professional, personal, etc) and my daily to-do list in a journal. About a year ago, I started writing these words on the first line, because it served as a daily reminder that without them, to me, none of my other goals would be achievable. Self-love is always first and then the rest follow in no particular order, so long as they are all there.

My morning ritual is the most important part of my day. My feet usually hit the floor around 5am without an alarm. I make my coffee. Black. Always black. Sit down (at my desk or on my couch depending on my mood – lately it’s been my couch), grab my word of the day, write it at the top of the page and then continue with my list. The goals always stay the same until one is achieved and then it’s usually replaced by another.
The peace and solitude this time brings before the rest of the world wakes offers me my daily meditation. My mind clears and I can breathe without being interrupted or distracted with the emails, phone calls, and text messages that I am usually inundated with throughout the rest of the day. It allows me time to reflect on events that happened the day before. What I was happy with or not so happy with, how I may have handled them differently or better and to mentally prepare for whatever the day is about to bring.

I am in a constant state of self-improvement. I am not perfect. I don’t know anyone who is. We all have flaws, which makes us human. I have found in the last year, the more flaws you allow yourself to bare to others, the more others are willing to bare their flaws to you. I believe what you put out, you get back (positive and negative). This past year, I started getting a lot more vulnerable with people and letting them in on my flaws. I never intentionally hid my flaws, but I think we all naturally do it out of fear of being judged. However, when I actually put them out on the table for someone to see, rather than people judging, walls got dropped, masks were taken off (insert some COVID-19 joke here), and genuine connection was made. It has been a monumental life lesson for me.

I imagine, this is why we love our animals so much. They don’t judge and we can be 100% ourselves around them. They love us unconditionally (another topic for another day).

In everything that is going on right now, I am seeing a multitude of emotions and reactions. One of the most prominent themes I am seeing is self-judgement (or judgement of others, which frankly, if you look deep enough, I still think has to do with self-judgement).

“I’m not doing enough of this or that…” “Why can’t I get motivated?” “I should…” “Why do I feel like this?” “Look at Susie’s sourdough, I can’t even muster the motivation to shower…”

All of those sentiments have run through my head at least once throughout the course of the past few weeks (except Susie’s sourdough… I couldn’t give a fuck about Susie’s sourdough – Sorry, Susie).

So I revisit and keep at the top of my mind:

Self-love. Patience. Trust. Forgiveness. Gratitude.