“Be good to yourself
‘Cause nobody else
Has the power to make you happy.”

-George Michael

Good Monday morning friends,

I have been thinking, do you have insecurities? About how you look, what you sound like, what your vocation is, how your children behave, or how you show up in this world?

As a woman who has just moved into her fifties, I have a lot to look back on. I remember when I went to Mexico for the first time on a spring break. I was 24 years old and I have pictures of myself in the blue Caribbean ocean. Wearing a bathing suit and a black bulky cover up. Thinking back, there was absolutely nothing wrong with my body. I don’t know if I’d agree with that statement back then. I did not think that I had the beach body that needed to be showcased in the world.

I heard Barbara Streisand be interviewed once. She had a similar realization. She wishes she could go back to her younger self and tell her that she was beautiful and not to have self doubts.

I feel that if we could have compassion for ourselves, accepting ourselves just the way we are, there is such a clarity of mind. We can turn off the chatter: the constant judging, comparing, assessing, giving feedback no one asked for, and trying to create a perfection that we can never achieve.

No one has the power to make you happy.

No one but you.

If you were going to talk to me in Mexico and tell me to take off my bulky cover up, I would resist. See, it is not what others say to us that matters, but what we tell ourselves.

If you could talk to yourself by any voice and could say anything you wanted, what would that be?

You are kind.
You are compassionate.
You are generous.
You are a hard worker.
You can do hard things.
You are reliable.

But the most important thing I want you to practice saying and believing is that:

You are enough.

Just the way you are.

Until you dig deep and believe this thought, you will continue to judge and scrutinize.

Be good to yourself. No one can make you happy. Make an effort and talk to yourself from an older version of you.

I see this in my patients all the time. The idea that they wish they could have taken it easier on themselves.

Here’s my permission to you.

Take it easier on yourself.

You are enough.

You want to have a beach body? Here’s how :

1. Have a body.
2. Take it to the beach.

Boom!

So much love to all of you.