Ten Things I Love About Me? A Lesson In Self-Reflection

As a part of my online workout community, I was asked to complete a mini-challenge: Tell me 10 things you love about yourself. Simple, right? 

Wrong. I stared at the blank screen and could not come up with anything. I stared for a solid 10 minutes. Nothing. How? How I am this positive person who has been killing it recently at work, as a mom, in my workouts, and with my mental health on the upswing. How was it that I couldn’t come up with one thing much less ten that I loved about myself? 

I mean physically, not to toot my own horn, I look pretty dang good but I didn’t love any one part. I like my eyes but is that too superficial? Surely. What about my skills? I can multitask – which is so necessary for motherhood – but to a fault most of the time. What else? What is so great about me? 

This sent me down the rabbit hole. Self-reflection is not something that I’m good at as it usually leads to self-destruction and self-sabotage. I’m so good at self-sabotage that I could easily spend countless hours in this state. I can loathe myself into a deep depression and the vicious cycle in my mind is never-ending. On the outside, I’m smiling, laughing, making jokes, taking my kids to events, spending time with my spouse, and living the dream! But that’s just it, it’s a dream. On the inside, I get very mean and short. I isolate to the best of my ability. I criticize everything and everyone I come in contact with. But most people would never know I’m experiencing this because I keep it bottled up until I can cry naked in the shower where no one can hear or see me. 

How I drag myself out of these depressed states; I have no idea. I have battled with the highs and lows for years. I’ve tried counseling, medication, ignoring it, pulling myself up by my bootstraps, ladies nights with copious amounts of wine, fighting, dancing, exercise, so on and so forth. Some of these obviously worked better than others. I haven’t found my magic key but I have at least narrowed down what starts my spiral and how to work on building a healthy relationship with myself. 

I still find myself asking how is it that we can spend hours and countless amounts of money on self-improvement but not love what we see in the mirror?

How was it so hard for me to come up with ten, just ten, things that I loved about me? More importantly, now that I’m a mother, how was my self-sabotage reflecting on my kids and their love of their own self-image? 

Let me tell you, nothing scares me more than messing up my own kids, especially their mental health. I can see how my parents’ mistakes created deep-seated issues within my own mental health. How can I avoid doing the same to my own children? Often I see people pledge to never treat their kids the way their parents treated them and yet they end up with eerily similar outputs.

Although I don’t have the answer to this question yet, I have come up with a few ideas. First, I try to speak kindly to my children and tell them I love them every day. Second, I show my children my healthy relationships with others, from their father and grandparents to my closest friends. Finally, I show them that I love myself. I show them pride and love with what I have accomplished each day, even if it’s something as small as crying humbly in front of them. I show them all my emotions so they can learn what each means and how to confront their own, similar emotions in a healthy way. I show them how to build a healthy relationship with themselves and that it’s ever-changing.

After 2 days of thinking about it, here are the 10 things I love {or at least like more than others} about myself.

1. Work ethic. 
2. My abs. {Yaaas queen, I worked hard for those!}
3. My eyes. 
4. My multitasking skills.
5. The fact that I can cook. {I never realized so many people have never been taught to cook.}
6. My “introvertedness”.
7. My independence. 
8. My ability to love and love hard. It might take you a while to get into my heart but once you do, I’ll love you fiercely.
9. Graduating from VMI.
10. Making a commitment to this program!

Share it with us: what are 10 things you LOVE about yourself?