Good Morning from Maine! #Gratitude to all!
Today's Best You Daily Inspiration and Journal Prompt is about Acceptance and about how we tell ourselves tales or we lose touch with ourselves.
Best You Daily will help guide you and your lifestyle to be the very best they can be. Following a few of my thoughts you'll find a journal prompt closer to the end of this blog. I hope you'll follow with me, as each day, I intend to give us all something to think about and/or write about through Best You Daily. We’re here to talk about your best life in 2017 and beyond. We’re here to learn to make some lasting changes in our lives.
When we practice acceptance and really have an honest discussion with ourselves, we make a choice how we view what we can and can’t change. Self-acceptance starts to increase awareness on all levels and, in my opinion, fosters gratitude and love.
So we all have our thing or things we would like to change about ourselves. I could fill a book with my little imperfections and real life stuff. I like to think of myself as fairly brave, but I admit I expose the world to what I want you to see. Take social media for example. As I sit writing this, my hair is a total mess, I have glasses on, no make-up, sweats on, a t-shirt that has two stains and I'm sipping my green tea. Oh, and I also have some fall allergies going on, so my nose is running and my eyes are puffy. Quite a vision.... However, I've chosen to be vulnerable to my imperfections, and while I'm not posting a candid photo at this time, I'm letting you know that my life isn't perfect either. If I continued, I'd let you know also that today is yard work day and the "to-do list" just for the house stuff here at home, feels endless. (I'm a big fan of gardening and planting, but not so much the yard work stuff.) Also, my dad isn't feeling wonderful and I need to schedule a trip to go home. I miss Cam, Quinn and Connor a lot - these are our older boys at college or in the real world with jobs. Oh and my one pair of jeans I love, don't fit at all.
Are you groovin' on my list? I could go on.... I'm trying to give you a glimpse into how most of our brains operate on a variety of levels with this or that. It's a continual go-go-go and in some cases ugh, ugh, ugh.
In all this go-go-go and at times, ugh, ugh, ugh, over the past year, for me, I lost complete touch with something. So for me, as we are all grabbing our pens and journals and soul-searching, I'm sharing with you, that for me, I'm getting back in touch with my inner-athlete. Now, I suppose it's my birthday rolling around and turning 48, to some degree, influencing this decision. But if I stopped lying to myself and had an honest discussion with myself and took an extra step to share that with you, I'd tell you that I'm just plum out of shape. Pick a shape, pear, plum, apple, but it's too roly poly for my liking. Not only are my clothes snug, but I'm huffing and puffing way too easily, which is not a good sign for me. It's my wake up call.
So I'm encouraging you to have an honest discussion with yourself. For me, I have a nagging, rolling conversation with myself when I ignore my health and fitness and I do go through periods of time where I ignore it. So about 3 weeks ago, I had this honest assessment of myself and I decided to listen to my own advice and stop being disconnected with one of the things I actually treasure the most - health and well-being.
So I walked down the block and back. The next day I did more. and you get the picture. I'm an old athlete, so my body remembers at this point, thank goodness, but those first few days were totally brutal. I had to force myself to stop routines and start new ones. I had to force myself to get consistent, determined and ambitious with well-being.
Three weeks ago, I rejoined the gym Fitness Factory in Portland. Two days ago, I also met with our sons' personal trainer Omar Kingston. I've really been afraid I would ache, hurt, hurt myself, not be good enough, totally suck and any other sucky running dialogue you can imagine going on. Just the look of me in workout clothes was bugging me too. However, I pushed through all the fear. One hour later with Omar and my ass was kicked, I was sweating and I did a high-five. The next round of fear kicked on on the drive home, which was all around how I was going to move the next day, LOL. That evening my right ankle hurt a bit and my right knee. I got up off the couch, with Peter, and went for a walk that night and drank a ton of water. The next day, I was stunned. I felt way way better and was fine. Peter and I did a 2 mile walk and I did an exercise tape. I had completely shocked myself.
I challenge you to do something you are afraid to do. For me, I don't want to just be in shape. I want to be in as top of athletic shape as I can be in. Like I used to be. I'm not sure where I will ultimately land with that, but I know it will be as close to the goal as I can get. It's not going to be an easy process at all.
You have to live and not necessarily thrive in the area of discomfort (sometimes huge discomfort) to grow and make change.
I've rambling on personally here, but hopefully it shows you the process to some extent. I respect your process. This was mine and I hope you respect it also.
I'm going to bring back yesterday's journal prompts. The might look familiar. This time, have a super honest, maybe even painful conversation with yourself and redo your journal from yesterday. You can share this one or keep this to yourself. The more vulnerable you get, the more you share your thoughts, goals, dreams and so forth, the more the world shows up for you to assist and you show up to assist yourself.
BEST YOU DAILY JOURNAL PROMPT
To begin, grab your notebook or your journal. Ask yourself these questions and write down what comes to your mind. You do not have to answer all the questions. Pick 1-2 that resonate with you for today's Best You Daily Journal Prompt.
Do you accept yourself? How do you practice moment-by-moment and mindful self-acceptance? What bothers you about yourself? What can you change? What are a few things you can’t change? What is your level of gratitude for yourself? Others? The world around you?
Is there something about yourself that you would like to change. Love, Elizabeth
About Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino
Elizabeth Hamilton-Guarino is a 19-year veteran of the financial services and regulatory compliance training industry. Now, a recognized leader in personal development, Elizabeth is the founder and CEO of The Best Ever You Network, a brand with more than one million followers in social media and over two million radio downloads on The Best Ever You Show.
With a mixture of humor and grace, Elizabeth helps people root in gratitude, discover motivation and implement positive, lasting change. An expert in mentoring people to market their strengths and achieve brand excellence, she works with clients worldwide to illuminate their light within, develop their best life and become their Best Ever You with gratitude-based behavior and belief systems.
Elizabeth’s book PERCOLATE – Let Your Best Self Filter Through (Hay House, 2014) has been called “charming” by Publisher’s Weekly, with “an ingenious extended coffee metaphor.” Guarino also ranks consistently as one of the top 40 social CEOs on Twitter and was just named a favorite by Oxford Said Business School. Her hashtags #BestEverYou and #TipstoBeYourBest are widely circulated.
Follow Elizabeth on Twitter @BestEverYou
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