OnTheBeach: 100 Things You Love About You

At the end of September, Allison Crow had a free Doodle Meditation event on Facebook – it was her Manifestation and Meditation with Markers Chakra Series. I love these doodle meditations – I love the colour, I love the chance to just doodle and draw and use coloured pens. And doing the course reminded me of the course I bought from Allison this year…and an exercise from it:

100 Things you love about yourself

Over the years, I’ve come across this exercise a few times. The first time, I had to ask friends for help because I could only think of about 20 things. I can’t remember ever actually finishing a list. And this time, I’d stopped at about 70…because I forgot about it until the new course reminded me.

So I went and finished it off. In fact, I ended up with 101 because I thought of another one just as I finished! I love that this shows how much more I love myself and know myself than I did 15 years ago when I first came across this exercise.

And I wanted to share it with you, because this exercise is POWERFUL. We all desire recognition and love…and usually we look for it outside of ourselves. And if the people outside of us aren’t great at noticing our strengths, or articulating them, or just telling us every day that we’re awesome, we miss out on building that confidence in how amazingly awesome we truly are.

A sacred truth that came to me in the 6th class of the Doodle Meditation course (on the throat chakra) was:

Your truth is MAGNIFICENCE.

Can you hear that? That is not just my truth for me. It is my truth for you. Even if you can’t see it yet, I can. I can see that your truth is MAGNIFICENCE. Who you are is wonderful, amazing, awesome. You have so much to be proud of and to celebrate about yourself. And I’m willing to make a bet that you don’t fully realise that truth yet.

So it’s time to build the magnificence muscles. It’s time to honour yourself. It’s time to appreciate, accept and honour your best qualities and most wonderful characteristics. I want you to ignore any thoughts that tell you it’s arrogant or self-indulgent or conceited. It isn’t. It is self-care. it is building self-confidence. It is acknowledging that you are fabulous. It is loving yourself.

And you deserve to be loved and acknowledged.

Whether the wider world is any good at this for you or not, you deserve to have love and acknowledgement from YOURSELF.

Here’s what I did: I used colour (as you can see in the image above!), and I cycled through the colours once a day – I spent 10 minutes a day brainstorming things I love about myself – from physical qualities (I have great boobs!) to my characteristics (I am self-sufficient) to utterly random things (I’m a stationary geek!). I included things I haven’t loved in the past (I am shy – I hated that for years…now I love that I’m shy, it’s cute). I included things about how I live (I rescue spiders and ladybirds).

I didn’t try to do the whole list in one go. I gave myself time. When I forgot, I went back to it. When I got stuck, I searched for inspiration – if you check out the comments here you’ll find lots of ideas. I didn’t beat myself for not being able to think of things…I just kept showing up to the page until I got 101 (I love that I believe in woo-woo and weird shit!)

I encourage you to do the same. Now, when I read through my list, I remember that I rock, I remember that there is a LOT about me to love. I remember my truth…MAGNIFICENCE. It’s a lovely boost in a book that everyone should have.

Next is a list of 100 things I’ve accomplished in life. I’m looking forward to this one too – I’m someone who is always focused on the next goal, the next project, the next plan…and sometimes I forget that I’ve done some good stuff. So, once you’ve completed your “100 things I love about me” list, maybe you could join me in doing a “100 things I’ve accomplished in life” list.

And I’d love to see what you come up with – feel free to put your list in the comments or share with me via facebook or twitter. Enjoy this exercise – it’s not a test of how lovable you are (that’s a given, you are utterly delicious whether you realise it or not), it’s a fun treasure hunt of things you love about you…what could be more fun?!

Love

Donna.x