Be Kind To Yourself

There are many naysayers in the world and there is enough negativity and problems in the world without you adding to them. We are here on this earth for a relatively short time. And honestly no one, but our Heavenly Father knows when we will meet our maker. There is no need for you to join the masses; we need to be the type of people we want to be around.

Unfortunately, life isn’t always fluffy clouds, fairy floss and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Some days feel like they go forever, and life can feel like a hard slog. It can go one of two ways for you, it can be a happy pleasant time, or every day can be a torturous torment to the day you die. Every day you have to choose your approach to how each situation and each day will be.

No one is perfect, and sometimes we stuff up and hurt the people we love (and sometimes the people we barely tolerate). I hate it when you play those mistakes or failures in your head over and over again. Unfortunately, some people will also remind you of those mistakes, and some people live forever in the past. You can’t change other people, and you can’t change the past unless you know how to time travel. However, you can repent, forgive yourself and move on. That’s part of being kind to yourself.

You don’t need to hold yourself to impossibly high standards. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look after yourself and always try to do your best, but are your standards realistic? If it has been a hectic time, it’s okay to have a messy room or house. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want a tidy room or house from time to time, but don’t drive yourself insane trying to achieve it. There are enough people who will judge you (even well-meaning people) because you aren’t living up to their standards. You don’t need to be one of those people.

I started this post by mentioning being the type of people we want to hang around. Whether people admit it or not, we all want to be around kind people. Maybe we are mean or take advantage of them, but we crave the presence of kind people in our life. We may not appreciate them, which is a shame on us, but it doesn’t mean we don’t desire their presence in our lives.

How can you identify those in our lives who are kind if we are not kind to ourselves? It is like asking someone to find a rare metal but not telling them what it looks like, what it feels like, how heavy it is or even where to find it. You can’t find something that you don’t know anything about. Start with the basics: Be kind to yourself, and then you can be kind to those around you.