Part 1: Introduction
For three decades, I have worked with individuals facing challenging life situations, whether it be counseling individuals with debilitating mental health issues, sitting at the bedside of someone near death, helping people face late stage cancer, or a client who is suffering from a life stressor…The one consistent theme that stands out with every single person, is the desire to be at peace with who they are, and happy with what they are doing.
How do you do this? By engaging in one act of kindness at a time, whether toward yourself or others. One action step will not only help yourself and others, but it will start to shift “who we are.” Who we are, is who I truly believe we were born to be, for those who are spiritual, who God intended for us to be. Why are we here if it isn’t to be our best self?
If you ever look at a child, they often are showing joy, happiness and a range of emotions. As adults, we often feel that we are not good enough, and we lose that joy.
By performing the action steps I’m introducing today, we can start to undo negative beliefs about ourselves and replace them with positive behaviors and thoughts. Our range of inner strengths can increase, such as compassion, discipline, patience, courage, appreciation, and self-esteem.
When you take on this challenge, the only thing that matters is that you wake up each day, set an intention to be your best self that day, and practice one or two action steps.
An action step may be helping the person crossing the street, sharing a smile with a stranger, acknowledging someone, shifting a negative thought, choosing not to engage in a non-constructive conversation, or being grateful.
At the end of each day, knowing that no matter how much you did or did not accomplish at home or work, no matter how much you are known or not known in the world, or if you weren’t always perfect, you tried to do your best.
Life is in the turn around!!
One of the best ways to turn around a negative or fearful thought to something more positive is to start believing that you are a good person, that you care for others and your intention is to do the right thing. Knowing that you would never intentionally harm someone else and that you try to do your best. By practicing the acts of kindness, this is a sure turn around for starting to believe these better feeling thoughts.
The importance of knowing “Who You Are” is that no matter what is going on in this wacky world around you, no matter what someone believes you should or should not be doing, no matter what hurtful or unkind things are being said, you know that at the core of your being, you are OK!!!!
