loving yourself

Last week I taught a YW lesson on Individual Worth. We talked about things we could do to strengthen our knowledge of who we are as daughters of God.

Throughout this week, I tried to focus on my attitude, thoughts, and words about myself as part of the challenge to strengthen my own individual worth. And I caught myself many times thinking or saying negative things... some of which I didn't really believe but they may have come out of habit. Tsk-Tsk!  I realized I need to do better at that ... especially when I think of the example I'm setting to my kiddos.

Today the other advisor taught the lesson on Loving Ourselves. We made the 'Why I like myself' ever-so-fun-to-do-list. I laughed about the exercise, but it really was a good one to think healthy-happy-good-yet-true thoughts about myself. Notice they never have you write things that bug you about yourself in lessons like that. (if you're doing your own list ... because you know you want to ... right? ... start out with "I like myself because Heavenly Father loves me".... a good & true & basic truth, right?  I didn't write that own down but then she mentioned it in the lesson and it taught me something about why I ought to love myself.)

Anyhoo... I just was thinking about women in general and how we downplay a lot of the talents or services we have/do.  We can love the simple things about ourselves without comparing to others or wishing we had their talents (hard to do - but so important- eh?).  Be glad for them in their talents but focus on the things we can do in our own life.

Heavenly Father loves us so why shouldn't we love ourselves and recognize the good that we do?  We can honor Him by loving the body and spirit He gave to us.

I really liked President Hinckley's message to the Women of the Church in 2003.

"Thank you for being the kind of people you are and doing the things you do. May the blessings of heaven rest upon you. May your prayers be answered and your hopes and dreams become realities.

"We all worry about our performance. We all wish we could do better. But unfortunately we do not realize, we do not often see the results that come of what we do.

"You never know. You never know whether you do any good. You never know how much good you do."

"You must be strong and bold and brave and march forward with gladness in your eye and love in your heart. How blessed you are.

"May you bring light and beauty to the world and particularly into your homes and into the lives of your children."

Gordon B. Hinckley

So there's my peptalk and reminder to myself so that next time I'm calling myself a dorko (mostly about cooking really!), I can think of the simple ways I do good... and then march forward with gladness in my eye and love in my heart.