Louise Hay offers
these helpful suggestions.

1. Stop all criticism: Criticism never changes a thing. Refuse to criticize yourself. Accept yourself exactly as you are. Everybody changes. When you criticize yourself, your changes are negative. When you approve of yourself, your changes are positive.

2. Don't scare yourself: Stop terrorizing yourself with your thoughts. It's a dreadful way to live. Find a mental image that gives you pleasure (mine is yellow roses), and immediately switch your scary thought to a pleasure thought.

3. Be gentle and kind and patient: Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself as you learn the new ways of thinking. Treat yourself as you would someone you really loved.

4. Be kind to your mind: Self-hatred is only hating your own thoughts. Don't hate yourself for having the thoughts. Gently change the thoughts.

5. Praise yourself: Criticism breaks the inner spirit. Praise builds it up. Praise yourself as much as you can. Tell yourself how well you are doing with every little thing.

6. Support yourself: Find ways to support yourself. Reach out to friends, and allow them to help you. It is being strong to ask for help when you need it.

7. Be loving to your negatives: Acknowledge that you created them to fulfill a need. Now you are finding new, positive ways to fulfill those needs. So. lovingly release the old negative patterns.

8. Take care of your body: Learn about nutrition. What kind of fuel does your body need to have optimum energy and vitality? Learn about exercise. What kind of exercise can you enjoy? Cherish and revere the temple you live in.

9. Mirror work: Look into your own eyes often. Express this growing sense of love you have for yourself. Forgive yourself looking into the mirror. Talk to your parents looking into the mirror. Forgive them, too. At least once a day, say: "I love you, I really love you!"

10. LOVE YOURSELF - DO IT NOW! Don't wait until you get well or lose the weight, or get the new job, or find the new relationship. Begin NOW - do the best you can.

This post was inspired by your comments of my last post.
I've done a great deal of internal work in this area. Getting to know 'me' and not the 'me' that others see has been my focus for the last several years. Its hard to change our beliefs about ourselves when we believe what others tell us they see.

I read once "change the belief and you will change the behavior".

Replacing negative thoughts in our heads with positive ones, helps change us 'back' to who we are.

Its hard I know, I continue my journey through my head...it gets cloudy and foggy up there sometimes and all my energy to remove the fog and replace it with clean air!

(Guess being called an 'air head' is actually a positive comment!)

God bless!

Sometimes life gets us so down that we feel we must have some evil negative force pulling us, gravitating us deeper towards the hole that we are so desperately trying to get out of.

It feels as everything and anything that exists, that breaths in this life is totally against us. Making it harder and harder to breath like a Maroon 5 lyric.

It's like we are drowning, and trying so hard to gasp for air, and swim up to the top, and some people who we thought cared about us can't hear our cries for help. They see us drowning, and instead of saving us and pulling us up out of the water, they use us as a step ladder to jump out of the water, push us back down even further, to get out and save themselves.

When we are overwelmed with these circumstances, and it seems like we don't get a simple break from the crap, even the things that we wouldn't let bother us so much before, become the feather that broke the camels back.

What is the message in a mess like that? Is the universe trying to tell us something, and if so, what is it?

I'm not sure what it is, and I believe it is different for everyone. Your circumstances, trials, and goals are much different than mine.

If I can quote Joel Olsteen for a moment...putting our best life forward. As I'm writing this, he comes to my mind. He says that if we are lonely and don't want to be alone, visit someone who is alone. If we need money, give someone as little money as we have. If we want to laugh, make someone else laugh. His message is simple in this one chapter.

But what if you are one of those people who give and give and give and give and get shit on in return? What else can you do?

Joel would ask, 'how are you treating yourself?'. He would say something like, if we want others to be good to us, then we need to be good to us. Are you good to you? If we want others to respect us, then we need to respect us. Do you respect you? If we want others to love us, we need to love us. Do you love you? etc.

I believe what he is saying, if we do all things for ourselves, first, then even if the people we want to love and respect us don't change their minds or attitudes, it wouldn't matter to us, because we have already done that for ourselves. We would know the truth from within, and we wouldn't need to seek it from 'without' (so to speak..) This is the hardest thing to do I believe. Love me. Like me. Respect me. Appreciate me.....Who am I for God's sake?

I have God in me, that's who I am, and He above all else deserves that!

It is hard when everything is so grey and black, to see any white light twinkling in the distance. But what if we only looked for white light? Would we never see the black?

It's hard I know to climb out of a hole when we feel we are being buried alive, and dirt keeps falling on us. Why do they keep putting this dirt on me. But what if that dirt was there for us to create a 'mound of dirt' to use and help us climb out of the hole? Guess that's what they call 'thinking out of the coffin' I mean BOX....

Today my daughter wanted me to take her to get a pair of sunglasses.
I had an extra pair, and offered her my 'cool white' shades.
She looked at me and said "Those are soooo OUT!"
I'm like, "What?, Out! How can sunglasses be in or out?" She said, "those are too small, they need to be bigger!"

I immediately recalled seeing her friend at the baseball game, wearing a huge pair of sunglasses. I thought to myself, "those look like her grandmothers sunglasses, she must be playing 'dress-up'.

I took her to the store, to see what the fuss was all about. I quickly picked up a pair of 'big sunglasses' that were my favorite color RED. I put them on and looked at myself in the mirror.....oh the horror...I looked like I was walking around looking at a fly through a magnifying glass!!!

She picked out the biggest black pair she could find with jewels on the side...

I wanted so much to be in fashion, in style....I mean really, I still wear hip hugger jeans. I'm cool aren't I? But I couldn't bear to wear the bug-eyed shades, just to be 'cool'!

I gently broke the news to my daughter...her mother refused to be 'cool', fashionable...and I resorted to the fact that I had finally become.....I can't even say it....no don't say it....

MY MOTHER!!!!!!

Today I brought Polyanna Jesus. (The blessed sacrament, Jesus)

I never gave anyone communion before, outside of the formal Mass setting. But today, I brought Him to Polyanna.

I had a book to read from, to administer the Sacrament. My pix (the container you transport Jesus with, from church and to the recipient), was givin to me by my BFF. I have been carrying it in my car, waiting for the moment I would need to pick up Jesus and transport Him to the person in need.

When I took my gift out, I felt the love of Jesus, the love of the gift, I felt Love ......(period)

When I arrived, she was sitting up in bed, looking so pretty. Waiting for us, waiting for Jesus. I have no idea how long it has been since she received Jesus, and I didn't ask.

I read from the book for administering communion to the sick to her. She was responding to the Catholic mass prayers and rituals, and worrying if she was responding 'correctly'. She looked at me after one response, as if she did it incorrectly...I said, "Polyanna, this is Jesus coming to you and for you, He doesn't care how you formally receive Him, that's a 'catholic thing', He only cares what's in your heart. He knows what's there. Please don't worry about it.

She laughed and smiled so pretty. When she smiles, her eyes smile. I love smiles when they are so big the whole face follows including the beautiful eyes.

Anyways, I took the Host, held it up to her and said, "The body of Christ" and she took it, and gasped an 'aaahhh'. We took several minutes to pray in silence, then she said to me, "I feel better already!". Wow, how great that made me feel, to be able to transport that gift to her.

It was like someone bought this great present, and couldn't deliver it, and I was asked to give it to them, and I was there when they opened it, and when they opened it, I felt all the joy they felt from receiving it.

It was truely a great experience, and I am so blessed to be asked to be Jesus' limo driver!

Perhaps that is why God bought the car for me. He new I would be driving Jesus around, and for Jesus, only the BEST!

Prayers of thanks to You oh Lord!
Blessings for all your gifts of today. I felt the love from everyone you sent to me.
Thanks for responding to my prayers!

When life gets us down, pain becomes an emotion
It trembles through our vains
It pierces at our hearts
Sure, there are lessons in the pain
But how can we lesson the pain?

We can't feel love where there is pain
Try it, the 2 cannot exist at the same time

If we are so overcome with pain, we'll never be able to let the love in
Happiness and passion become a thing of the past

For me, a simple hug from the one I hold the dearest in my heart, washes away that pain so I can feel the love instead of the pain.

If that hug would last a day, a week or a lifetime, would I never have to feel pain again? Maybe only during those moments of non hugging time.

I wonder if the pain becomes so intense, if even that hug isn't enough to wash it away, if only for a moment, so the love can flow through your vains instead

What happens if the one you love the most is in so much pain, that they can't feel the love you are giving, flowing, glowing, from you to them...but the pain is so great they can't feel it.

Then what do you do to help them?