How do I love me? Let me count the ways.... I must admit that I, advocate for personal development and admirer of most things touchy-feely, at first felt a little narcissistic at the idea of taking time each evening to write a love letter to myself extolling my sometimes many accomplishments for the day. And to think I was going to commit an entire month to this practice. What an exercise in egoism, right?
Well, it did not take long at all for me to, literally, fall in love with this nightly ritual. My intention in doing this exercise was to: 1)Find more appreciation in who I am and what I do2)Increase my overall productivity in my daily life. For my love letter, I gave myself 3 simple rules:
Write Every Night - Regardless of how I was feeling I committed to writing something loving and positive to myself each evening.
Write Anything - Even if I only wrote "David, I am proud of how you opened the door for that lady. I love you." than it would be a success. It was never that brief, but some nights it was close.
Say "I Love You" - Whether I opened or closed my love letter with it, I had to be sure somewhere in the letter to say/write the words "I love you". At first it seemed a little forced, but as the days progressed I found more truth in those words to myself.
Much like my No Facebook Experiment it took some time for me to notice the changes but, I'm happy to say BOTH my intentions were realized!! Here are my discoveries:
1) I have found that I have become eager to write down my praises of me each evening and have become much easier to find reasons to love who I am. Additionally, I feel so much better about myself that it is now fact that I am amazing!! :)
2) For the first time in over a year I feel as though I had an entire month that was productive and look forward to taking that awesome momentum in this next month.
The Lesson: When you focus your energy on what you are doing right, you create more things that are right.
Next 30 Day Experiment - Eat a Salad Everyday