What does it really take to love yourself? Day in and day out?

How do you move forward with your hopes and desires with steadfastness yet without beating yourself up?

How do you stay in action, taking baby steps, and enjoying the process?

These are my perennial questions — my life questions — and today, I want to remember that one answer to these worthwhile questions is to stop looking at the big picture and to notice how I might be checking out in the moment and to look for the simplest, most fundamental way to check back in, to choose life, to choose to be here, feeling and being who I am in this moment. To accept what is happening, even a few seconds. Instead of shoving it away or wishing it weren’t there. To return to my body, my breath, my sensations.

Right now, I can invite myself to stop and feel the wanting to write something helpful for you, the wish I was already finished writing and could go eat my lunch and read The New Yorker, the fearful tang of not getting my work done fast enough. I don’t let my feelings define me or rule me and I keep letting the urge to feel different, to be different than I am, drop away.

That stops the checking out, that brings me to self-love in the moment.

Today’s Intention: Reminding myself that acceptance happens right now. Not when I am perfect or all my work is done or I know how things will turn out. Right now.

Jen