Encourage Yourself!

Yesterday I talked about encouraging others. Today I’m talking about you encouraging you!

Yes, we can and many times will have to encourage ourselves. There will be times you have to stand alone. Others will not be there for you. They will not see what you see. They will not have your vision, your principles or motivation. You will have to hold the line by yourself. Take courage! This will build fortitude (another word for strength) so you can go further, become stronger, last longer, endure more – (that doesn’t sound fun, it sounds like hardship involved!!!)

We’ll have to chew our own meat – no ground up baby food involved. But I’ve heard it said meat is for the strong. No carnivore diet spoken of intentionally here, but meat makes strong muscles and we’ll need them to weather our storms, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical.

So, you had the idea to build the first lighthouse at sea alerting ships to steer clear and not get dashed to pieces in the dark. ‘How are you going to do that’, somebody said. ‘You can’t, the surf is too strong, water too deep, tide comes in, you’ll get washed out’… and on and on.

Yet! Somebody kept at it. They planned and planned and thought and thought and tried and finally the first successful one was built and saved many lives. ‘I could never do that!’ Maybe not your area of expertise, but there is something that you and you alone can and need to do. You – yes you – plan and think and try things out until you succeed. Begin to encourage yourself more!

Now back to the lighthouse. No one built it completely by themselves, but there had to be an idea, maybe guarded at first until it could develop and ‘build up steam’, and then others became involved. It began with them.

Today I am not giving up on my plan, thought, dream to ….

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

There are three big mountains in the range of regret….shoulda, coulda and woulda.

Fortunately, we don’t have to climb those mountains anymore and fall into their valleys.

They lead to the land of discouragement, disillusionment and fear.

Nothing can be done about our past, we don’t live there anymore and it doesn’t matter what others think of it.

Let’s unpack that old climbing gear and repack with new gear and head for a different mountain range…wanna, canna, gonna.

I wanna climb this mountain.

I can climb that mountain.

I am gonna climb it and find out what’s at the top!

Trade in the shoulda, coulda, wouldas for a ‘good on me’!