What Makes You Beautiful

I have a friend and most of us do, or maybe this person is you, that genuinely doesn't like themselves. It truly makes me feel awful to know that someone doesn't feel comfortable in their own skin. No we don't always feel stunning or fabulous or gorgeous and we don't need to, but I would hope that most days we're all at least content with ourselves. As moms, we're put under so much pressure to be put together 100%. We have to look like a model, have kids that are geniuses that only eat organic and never watch tv, and on top of that our house must always be spotless or we just aren't a good mom anymore. At least that's how the world makes us feel sometimes. With all of this, its easy to start telling ourselves that we're just not making the cut, we're just not good enough. It starts with "I need to loose 10 more pounds, my hair never looks good, my teeth aren't as white as they could be, my house is a mess, my kids don't speak 3 languages..." and slowly we've torn ourselves down so much that in the end it doesn't even matter if we do all those things, because as soon as we do, we'll find 10 more things we don't like about ourselves. I think we should always try to do our best, work hard, and improve, but while we're doing that we need to remember that not only is our best enough, it's freaking awesome! We are more than enough. As moms we do so much and it never ever (ever) ends. We have little tiny humans that not only need us, they love us, they worship us, they never want to stop being around us, in fact if your kids are like mine, they literally never want to be more than 1 mm away from us. There's a reason why they love us, because we're amazing to them and shouldn't that alone make us feel pretty special? How many times have your kids or your husband told you that you look beautiful or pretty? And do we brush it off most of the time because they're "supposed" to say things like that, they love us. Don't brush it off, say thank you because they mean it!
I have a challenge to moms this year. Every day look in the mirror and write down at least one thing you like about yourself that day. It can't be "I like my shirt." Because you can like a shirt that is sitting at the store, that has nothing to do with you. You need to say "I love how the shirt I picked out looks great on ME today." If you like your lipstick, you need to say "I love how my lipstick enhances how beautiful my lips are." But write something down every day! Even if you feel silly, just do it! At the end of the year you'll have a whole list of things that should make you feel great about the way you look. That way, on days that you are feeling crappy about yourself you can look back and remember that you are beautiful! I would also challenge you to write down one good thing you did each day or something you accomplished, because how we feel about ourselves should be more than just about how we look. Sometimes we might only be able to say that we fed our kids and kept everyone alive that day, I think that's a pretty big accomplishment some days! Lets try to love ourselves though, and if you know someone that really struggles with confidence, give them a genuine compliment every day. Lets all be beautiful and be kind.