Читать книгу Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment - Barbara Angelis De - Страница 18

If you learn even one new thing about yourself today, it will be a successful day.

If you handle one situation with another person a little better than you have before, it will be a successful day.

If you have been more patient and compassionate with someone else or yourself, it will be a successful day.

If you gain a little bit more understanding about something or someone, it will be a successful day.

If you resist indulging in an old, unhealthy pattern of behavior or of thinking and instead choose a new one, it will be a successful day.

If you are kind to someone else, or to yourself, it will be a successful day.

If you love yourself even though you don’t do everything perfectly, it will be a successful day.

If you are grateful for the gift of being alive and for the opportunity to learn and grow, it will be a successful day.

This is such an uplifting way to approach your life. Instead of seeing existence as a series of tests that you pass or flunk each day, why not see it as an opportunity for growth, for learning? Then, instead of “bad days” or “good days,” you end up with days in which perhaps you have grown more or grown less, but all of them are successful days.

Remembering this principle has made a huge difference in my own life. Being a perfectionist and an achievement-oriented person, I used to have such a long list of “shoulds” for myself each day that I made it virtually impossible for me to feel successful, to feel fulfilled. The result was that I was having too many “bad days,” not because anything bad was happening, but because I was misunderstanding the purpose of my day, and therefore judging myself and the day incorrectly. Lately I have been consciously remembering Secret Number Two, and whenever I notice that I think I’m having a “bad day,” or even a “bad hour,” I stop and ask myself:

“What am I learning today?” “How am I growing today?”

Instantly, I discover something that I wasn’t seeing before, something I wasn’t appreciating about myself or the challenges I am facing. I always come away from these moments of contemplation feeling more love for myself.