My Valentine To Me

I'm reading a book right now called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Memoirs about goals and finding self and character development are my favorite genre - at least for now - and I'm loving Gretchen's approach to her year of finding happiness.

In fact, she inspired me to start my own project.

My plan is to give myself a Valentine gift: one year of loving myself.

It occurred to me not long ago that I'm not really great at keeping the second great commandment, that is, to love my neighbor as myself. I'm not very nice to me. And I think in there somewhere is the commandment to love yourself, along with God and neighbors ... Somewhere recently I read something that made me think of all the good a person can do who is comfortable and gentle with themselves. I think kindness to others and generosity of thought might come more easily to those who are not fighting some kind of inner war with their own heart and mind. (Yes, I think of myself as quite separate from both my heart and my mind ... I'm often at odds with both of them. Maybe that makes me crazy? That's a very real possibility.)

So, I decided I'd like some inner peace ... for the first time in my life. I'm always fighting with myself, telling myself yes or no - whichever one is harder. Then, when I fail at whatever it is I've told myself I should or should not do, I hold it against me. I use it as evidence that I am not as good as I want to be, and, most harsh of all, I tell myself God has the same expectations of me that I do ... So I never feel I'm what He wants me to be either.

Rough.

Gretchen focuses on one area of improvement per month. I like that idea because my resolutions are usually I list I expect myself to be immediately perfect in performing, a list of daily, weekly, and monthly deeds I want to accomplish. This month by month thing might help me develop habits one at a time before I overwhelm myself in characteristic fashion and give up entirely.

I'd like to start on the actual day of Valentine's ... today ... but I'm not organized yet and that will make me feel frantic. So I'm going to begin on February 25 - Chiara's birthday. That will give me some time to plan my habits and make a schedule and really put some serious thought into it all.

Basically I want one year full of reasons I can be proud of myself. I want to rejoice in the small and simple things I can do to bring about great changes in my life and character. I want to learn to be nice to myself because I'm afraid that if I don't I might unintentionally teach my girls to treat themselves this way too. And I don't want that.