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Illuminating the Spirit

Community Goals

Your Best Year
Make 2016 the year you love yourself
by Mark Anthony Lord

It’s that time of year again, when many fervently struggle with keeping new resolutions and big goals. We create lists of things we are not going to do again…only to find ourselves, once again, doing those very things. By February, if not sooner, our desires become mixed with confusion. Our goals are often geared towards perfectionism. Our dreams become fogged over with fear.

I have been a big goal setter, an ungrounded dreamer and a man who put my desires on a big vision board thinking that will make them all come true. Even if you’re not that kind of person, wherever you find yourself on the ocean of wishing, wanting and trying to manifest your wonderful life, those waters contain some real big sharks of self-rejection, disappointment and inadequacy.

How about this year, you stop the insanity, once and for all?

What if you had one audacious goal, which would simply be to love and accept yourself every single day, come what may?

Want to have the best year ever? Set the intention to appreciate yourself, be your own champion and pick yourself up off the ground with kindness and even a bit of humor—no matter how many times you fall.

Decide that you are worth all the love, compassion and patience that could ever be given, and that you’re done expecting anyone else to give it to you. Give it to yourself.

Dance when you’re alone, sing out loud in the car, and if you’re going to eat two pints of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting (I’ve eaten three pints. No shame.), do it with joy!

Sometimes we can get addicted to feeling inadequate, frustrated, angry, not good enough, guilty, rejected or abandoned. These can be core wounds from our childhood, or maybe they are common emotions in our family that we started learning when we were beginning to walk and talk. Negative emotions and beliefs about ourselves can, over time, begin to feel like our very identity. Almost like, “Who would I be without feeling like (fill in the blank)?”

Changing your beliefs about yourself in the midst of a negative pattern can feel hard, but it’s doable. You can, over time, become your best support system. It begins by letting yourself off the hook.

This year, you’re going to screw up. You’re going to say the wrong thing. You’re going to look stupid, oversleep, run late, overindulge and maybe make one of the biggest mistakes of your entire life. Yes, it really could happen.

How will you prevail over these challenges? Love and accept yourself, as you are, right there by changing your inner dialogue. It can sound something like this: “Hey, relax. It’s totally cool. You absolutely look like a fool right now, but I’m here. I’m on your side, and I love you!” Give yourself the words you need, and do your very best to mean them. If not you, who?

Does this sound cheesy to you? So what! Cheese it up.

Your fantastic 2016 begins with the commitment to loving yourself. Decide to be your own best friend, and make it happen, finally.

Mark Anthony Lord is a world-renowned spiritual leader, teacher, author and coach/counselor. He currently speaks and teaches at Unity in Chicago Monday evenings. For more information visit: markanthonylord.com

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