I Am Fabulous

July 28th, 2011, by Shelley Riutta

“I am Fabulous”: Embracing and Celebrating You!

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire Universe, deserve your love and affection.” Buddha

“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” Marianne Williamson

You are Fabulous! Yes YOU are. How do you feel when you hear that? Do you respond, yes that is right, I am Fabulous. Or do you have a reaction that blocks you from taking this statement in fully. If you are like most people you may not be able to take this in whole heartedly for various reasons. One, it may interrupt your inner litany of you telling yourself all the ways that you are less than fabulous—all the ways that you are messing up in some way, falling short of yours or other people’s expectations. You may have trouble taking in “I am fabulous” because you fear if you do that other people will think your arrogant and self-centered.

We live in a culture that does not support healthy self-confidence and self-celebration. We tend to give people support and sympathy when they are beating themselves up and feeling down and out. We don’t have as much practice supporting people in healthy self-love. What would you do if the next time you saw a close friend they said “I’m feeling so wonderful about myself—I love my life—everything is going great for me!” Would you know how to react to them? Could you celebrate with them? The level to which you could support them in their self-celebration would be to the level that you are doing this on the inner level with yourself.

An example of this is the other day my best friend, who is writing a book, left a message on my answering machine stating “I have had such a great day working on my book, the book is really phenomenal!” This was a perfect example of self-honoring and celebration—she was really acknowledging her talent as a writer and the beautiful expression of her soul reflected in the book. Because she and I both do a lot of work on the inner level to see our own beauty and worth we can support this fully in each other. So my reaction to her message was excitement and celebrating in her success. If I wasn’t clear about my own inner worth and wonderfulness, I may have reacted with judgment of her “Who does she think she is” or self-judgment “I’m not talented and she is—she is better than me.” My reaction has more to do with my own level of self-love than it has to do with what she said on the message.

Why Self-Love is Important

1. Seeing your own beauty and light allows you to see others more clearly. The fear that people have when they first start working on self-love is that they confuse it with being self-centered and arrogant. The reality is that opening up to deeper levels of self-love and appreciation allows you to see the beauty and magnificence of others more clearly. We all have within us an essence, a radiant Spirit that is filled with love, joy, creativity, compassion and beauty. When you really get that and are able to see this within you—you are able to see it within everybody. You can see beneath people’s protections of fear, negativity and anger and see the truth of who they are—the light of who they are. This is a beautiful gift you give yourself and others and it can transform your whole life and all of your relationships.
2. Seeing your own Magnificence allows Good things into your Life- If you love and value yourself you will want good things for yourself and you will take action to bring these good things into your life. An example is if you are in a job that you don’t love—if you cared about yourself and your happiness you would take action to find a job or career that you really love. You wouldn’t allow yourself to be in an unloving situation in any area of your life. You would want happy, loving relationships for yourself, a job you were passionate about, a home that you loved and felt nurtured in, plenty of money to do all the things you want to do. All the things that you would want for a person you deeply loved, you would want these things for yourself too.
3. Seeing your own Fabulousness allows others to see that in you too-People tend to see us and treat us how we see and treat ourselves. There is two ways that this happens. One way is that if you really value yourself and treat yourself kindly other people will pick up on this energy and treat you well too. An example of this: Do you know people you would never say anything disrespectful to because they emanate a sense of self-confidence and self-respect—it is so clear you can feel it. The other way is if you value and are kind to yourself and someone is unloving to you—you would let them know that it is unacceptable to treat you that way. If they don’t respond and continue to be unloving – if you really love yourself you would choose not to be around this person again. It is as simple as that. Either way your inner self-love is setting the standard for how people will treat you.If you see the exquisite beauty and specialness of who you really are—people will automatically see that in you. You, in the state of celebrating you, opens the doorway for others to see you more clearly. There is so much beauty and radiance inside of each and every one of us—if we open our eyes to see it more clearly in ourselves and others, we would be astounded!
4. When you see your own Brilliance you become a role model for people to see their own Brilliance. So few people are able to see their own beauty that when you are able to love yourself, you are able to light the way for others to do this for themselves too. You are able to role model what this looks like. This is so important if you are a parent—if your children see you taking loving care of yourself and feeling healthy self-love, they will be able to do that for themselves too.Just like you can feel if someone is insecure, you can also feel if someone loves and appreciates themselves. We tend to feel comfortable and relaxed around people who feel good about themselves—and this feeling even rubs off us on us—we start to feel good about ourselves in their presence. Our own self-love has a positive ripple effect on others—by providing a role model for healthy self-love and also energetically opening a space for people to love themselves just by being in our presence.

Ways to Love Yourself More

1. Take responsibility for seeing your own worth and lovability- Do you realize that your worth and lovability is intact and unchanging? Nothing you can do can ever take away from it—it is your intrinsic worth and can never be diminished. There is nothing to be improved upon and enhanced—you already are brilliant and magnificent just as you are. The real you, your authentic self, is here to just express itself fully and completely. It is beautiful and breathtaking as is. There is nothing to learn, no further schooling, no special skill or special success needed for you to prove your intrinsic worth.In the psychospiritual process Inner Bonding, there is a distinction made between your essence, who you really are– and your protective parts, your wounded adult child. When you are in worry, judgment, fear, anxiety, depression, trying to control—these are all protective parts of you. If you are operating out of your protective self most of the time, you won’t feel the beauty of your essence and neither will those around you. What can happen is that if you operate out of these parts of you long enough you start to believe that this is really you—but it is not.It is like clouds covering up the light and brilliance of the sun. The sun is always there shining. The transient clouds can block your experience of seeing and experiencing the sun—but it doesn’t change the fact that the sun is always shining. It is important to start to remember that you are the brilliant Sun, not the grey clouds that feel so real. You, your essence is always shining and all you need to do is really get that this is a fact, it is unchanging and no one and no event can ever diminish this. Once you know that you really are your essence, this beautiful light—self-love is a natural consequence and you can relax and let this light shine!
2. Eliminate Self-Judgment and replace with Self-Supportiveness and Self-Appreciation- Your level of self-love will be dependent on the kind of internal dialogue you are having with yourself. We are all having inner conversations with ourselves throughout the day—these conversations are either loving and supportive or critical and unloving. If your self-esteem is low—chances are that your internal dialogue is critical and harsh—pointing out what you’re doing wrong, how you aren’t good enough in some way etc. One way to change this is to replace this negative dialogue with a loving supportive dialogue. The following are ways to shift to a more positive inner dialogue:
   • Think of statements that you want to hear throughout the day and write these on a 3X5 index card. They could be statements like “I love you just the way you are” “Just be you, you are wonderful” “I love you no matter what” “It’s OK to make mistakes, I will still love you” “Let go of what others think of you-I think you are amazing” Use these statements with yourself during the day.
   • Mirror back loving statements to yourself about who you are and how you handle things throughout the day. Examples of these statements are “I love the way you handled that situation” “You are so loving and kind” You are so creative!” “You are such a good listener” “You are brilliant” “You are sweet”. Mirroring back the positive will help you reverse the pattern of being critical with yourself for every little thing you do.
   • Talk back to the Critical Voice and bring in the Truth- If you catch yourself yourself being critical respond back with a loving voice. If you say to yourself “I’m so stupid, I can’t believe I just said that” you can respond back by saying “It’s OK, your not stupid, what you said was just fine, just relax and be yourself, let go what that person thinks of you, I love you no matter what.” Feel how supportive the loving statement is and how it eases the anxiety of the critical voice.
   • Before you go into various situations, think of what kind of positive dialogue you want to have with yourself during the situation. You can even practice this dialogue beforehand. Once you get into the situation you will be prepared with a loving, supportive dialogue. In this way the negative chatter that might get triggered for you doesn’t get a chance to even start because you have consciously chose a loving, positive inner dialogue. You are crowding out the air waves with the positive. Try this and see your self-worth soar and your comfort level with all kinds of situations increase.
   • Write 5 Appreciations about yourself each night in your journal. This can be ways you handled certain situations, how loving you were with others, your creativity, the special unique qualities that are YOU!
3. Start a “Celebration of Me” Journal- Get a beautiful journal that you can collect sweet notes and cards you receive from others. When the people around you have their hearts open and are sharing love with you—they are seeing the beauty of your essence. These loving cards and notes are reminders of who you really are and it can be helpful to have these in a lovely journal. You can even jot down loving comments people make to you and you can add these to your journal. You can also write loving notes and poems to your inner child, the part of you that reflects beautiful aspects of your essence. You can also put pictures or images that reflect the beauty of your essence in your journal.
4. Develop Self-Trust- Keep your promises to yourself like you would to anyone else in your life. If you promise yourself you are going to take some time off do something fun or complete a project that you have been putting off—then make sure you follow through and do it. When you let yourself down by not following through on a promise, you are eroding self-trust and self-love. When you keep your promises with yourself, you will feel more secure and strong within yourself—your essence will feel loved and valued.
5. Take Loving Actions on your own behalf- If you tell yourself you love and care about you but you treat yourself poorly—your self-esteem will stay low. You must take actions that reflect a deep love for yourself. If you were to show love to yourself, you would exercise if you needed to lose weight, you would get to sleep early if you needed more rest, if your life was chaotic you would create balance, if you needed more social connection you would plan some fun things with friends, if you needed to leave an unhealthy relationship, you would leave it. Taking these loving actions will lift your self-esteem and you will feel great about yourself. Try it. For one week put into action all of the things that you know would be loving for yourself. A lot of times this alone can create a major shift in increasing your self-love significantly.

You are Fabulous—it is a given—and it is up to you to see it for yourself. By doing this you will radically improve the quality of your life, your relationships and even pave the way for others to see their own Magnificence too!

Copyright 2007