You do not need to waste your time scattering your energy to prove your worth. You are inherently worthy, and honoring your self-worth means saying no to many, if not most, things.

Consider what unique contributions you make that bring you fulfillment. Is it your attentive listening? Your intentional words? Your special brand of genius? Your deep-rooted passion or curiosity? Recognize and appreciate these personal contributions.

You are worthy of focusing your energy on what you give that fulfills you. Would you be willing to permit yourself to say no to everything else?

The point of knowing what you want is to stay clear on where you are going as obstacles inevitably arise, not to ensure a path without obstacles.

The newer the route you are traveling, the more obstacles there will be. Go around, over, through, or under; whatever is required. Just keep your focus on what you are doing, and you will astound yourself with how far you go and how strong you become along the way.

Might you experience more creativity and endurance if you keep refocusing from what you don’t want to what you want?

Forgiveness lets you decide how you use your energy in the present moment instead of letting someone else, something else, or the past decide for you.

You can forgive without agreeing, getting on board with, or condoning what happened. Once you forgive, you can retake ownership of your life and make it about the solutions you want to create versus the problems you can’t control.

How might your life change, and how might your life help change the world, if you went all in on what’s truly important to you by discerning yet forgiving?

To get great at something, you have to do it a lot and be totally willing to suck at it for a while.

To get better at something you are great at, you must also be willing to feel like you suck at it again because it is always awkward and uncomfortable to expand your capacity.

If you are committed to getting better even after getting great, that means new challenges await you. Getting great feels different than already being great. Don’t feel discouraged if you are in a learning phase. The feeling of a new level of excellence is on the way.

The point of playing a game is not to win or get to the end, it’s to play the game.

The point of living is to live. Today. Not someday when you get to Point B or have accomplished Thing X.

If you believe there’s another point to life besides living you’ll miss it.

How might life feel if you stopped complicating it?

Figuring it out is not a one time event. It is a moment-by-moment discipline to stay present and choose what we sense to be best right now. Sensing is the type of knowing that comes from the heart, not from the certainty the mind craves.

Figuring it out takes work because is requires us to become comfortable in the unknown. It might feel easier to “wait” until the one-time event when the whole path reveals itself, yet we’ll find ourselves waiting forever.

If you trust yourself to figure it out, there’s a chance you might not get exactly where you want to go, yet that’s better than missing the adventure.

You are the only one who can see exactly what you see from your perspective, so you need to let go of the need for other people to understand or agree with it- they can’t even see it.

The same is true in reverse. We are not meant to agree with one another fully. Your job is to gain as much clarity as possible from your unique perspective and then take wise action, knowing you are acting on what only you can see.

What would you do if you let go of others seeing it from your vantage point?

It only develops you if you go take action on it and experience moving through the (sometimes extreme) discomfort of integrating the learning into your body and life.

Anything else is just thinking about ourselves, which is nowhere near as valuable as we might like to believe it is.

Where is it time for you to shift from thinking to developing?

If you suddenly start to doubt yourself, it might not be a doubt at all. It could be someone else’s discomfort, disappointment, or fear disguising itself as your issue.

People have their agendas, which often don’t include you expanding out of the expectations and labels they have for you. Our job is to practice being present enough to discern when someone’s reaction to us is based on their aversion to discomfort instead of a response from their love for us. Then, we can offer compassion for everyone, freeing ourselves from spending our energy fighting a losing game.

Before you react to their reaction and create your life based on their agenda, could you check and see whose issue you are tending to?

To truly show love to someone, you must allow them to be themselves, experiencing their own growth and journey without commenting on, criticizing, or micromanaging it.

To truly love yourself, you must sense and know your boundaries and honor them as you allow others (and yourself) to grow. Without being clear about your boundaries, you are likely focusing on the small things that don’t matter and over-allowing the big things that do.

Love is allowing with boundaries, and boundaries exist to help you love people more, not less. Yet, you can love someone and know it’s correct to never talk to them again. Love is not proximity; it is allowing and honoring yourself.

When making a new commitment, the only thing you can guarantee likely is that you can’t guarantee it will come to fruition. This is how you might know that commitment is powerful and necessary.

If it were easy and obvious that it would work out, you wouldn’t need a commitment. Commitments exist to help you become the best version of yourself and help others do the same, not stay the same or prove what you already know.

Committing to something you are unsure about does not mean you give your word to something you know you can’t do. It means you love yourself and others enough to trust when you sense there is something in you to contribute, create, or experience bigger than your doubtful thoughts.

The most important commitment to make may be the one you aren’t positive you can fulfill, knowing that no matter what you create in the pursuit, it will be more expansive than where you are now.

Having clarity about what is essential for you to express is step one.

Having the courage to share it is step two.

Having the wisdom of how to communicate it with love is step three.

Step four is the discernment of where to share it, which can make or break the power of the first three. In a world where posts, DMs, emails, and texts make it too easy to be cowardly or to hide, the simple power of a phone call or a face-to-face conversation can help you be the person you want to be in the world.

Please don’t underestimate the power of the correct medium when sharing yourself.

No one ever criticized themselves so much they became happy.

Happiness comes from self-love, self-confidence, self-trust, self-acceptance, and self-appreciation, amongst other uplifting ways to relate to yourself. Cultivating these things doesn’t mean you don’t notice or take accountability for your growth opportunities. It means you have enough ease in your body and heart to confront things that no longer need to challenge your self-worth.

Instead of focusing on what’s wrong with you, focus on what is right with you and let those things light the way right into and through the challenges that will help you continue to evolve.

How can you practice self-appreciation today instead of criticism?

When you’re not starting because you don’t know where to start, just start anywhere.

The path will become clearer after you begin.

Life gets messy when you only respect yourself sometimes.

When we respect ourselves, we make choices, decisions, promises, and requests that honor our wholeness, worth, and values. When we disrespect ourselves in the “service” of pleasing someone else or prioritizing their comfort over our personal responsibility, we make choices that lead to confusion, resentment, and inauthenticity.

Our job is to respect ourselves enough to be uncomfortable now and experience more ease later. The skill to develop is staying present to sense when we are moving away from our worth, vision, and values. The skill of noticing when we drift is how we can utilize the courage we already have within us to come back.

What would it feel like to respect yourself 100 percent of the time instead of just sometimes?

This is your loving Monday reminder that your happiness matters. It matters because you matter.

Not only will your physiological state change how you see the world, which will change the opportunities you see, but your experience of being alive is also made up of a string of moments defined by how you feel about yourself and the world.

We are designed simply and powerfully. Maybe instead of thinking your way out of a problem or a dip in mood, you could try doing the things that make you healthy on all levels.

What could you schedule this week to help your well-being, therefore helping everything else in your life?

Getting people to give you attention is different than providing value to them.

The former is for those who are in the short game, and the latter is for those who want to play the long game, both in business and in happiness.

What would it take for you to shift from hustling for attention to sensing how to give something meaningful?

You don’t owe anyone anything except the best version of yourself.

You have likely been holding back on your dreams, expression, and contribution to some degree because you fear shaking up the status quo for other people. This is your reminder that holding back doesn’t serve anyone. The world and everyone in it need you to contribute at your highest level, whether they know it or not.

What would you do if you didn’t feel indebted to others to stay small?

The point of living in this world together is that we each have a unique perspective that is essential to seeing the whole picture.

No one else can know what lights you up like you do, yet other people can offer different ways in which that passion can be expressed and have the maximum impact. 

Before you commit to doing things the way that seems obvious or easiest to you, might you gain the perspective of other people you value to see how else you might approach it? See as many possibilities as you can now so you can be confident that you are using your energy in the way that gives you the greatest return on your contribution. 

In the book Influence, Richard Cialdini shares the power of authority when it comes to how we perceive information. People are way more likely to align with us if what we assert is backed by authority, whether that authority is a celebrity, a doctor, a subject-matter expert, or anyone else they hold in a high regard. Knowing this can help us choose one of three paths:

1. Be the authority and expert. This takes time, knowledge, commitment, and trust-building.

2. Align yourself with an authority and get their validation.

3. Understand that people just might not see and know what you see and know yet because they don’t deem you as the authority, and that’s ok because you can.

We aren’t rational, fact-influenced beings. We are emotional, feelings-influenced beings whether we like it or not. How might understanding this help you free yourself to have the impact you want?