You deserve to love yourself every day.
Take a moment to reflect.
Tonight, I feel good about myself.
I was just shaving my face while getting ready for bed. To be honest, with everything that’s been going on and getting caught up in the autonomy of life it’s easy to dwell on the simple things. This wasn’t one of those nights. Currently, I’m a new software developer for a company I’ve been at for seven years. I have a wife and toddler, own my own home and have reliable food and transportation. I live in an urban area that’s widely recognized and I’ve worked over the last couple of years to improve on family finances. But that’s not the thought that actually made me feel grateful and proud of myself.
I grew up moving around a lot but mostly lived in a small area of central Louisiana. My family never really had a lot and my grandfather spent his life to build out as much as he could for family security. My school was very small and comprised mostly of extremely skewed beliefs and racism.
I never got very good grades. When I moved to Florida to finish high school after I lost my mother to a car accident, they actually said that they never filed my transcripts because they didn’t think I’d continue going to school, much less graduate. I think it was that exact moment that I decided to go against the grain of those around me and make decisions for myself.
Remembering the contrast of where I came from to where I am now just filled me with a lot of appreciation for myself. I know I’m nowhere near done with my journey either. I just wanted to put this out there in case you’re reading this. Your decisions now will ripple into the future and both conrollable and uncontrollable outcomes will happen. Being able to influence the controllable outcomes based on your own decisions is one of the best feelings in the world.
So please, be kind to yourself and remember that there are always forks in the road. Pick a good path and remember that you are your best advocate!
