Give Yourself the Greatest Gift for Christmas

Across the Western world, many people are preparing for Christmas. We are busy about looking for the perfect gift to give. And what we lose sight of is the fact that we ourselves are the perfect gift.

First, there’s no better gift you can give yourself this Christmas than the gift of self-acceptance and self-love. You are enough. You don’t need any “thing” or anyone to complete you or make you OK. God has already taken care of that through the very fact that God created you and made you a gift to yourself and the world around you.

The problem for so many people is that they don’t believe that they are good enough, and that all of their wholeness and happiness is resting inside of them. No matter how many times I emphasize this to people, I still find many of them searching for someone or something outside of themselves to validate them and make them OK. And these are the very people who are miserable at this time of the year because they haven’t been able to find that special someone who could rescue them from themselves and make their holiday a happy one.

Only you can rescue you from your self-loathing. Only you can make yourself happy. And only you can do that through complete and unconditional self-acceptance, which leads to better self-love.

Once we choose to accept ourselves unconditionally, an inner-light will begin to shine from within us. This inner-light is love: Our newfound love for ourselves blended with God’s all-embracing love for us. And the warmth we then feel is called happiness. Once we have created our own happiness in this way, we will find that there are people in our lives who can complement our happiness. But they can never be responsible for it. That’s our responsibility.

So go ahead. Give yourself the greatest gift this Christmas: The gift of self-acceptance and thus self-love. Ask your Higher Power to help you and miracles will begin to happen inside of you, because self-acceptance will silence your inner-critic. Once we accept the things we used to malign ourselves for, the critic inside us will have nothing to feed on.

Then, after you’ve gifted yourself with self-acceptance and love, gift all of your family and friends with the same gift. Offer them your unconditional acceptance and love for them. This is the only gift that truly keeps on giving—forever and ever.