Self-Acceptance Makes You Beautiful from the Inside-Out!



As a codependent I’ve spent much of my life WAITING for someone else to bring me flowers, or rather, to MAKE me happy. I had decided I couldn’t be happy being me, so there was no way for me to make me happy. So my happiness became someone else’s responsibility. I wanted someone to rescue me from horrible me.

Sounds like an old Disney movie, doesn’t it? From Snow White to Cinderella, the story line is basically the same: Helpless person, who can’t ensure their own happiness, needs a prince or princess to rescue them, to MAKE them happy— ever after!

Recovery has taught me real life doesn’t work that way. It works like this: I have to relinquish all of my reasons for feeling inferior and hating myself. I have to work at accepting me just as I am. Self-acceptance leads to self-love over time. When I’m having difficulties in accepting and loving myself— in tending the garden of my own soul— I need to place what I can’t do for myself into the hands of a Higher Power.

My Higher Power does not exist to RESCUE me. My Higher Power is present to assist me. I now choose to partner with God, or a Higher Power, and with others to make the garden of my own soul beautiful. I have to do the real work. Only I can MAKE myself happy. But others, including God, can help me when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

If you’re still waiting for someone else to make you happy, to bring you flowers or rescue you, forget it. No one exists to be responsible for you and your happiness, except YOU! And, with a little help, you can do it— you can turn your life around by growing your own soul into something beyond beautiful.

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