You deserve to feel proud of yourself

Last month, we had our community journaling mini-retreat on accessing our inner wisdom. In one of the journaling exercises, we journaled to prompts for remembering, “Who am I?” The prompt I chose for this exercise was, “I deserve to feel proud of myself for…”

I went into this prompt apprehensive, feeling like I couldn’t really say much about it. But I have a hard time receiving compliments, so I figured this prompt would be good for me.

First, I listed a few small wins that I had had recently. I felt “meh” writing those out. I had answered the question but didn’t feel proud. I felt kind of crummy, like, “well, I guess that’s it…”

My mind then wandered to my bigger life goals — with Zenit, with my art, with my personal life. I sighed and wrote about how I’m NOT where I want to be. I realized I had been feeling not enough in those areas for years now, to the point where I had gotten used to feeling not enough. This was my first time naming that. Damn.

But with this prompt guiding me, I looked back and acknowledged, “you know, even though I’m not where I want to be yet, I still deserve to feel proud of where I’ve come in these areas.” And then, I felt the shift.

It’s a journey to move from feeling not enough to enough. It’s not a light switch. With this journaling, I took a step…