I had no idea how bad my Long Island accent was until I left Long Island. Within weeks of beginning a television news position in Allentown, Pennsylvania, I realized I seemed to have a restraining order out on word endings. Instead of walking and talking, I was walkin’ and tawkin’. And for some reason, I really liked the letter “W”. I found myself tawkin’ to the “ow-fih-sa”, instead of the officer and going to the “mawl” instead of the mall! This began years or self examination, as folks in the television business will do, focused on every nuance of my outward appearance: every sound, every look, hairdo, inflection, eyebrow tilt, collar and shoulder turn. If you could see it or hear it, I had put a shine to it. You’d never hear a trace of Long Island today, unless I cross the Verrazzano Bridge, then I might just slip a little. But what I forgot about for many years was what was on the inside. When we began the Wisdom Coalition, it hit me like a battering ram. My inside was a bit of a train wreck. When I started to listen to what I was saying to myself, I heard a demeaning voice with absolutely no compassion, empathy or kindness.

In our book, The Power Of A Pivot, How Changing Your Mindset Can Bring You More Joy In Every Aspect Of Your Life, I went on a journey of self-discovery, as we invite the reader to do with us. This process helped me find the reasons for what I was hearing and the motivation to change the verbiage. As we explain in The Power Of A Pivot, you have to truly know yourself, understand yourself and take an active role in how your life and your thoughts unfold to truly be happy. We explain our Wisdom Symbol; the idea that we can live our lives from the inside out and that WE control our thoughts and that those thoughts don’t have to be based on external factors. While writing the book and exploring these concepts, I crawled deep inside myself and decided to create the peace I needed there, not even realizing how much better I would feel, and how much more joy I would have. Listen, I’ll never stop polishing the outside because I love competition and make-up and a million other things, but now I have more of a balance with the inside and an understanding that you truly do have to love the one you’re with all the time to love every other aspect of your life with a full heart.

Self-love is kind of like the accent. It’s about raising your awareness to the idea that maybe the way you’ve always done things isn’t necessarily the best right now. Life changes. Accents change. Thoughts change. But self-love might just be the constant that anchors itself to everything else you need for a full life.

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We've all heard the saying that we can't truly love another until we love ourselves. Yet the idea of self love can leave us feeling conflicted. Many of us were taught at an early age that loving ourselves is conceited, and this may be at the root of our constant need to berate ourselves. However, this process of constantly putting ourselves down has contributed to what Dr. Brene Brown calls a scarcity culture, where we feel as though we are never enough (smart enough, successful enough, pretty enough, etc.), and ultimately, this leads to our inability to recognize and appreciate our strengths.

So how do you turn that ship around? Start by focusing on what you do well rather than what you perceive that you do wrong.

• Create a list of your accomplishments and note which of your strengths enabled you to succeed.
• If you are not familiar with your strengths, take the VIA assessment.
• Once you've identified your top strengths, begin looking for opportunities to use them in new ways throughout the day.
• Take time to visualize your "ideal self" using your strengths to accomplish your personal goals.
• Celebrate and congratulate yourself when you use your strengths and/or act in accordance to your values.
• Place your attention on the positive aspects of your life. What we look for is what we see.
• Set the intention to see only the light in yourself and in others.

Although self love in an inside job, sometimes it's difficult to turn off our "stinking thinking" and focus on our strengths. If this is the case for you, we have the perfect solution! We invite you to join us for our online Journey to Self Love workshop where we will walk with you and help you every step of the way. Stay tuned; more details coming soon.