Reprinted from The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-lang/good-enough_b_9396406.html

Life can sometimes beat us up a bit, turn us over, and spin us around on the subject of our worthiness. Friends and family, and perfect strangers tell us what they think about us with a critical, just-trying-to-help-you eye. But all this does, and especially over time, is erode our self-esteem until we can barely lift our heads up from the weight of all the corrections and criticism from the outside of us – and of course, even worse – from the inside.

Our own inner dialogue is often fraught with egregiously negative self-judgment. “We shouldn’t have said that. We definitely shouldn’t have done that,” etcetera, etcetera, until we can become virtually paralyzed by the sting of our own intensely disapproving and manifestly unkind personal self-evaluation.

In response we might find ourselves disappearing into the social wallpaper of life, dissolving into the crowd, trying to blend in to keep safe.

Or, we do the opposite, and overcompensate, trying to prove our worth to everyone in sight!

The worse we feel about ourselves, the more we project this negative self-image into our actual life experience. This is bad for our relationships, bad for our sense of self, and can make it almost impossible to express our personal creative contribution to the world.

The spiritual solution is to realize that we are inherently good.

This doesn’t mean that we do not grow, or change, or challenge ourselves. It just means recognizing that the raw material of us, the essence of us, is good in the first place. As we become more and more aware of this intrinsic truth, then our natural impulses, our inclinations, our loves and passions begin to unobstructedly carve a beautiful and elegant living sculpture of that essence.

You can start right now to improve this inner state by saying these two affirmations.

“I am good.”

“I am enough.”

While these two statements may seem insignificant, they truly are much more potent than they seem.

And, you may find, they may not be so easy to say as they sound.

But, I can promise you this: by saying them, intoning them in your heart, and bodily memorizing them, you will change your life – utterly.

These essential phrases are like a sacred mantra, a veritable spiritual prescription for rectifying self-esteem. By consciously maintaining them you are choosing to embark on a journey of real self-compassion, where you can begin to rebuild a structurally sound and positively focused framework for living a more loving and fulfilled life.

Diana Lang is a spiritual teacher and author of
OPENING TO MEDITATION – www.DianaLang.com