Whatever you did, no matter how big or small that thing was, I am so damn proud of you. We’re going to celebrate this moment because next time you doubt yourself, you can come back to this place and remember how glorious you felt.
We can all be pretty bad at congratulating ourselves, but giving yourself recognition is so important in building our self-esteem and becoming our own best friend.
I feel so much pride for my friends, family, Mat and total strangers – but I have struggled to congratulate myself in the past. I’m easily proud of the little things like putting on a white wash without turning it all pink by sneaking in a red sock. But with the bigger things, the things other people were ‘proud’ of me for, I just couldn’t feel it. But we’re working on it, my best friend and I.
Writing this is genuinely the proudest I have ever felt of myself. Every time I sit down at my laptop to write words, I do a little wiggle. I think it’s a real milestone for me, it’s a proud mum moment, like I’m proud of my brain, proud of my fingers for tap-tap-tapping away.
INDULGE IN THIS PRIDE.
Tell your brain just how phenomenal you are. Not anyone else – you. This is your time to big up yo-self. It’s not just saying, ‘Well done, good job gal,’ once a year – it’s a daily thing, because it all adds up. You have to believe you’re worthy of the congratulations, the celebrations. Be your own supporter, cheerer-on-er and then spread the lalalove:
You have three ‘I’m proud of you’ compliments in your kindness bank; they’re to give away today, tomorrow and the next day …
1. For you
WHAT ARE YOU PROUD OF TODAY?
Write it down – you can read this whenever you’re stuck in a patch of self-doubt. Revisit it, relive it.
HEY ME. REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU …
did your first talk at a school and spoke to 150 girls about body confidence, mental-health awareness and social media?
YOU ORIGINALLY THOUGHT THAT …
you wouldn’t be able to do it, so you were going to say no when you were asked to speak for an hour on your own.
BUT YOU DID IT AND YOU FELT …
so appreciated and you still buzz off the energy in that room now. You woke up the next morning so proud of yourself, you were paid in hugs, lovely feedback and teachers who said how interesting they found the talk.
SEE, YOU CAN DO IT.
2. For a stranger
I see you – you’re feeling yourself, let’s use that rocket fuel to make someone else feel proud of themselves too. Let’s show everyone else some love and feed them some of your energy. You’ve noticed the new assistant in the office is feeling a little anxious as it’s her first day – give her that extra boost and recognition she deserves by commenting how well she did when you’re leaving the office. Build each other up, see people, hear people, root for each other. A fire doesn’t lose anything when lighting another fire.
3. For a family member/friend/partner/colleague
With all compliments, they should come from a place of truth, and not just be forced, because that won’t help anyone.
See how it goes down … how do they take it? If they deflect it, say it again in a different way … I find rephrasing it works – mean it and repeat it:
It’s never too late for you to start being proud of yourself – it doesn’t mean you’re ‘cocky’ or ‘arrogant’. Come back to this joyful feeling when your inner cheerleader has gone quiet on you.
MY DEFINITION: when you feel like it’s time to be totally truthful with yourself AND with others.
This is your time to come clean; you’re ready to open up and say it how it is. I’m writing this bit with my bits out … I’m completely naked. I ran out of the shower to do this little section – it came to me just as I was washing my armpits.
TRUTH-FACED OR TWO-FACED?
As I’ve grown up, I’ve learnt that the more open and honest I am with my friends, the stronger and more understanding our relationship is. Especially for women, there is still a stigma around us all being ‘two-faced’ and not telling each other how we really feel about things … well, that’s not how I roll. There is absolutely no benefit to speaking behind someone’s back. I believe it’s better to address a situation before it becomes a mess – this is what I like to call being ‘truth-faced’.
Honesty doesn’t have to a brutal – ‘Wow, you’re totally shit at singing, please stop, I’m sending you the invoice for my broken ear drum surgery’ – it can be nurturing and ‘character-building’. If anyone has upset me or made me feel uncomfortable, I meet up with them face to face and tell them with kindness and empathy. I know they might not even be aware of it, or they didn’t intentionally do it, or they could be going through something.
I have a good friend who I’ve known for years. We have a very complex friendship, but we respect and understand each other. She’s admitted that, before me, none of her other friends had ever been honest with her. Out of courtesy, I’m going to call her by another name: Gladys.
Gladys has been through things no human should have to deal with. I cannot even imagine the pain and hurt she’s been through and how it has affected her. There was a stage in our friendship where she was spending most of our time together talking about other people negatively. It left me feeling really deflated, questioning whether she spoke about me like that to others … so I addressed it head-on. I said exactly how I felt, and asked if she was aware she was even doing it. She was initially a little defensive, saying that she didn’t mean it maliciously; she was processing stuff and her way of doing that was talking about others, to me.
A few months later, Gladys thanked me for being honest with her. It had made her think and she was more aware of spending time talking about other people while she was with friends. I was genuinely quite surprised by the effect our conversation had had on her, but we are now even closer because of it.
I used to be sensitive to honesty; I was a confrontaphobic. I would immediately go into self-protection mode and make an excuse for myself before apologising. It can be hard to take, but flip it round and be honest with yourself: if you didn’t know you had upset a friend, would you prefer them to communicate with you directly or would you want them to go to someone else and talk about you?
I find that if you both have a mutual understanding and level of respect for each other, you will have one conversation about whatever it was and then (hopefully, and I talk about this later in the book) it won’t happen again. I believe honesty is a really important part of building a friendship.
CONFRONTING TRUTHS ABOUT YOURSELF
Being honest isn’t just an emotion you can use with others; it’s just as powerful if you use it on yourself.
It can be painful, but these moments leave me feeling empowered – like I’m taking back control of my life and deciding to make a change. It took me a good chunk of time to be honest with myself about a previous relationship that had