Have you ever paused to listen to your internal dialogue?

What are you saying to yourself? About yourself?

Perhaps, like me, you’ve been criticizing yourself for years and didn’t even realize it. Life sent you to places that were so challenging that you think you’re broken, but you’re really broken open.

Isn’t it time to start approving of yourself and see what happens?

Many of us wish we had another chance to right our wrongs or an opportunity to do it all over again, whether it’s in our relationships, career, health, finances, or lifestyle. Believe it or not, we sabotage our own success and relationships because of what we say to ourselves.

Many people are lying in their graves whose business still remains unfinished. They never got around to living their lives on their terms or bringing closure on certain issues that haunted them while alive. Regrets, disappointments, and heartaches were their norm because they never felt deserving or worthy enough.

We measure ourselves and our self-worth by standards that are not even real. We are indeed our own worst critics. It’s our own perspective, our own internal dialogue, our own thinking . . . It’s simply us.

But why, you ask. Why are we so hard on ourselves?

Those limiting beliefs are inevitably rooted in our deep subconscious, planted when we were young. They could have been innocent remarks a teacher made or some things you heard from the elders in your life possibly said in jest or in frustration at something you had done. Perhaps those people didn’t even mean what they said, or they were just having a bad day and didn’t realize that you would take their words to heart and keep them in your memory forever. Regardless, you believed them to be true.

So, what happens when you believe those labels to be true? You waste your whole life believing those lies and trying to prove yourself to the world. You hunger for approval from others so you can feel better about yourself and your place in society and the tribe you struggle to belong to.

It’s certainly good and commendable to set high standards for ourselves, to strive hard and dream big. But when our own self-imposed, high expectations cause us to turn on ourselves with nasty, self- deprecating words, it is then that we become our very own worst critics.

We critique ourselves in so many ways that our entire world exists within this bubble we’ve created for ourselves. We hold ourselves to an unrealistic standard of perfection, and when we fail to meet that standard, we replay the same words over and over again in our mind, words like, I’m not good enough, how could I be so dumb? I never get it right. These were words that perhaps you heard from elders as you were growing up that had the power to tear you down and make you believe the lies, that stripped away at your self-worth, that became these beliefs that sabotaged your progress and hindered your growth.

When your self-image is rooted in shame, you fear being exposed as flawed, insufficient, or a failure. You believe that your disappointments and failures are the logical outcomes of who you “really are.” And because your belief system has been around for a long while, it is self- enforcing. The constant self-critiquing and hateful self-talk slowly kills your self-confidence and your self-esteem. It robs you of joy as you become blinded from seeing anything good and worthy in yourself.

Others may see your successes, and their words and actions may even imply how much they admire you and envy your accomplishments. But you are not likely to believe your successes are anything other than mere accidents. You give credit to others, not convinced that you are the one who made it all happen and that you ought to be patting yourself on the back and give credit where credit is due. Yes, you did it!

What we value in ourselves and what others valued when we were growing up can make a difference in how we are living our lives today. The labels we give ourselves when depressed often emerge from a shame-based self-image, which not surprisingly originated from the environment we grew up in.

Be gentle on yourself and treat yourself with the kindness that you would extend to your best friend. Send healing love to yourself, stay calm, and give yourself grace for the moment.

Breaking this habit requires grace. Grace enables us to move on to being more whole, one step at a time. Grace is saying to yourself, I’m trying my best, it’s okay.

Be more loving and compassionate as you go on this journey to becoming whole. Pick up all the pieces that have been scattered as far back as from the time you were a little child through all those years up until now. Pick them all up and piece them together, and using the kintsugi method, fill the cracks with gold to illuminate your beauty to become this beautiful treasure that makes you proud.

I did it, and so can you. From broken to beautiful, you too can now feast your eyes on your treasure like I do mine and admire its beauty. You can use it to display the most beautiful work of art, your creativity, which reflects your present moment, and see your life transformed right before your eyes.

Remember, you are one hundred percent responsible for your life.

YOU get to choose how your story ends.

Above is an excerpt from Gold in the Cracks: Move from Shattered to Whole and Reveal Your Light