Let me tell you, I have a good number of kind and loving people in my life, but there is no one who will let me know my strengths or my potential unless I believe in the reality of them, first. And that’s probably true for you, too. The people who care about you will politely inquire about your health, your happenings, and maybe even your state of mind. However, the topic of whether you are keeping yourself aligned and committed to what you believe in will rarely come up in casual conversation. But I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Because there are plenty of us who have not yet taken the time to get quiet enough with ourselves to consider what we want to believe in, first. And that is what I mean by taking yourself seriously. Not in the sense that you carry yourself with such an uptight bearing that you can’t laugh at yourself, or look at the lighter side of life. I mean take yourself seriously in the sense that you’ve decided that you believe in your own human potential to be a force for good in the world, and that you are going to live a good life, as a result. For a long, long time, I lived in a constant state of self-doubt and denial, all the while assuming that was “just the way I was.” I didn’t take care of myself, I told myself that terrible or inconsistent relationships were all I deserved, and I had a severely limited notion of what I was capable of at work. Deep down, I think I was always waiting for somebody to tell me I was more valuable than that. But even if they’d tried, their words would have felt hollow until I was ready to decide for myself that I was worth living for. If you’re anything like me, nobody can lift you out of your own falsehoods or limitations but you. No therapist, friend, parent, or partner could convince you otherwise. I think you’ve got to be sick enough of living out your old, self-defeating ways to take the leap of faith of seriousness, for yourself. ❤️‍🔥—Y.B.D.