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    Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You
    Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You
    Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You
    Ebook153 pages4 hours

    Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You

    By Diana Bletter

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    About this ebook

    Prize-winning author Diana Bletter teaches readers how to big up themselves, how to truly love who they are. Each simple lesson in the book guides readers to take care of their four elements: Mind, Heart, Body and Soul, ten minutes each day. That is all it takes to learn how to big up yourself.
    Do the big things small, and the small things big, Bletter says. Readers learn to break down large projects into a small, manageable size. They also learn to do the small things with mindfulness. These are some of the tools that guide people toward accomplishing their goals.
    “Big Up Yourself will encourage readers to take care of their four elements each day,” Bletter says. “In this way, they learn how to love who they are.”
    “You can travel all over the world but you will never find someone who deserves your love as much as you do.” There is no truer statement yet many readers do not know how to begin finding self-love. As readers commit to devoting ten minutes of their day to nurturing their four elements, they will discover a new inner glow. That is self-care, and it grows into self-love. Readers will learn that if they approach life as a series of spiritual lessons, they will reach understanding and acceptance during difficult moments. Then they can transform pain into wisdom, fear into trust, and self-doubt into inner power.
    With an easy-going, accessible style, Big Up Yourself gives readers the tools they need to appreciate who they are. Then they can stop enduring life and start truly living it in a Big Up Yourself way.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiana Bletter
    Release dateAug 17, 2017
    ISBN9780985343224
    Big Up Yourself: It's About Time You Like Being You
    Author

    Diana Bletter

    Diana Bletter's writing appears in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Huffington Post, tabletmag.com, and other publications. She is the First Prize winner of Family Circle Magazine's 2011 Fiction Contest, and her novel, The Witches' Secret, was a semi-finalist in Amazon's 2009 Breakout Novel Award. Her stories have appeared in The North American Review, The Reading Room and Watchword. Her first book, The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women, with photographs by Lori Grinker, was nominated for a National Jewish Book Award. Her memoir, The Mom Who Took Off On her Motorcycle, has just been published. "A spellbinding read," wrote Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Assault on Truth and Why Elephants Weep.

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      Book preview

      Big Up Yourself - Diana Bletter

      Big Up Yourself

      It’s About Time You Like Being You

      Diana Bletter

      Copyright Diana Bletter 2017

      Published by Kent & Cordell at Smashwords

      All rights reserved. No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any form other than that in which it was purchased and without the written permission of the author. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you want to share the e-book, please purchase another copy. Thank you for respecting the very hard work of the author.

      http://www.dianabletter.com/

      www.facebook/dianabletter

      www.twitter/diana bletter

      ISBN: 9780985343224

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      About the Author

      Other Books by the Author

      Introduction

      My mother used to tell everyone she lost all her money with Bernie Madoff. That was not the truth. She lost it all because her she drank too much and her thinking became irrational. She went from living in a fourteen-room house in the Hamptons to surviving on her monthly Social Security checks. She spent her final years smoking, drinking, and calling up different companies to complain about their products so that they would send her free stuff. She died broken, bitter and miserable.

      The last thing I wanted was to be like her. Nevertheless, without my even knowing how it happened, all her negativity, dissatisfactions and sorrow had seeped inside me. I felt like my life was falling apart. I felt like I was falling apart.

      I had so much in my life but I could not even acknowledge my gifts. I had a loving husband, four amazing children, two incredible stepchildren, and a wonderful unofficially adopted daughter from Ethiopia. I lived in a beautiful house one hundred steps from the Mediterranean Sea. Yet I felt like a complete failure. An utter disappointment. I belittled my accomplishments and derided myself. I treated my dog, Happy, far better than I treated myself.

      I hated being me.

      One afternoon, full of paralyzing self-pity, I lay on the living room sofa, staring up at the ceiling, feeling as though I was done. I let the sounds of life go on all around me. A car passed by. Then a kid on a skateboard. Then I heard the sea. I listened hard as the waves crashed against the rocky shore, then receded.

      In came the waves, and out they went.

      It suddenly dawned on me that if I wanted the power of the waves, I had to pull back deep inside myself.

      Before I could venture outside and make something of myself in this world, I had to venture deep inside. I had been waiting for the world to discover me and like me but I knew I had to learn to like me first. A popular Jamaican term that my sons always say came to me.

      Big up yourself.

      Celebrate being you.

      Everyone else is taken. I knew I had better start to like being who I was.

      I was not sure how to go about finding love for myself. It seemed so basic. So fundamental. Yet I did not know how to direct the love I felt so naturally and easily for my husband, children and friends toward me. I thought about taking care of my children. Caring for them went hand-in-hand with loving them. I decided right then to try to take care of me.

      Take care of yourself because you are a precious child of God.

      Chapter One: Discover (or rediscover) The Four Elements

      It dawned on me that all of us are comprised of four basic elements.

      Mind, body, heart, soul.

      We have four elements inside us that we must take care of each day. Body, soul, heart, mind. It does not matter in which order you choose to care for them, but care for them you must.

      That afternoon, I got up off the couch.

      I decided to make a chart. You can do an excel spreadsheet, but I used a pen and paper. I think better when I have a pen in my hand.

      The Four Elements

      I wrote that on top. Underneath that, I wrote the days of the week. Down the side of the page, I wrote the four elements. Then I filled in the chart with what I could do for myself right then. I did not have to do anything more than that.

      I also knew that I could not make plans that were too grandiose and impossible to carry out. I decided to take care of the four elements, devoting ten minutes to each of them.

      Ten Minutes

      I cannot change my life in the next ten minutes. However, I can use ten minutes to change my life. Sometimes, that is all it takes. Living well, ten minutes at a time. I could do that.

      I sat up on the couch and wrote:

      Mind: Read a poem on The Writer’s Almanac

      Soul: Try to meditate for ten minutes

      Body: Jump in the sea

      Heart: Send an email to Mary, my college roommate

      I decided to do each activity for at least ten minutes. I could do that.

      Slowly, I learned how to take care of my heart, body, mind, soul. Slowly, I learned how to big up myself. When I started caring for myself, I started loving myself. There is no greater feeling than that.

      Here are some suggestions. Remember that each element is like a muscle. We use it or lose it. We can’t be lazy about caring for the components that comprise us.

      Mind: Find something interesting to read or learn something. For example, I am trying to learn Arabic. Try a new hobby. Take a class. Learn a new skill.

      Body: Walk for ten minutes instead of driving. Park at the far-end of the parking lot instead of circling and circling, searching for a parking space. If you do not have the money or time to go to a gym, run in place for ten minutes in your house.

      Heart: Find someone to talk to. Maybe someone who needs cheering up. Maybe someone you haven’t spoken to in a while.

      Soul: You can say a short prayer. Here is a simple one: You can travel all over the world but you will never find someone who deserves your love as much as you do. Commit that sentence to memory. I did. After you read it over again, close your eyes, take a deep breath in, a longer breath out, and repeat that prayer in your heart.

      A Riddle, a Paradox, a Contradiction

      The other thing that came to me when I was lying on the couch was this idea:

      Do the big things small, and do the small things big.

      From here on, I decided to do the little things in my life in a big way. Taking out the garbage, cleaning the bathroom sink or sweeping the kitchen floor: if I did chores with a full heart, they became more than chores. They were part of self-care. They were part of my life. This is my only life and I want to learn to embrace all of it.

      Moreover, I had to learn to do the big things small. I stopped saying, I want to write a book, because I got angry with myself for not accomplishing it. I started to break it down. I would write a page. A short sentence. A few words.

      I could do big things if I did them small.

      Behavioral Science means, If the gap between what people want and what they can get is too wide, then they will probably give up, my friend, Vladimir, who is a statistician and economist, told me. We have to set goals that are realistic. That way, we will keep trying, and we will not quit.

      How to Do It

      When my children were small and they were playing a game, they used to yell, Do over!

      We do not get a do-over in life but we can get a different kind of life.

      We can do it small.

      We can do it big.

      We can do it each day.

      Start with a minute. Start thinking right and acting right.

      There is no better time to begin than at this moment.

      Remember, you can only do you.

      You can only do now.

      Each Day is a Room

      Every day is a room that I have never entered before.

      My life is a book that I am writing for myself. The story of my life is the story that I choose. When I wake up each morning, the first thing I do is think about how thankful I am that I am still alive. I never take that for granted.

      Then I take care of my four elements. I want to go over them in more detail.

      Mind. I have to take care of my mind first. Open my eyes. Mind intact. Brain functioning. All systems go.

      In the morning, I never turn on the TV. I call it junk food for the brain. I do not believe in useless information. I believe that I need the quiet of the morning. I like getting up while it is still dark so that I can greet the dawn.

      This is a new day.

      My brain needs to refill itself. I read something useful. I read about how other people live their lives.

      I find something to inspire me, to help me. My mind is a muscle. If I do not use it, I lose it. I can read a quote from Marcus Aurelius. Or a poem. Something to start my day right—or, to restart my day. Remember, you can start your day over at any time.

      Heart. My husband, Jonny, is already up by the time that I wake up. He always gets up before me. I always say good morning, sweetheart, and give him a kiss. That is what I do for my heart. Whenever I speak to our kids, I make sure to say that I love them. I do not speak to all of them each day but if I do, I always end the conversation with I love you. Sometimes, I will even ask them, Did I tell you today that I love you? My college roommate, Mary, who now lives in Anchorage, Alaska, taught me that.

      Soul. Each morning, I say prayers of thanks.

      Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

      Gratitude pushes back self-pity, fear, and envy.

      Gratitude is the best mind-altering drug there is. Being grateful for what I have makes me happy. I used to think that happiness came only after I fulfilled certain requirements. I thought I had to earn happiness. I thought it came only if I wrote a certain number of books or if I had a certain number of zeros in my bank account. Now I know that I can choose to be happy for all I have. There is no better way to start my day than giving thanks that I am still alive.

      Maybe you do not believe in God. I do not want to try to talk you in or out of belief. Yet I believe that if we are alive and here on earth at this time, we are part of creation. We can give thanks.

      Sunflower

      I picture myself as one sunflower in the field of life. A flower among flowers. I turn my face to the sun and feel the warmth.

      The X is Gone

      I used to think that slashed across my soul was a big, black X. I thought I was defective and there was something wrong with me. Well, that happens when you grow up in a crazy house. One thing that has helped me is reading a prayer that says: the soul that God placed within me is pure.

      Babies are born with pure, unadulterated, good souls. Babies are born good. I sincerely believe that. I believe that my soul is still pure no matter how many mistakes I have made, or people I have unintentionally hurt, or stupid, crappy things I have said and done.

      My soul is

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