Baby chickens!! I came home to my parents place in NZ to find three baby chickens running around inside in a huge cardboard box! When I put my hand in there to pat them they peck at all my freckles.

I have about a million freckles on each hand, so they reckon they’ve won the crumb lottery.

The gluten free crumb lottery.

Now to spin this chicken photo into a semi-relevant post: (but really I just wanted to post a photo of these little dudes that I’ve named Harrold I, II and II. Even though they’re chicks.)

I used to HATE my freckles. My young cousins used to call me freckle face and I would cry for hours. My freckles embarrassed me no end. A few years back I probably would have got upset at Harrold for noticing my freckles.

My mum told me they’d all blend together one day, which they kind of have, on my face, but my arms and legs and hands are still COVERED in freckles. It’s a serious freckle war zone.

She also always told me that I just needed to learn to love myself.

She told me that I’d grow to love the weird bits about me that make me unique.

But I didn’t believe her, all I wanted to do was iron my hair straight, fake tan my skin, and try to look more like a perfect barbie person. On my NZ drivers licence I actually look a bit like Barbie. Barbie, small boob edition.

In hindsight, I totally agree, once we can learn to “love ourselves”, life is a whole heap easier.

But the question is, how the devil can we do it?

I went to a facilitated talk recently where lots of people gave out their wisest advice to an upset person: “you just need to love yourself more”. It really flips my wicket when people say that.

We all get the concept, but what the hell does that even mean on a practical level?

How do we “just love ourselves?” Surely if it was so obvious we’d all be doing it, right?

Because we all have this little voice in our head that tells us we’re not good enough/ not pretty enough/ not lovable enough. As far as I’m aware, no one is exempt. No matter how many people tell us things to the contrary, some part of us will continue to believe that little voice called our mind until we can learn to defuse ourselves from it.

I now understand what it feels like to love myself. Sometimes. Mostly.

Well, a lot more than before. But it didn’t come as a result of lighting heart candles and sprinkling glitter everywhere while saying positive affirmations to my mirror reflection. Though if that floats your boat, absolutely go for it. I’ve just always been too practical for that kind of malarkey.

The only way I started to learn to love myself was when I learnt to see the separation between the voice in my head that kept telling me I was shit, and myself, underneath it. I had to learn not to always believe that voice in my head in my mind.

We can only love ourself if we know ourself. Who we are. Who we aren’t. Who we’ve been pretending to be. Who we’re scared to be.

The good, the bad, and everything in between.

And the only way to work that all out is to learn to separate between our mind and our self. Something that for most of us seems to be one and the same.

Somewhere in there under all the mind chatter and people pleasing is what annoying people call “our true self”. The only way I know of to find this true self and love them is by learning what is commonly called mindfulness. I call it Bloody Good Life 101. Because you can’t live a bloody good life without it.

Want to know who you are under all the overthinking and people pleasing? Check this out Bloody Good Life .com

And get a baby chicken to stand on your hand and peck at you. It stimulates bloody goodness.