Do you ever have one of those days where you have to look in the mirror and tell yourself, “I am beautiful. I am likable. I am good enough.” Do you ever have to convince yourself that you aren’t a failure? Not because no one has told you those things, but because you are your biggest critic, and it needs to come from you.

Do you ever have to remind yourself that your self worth shouldn’t doesn’t come from someone else’s opinion of you. They (whoever “they” are) do not determine your merit.

(Can I interrupt myself for a second to say that I know my blog is mainly about food. But, even though I’m a bit hesitant about posting this, I think it’s important to share who the girl behind the apron is. If reading about this is not interesting to you, here’s a post without too many feelings, but with a fun video, and a yummy recipe. :))

This stemmed from a time a couple of weeks ago where I forgot that I’m valuable and focused on someone else’s opinion of me. (OK, let’s be honest here, it hasn’t just happened once.) It was an interesting learning experience though. As I was in the midst of it, I was able to take a step back and really examine why I was so upset. And it was good, really good. In the middle of a tough situation, I often have trouble seeing clearly what I need to be changing or how I should be acting. This particular day I had a more coherent frame of mind and I started thinking about how I define success.

It’s difficult to strike a balance, especially in the social media laden world we live and work in. Maybe more-so for those of us who rely so heavily on things like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for our “success”. The problem is that I can place my value on the number of comments I get on a blog post (sometimes there are none), the number of YouTube views my show gets (sometimes the numbers are way lower than I’d like), the number of Likes I have on Facebook (why don’t I have as many as so and so).

Some of this has led me to contemplate my childhood. Who I was, the people who helped shape my life, why I am the way I am and respond the way I do. I’ve been thinking about my brother and sister-in-law’s precious 10 day old baby girl and how she is going to be influenced by me, as her Auntie. I want her to know how special and important she is.

And through all of these thoughts, I’m realizing a lot about success, who I want to be, the good things and the not so great things about who I am, and that I’m OK with being me… It only took 31 years to be able to say that.