No, I am not telling you to be less than the best you can be.

I am saying you need to speak to yourself through thick and thin so that you come across well to others. That means attitude starts at “home,” right? As in your head.

Over 9 years ago I wrote a blogpiece advising you to express your worth on LinkedIn, highlighting a book I kept in my collection “What to Say When You Talk to Yourself.”

I suggested that you have to be your own best cheerleader, salesperson, advisor, confidante, expert. If not, it comes through in how you mix your words, show your presence, and impress others.

Recently, I read an article “How to Speak More Kindly to Yourself,” by Art Markman and it reinforced what I believe to aptly augment that years-old advice I offered, with some new twists in our even more unkind,  post-pandemic era, and the upcoming alienating (for some) holiday period. Let yourself ponder the upside of the downsides, the lessons from failure, heeding the warnings from perceived dangerous paths. Know that we are all there with you in the same journey.

Implement what Markman suggests: “…you will find that your first reaction in the face of an error is to seek to learn from it, rather than getting down on yourself.”

I hope you will find some value in the above-referenced articles and the book, as my gifts to you, because we all need a pep talk now and then, and it needs to come first from within.