How often do you beat yourself up over your own weaknesses and shortcomings? How often do you silently critique yourself with the usual "you didn't get an A on the paper you should have aced" or "You didn't work hard enough to make that relationship last", or the extremely common "You should have your life figured out by now. Other people do". Although we are permitted to feel and experience grief, sorrow, pain, frustration and disappointment, those feelings should not be the constant 'self talks' we give ourselves. Yes, sometimes we need to do some serious self-evaluation and maintenance work, but just because the toilet gets clogged, it doesn't mean the whole house is on fire. Let's discuss a few ways to be more self-motivating and positive, embracing the beautiful mess of life we are all living in.

So you don't have the best car. It needs new brakes, a realignment and the radio no longer works. But hey, it can take you from point A to point B just fine. Always take a minute to be grateful for what we do have. Feeling sorry for yourself only leads to more disappointment and frustration and a lower quality of life in general. Be grateful for your old beater. At least you have a car!

Your coworker is skinnier than you. Your boss makes more money than you, and Betty Lou goes on dates every weekend while you sit at home because your date cancelled (again). Well, hey. Think of it this way: there's more of you to love, a little humility makes saving money way easier, and, frankly, ice cream and a movie tends to turn out better than most dates anyhow. Take a deep breath. Newsflash: everyone puts up their 'perfect life' on Facebook and Instagram, hoping that they can trick everyone into thinking their life is pretty darn awesome. Your hair, makeup and home-cooked meals don't always have to look like they jumped out of your Pinterest account. Don't ever try and compare your weaknesses to someone else's strengths, unless you like to be the winner of a losing game of course.

As a final thought, I'd encourage you to have some faith. Whether that means trusting that better, brighter days are ahead, that the sun will rise and set, that time can heal, or that things work out (because they do), keep hanging onto what you do know. To me, I have found it most helpful not only to have more faith in myself and what I'm doing, but to have increased faith in the person who grants me daily breath and the ability to grow and learn. Faith isn't to have a perfect knowledge of something and then to follow the instructions because you can see that logically it will all work out. Faith is believing in something much larger than yourself, believing because deep down your soul yearns for peace and love.

At the end of my life, I look forward to being able to draw connections of how events, people and destiny charted my course and shaped me into who I was meant to become. We were created to learn, and the best learning is always a little messy. As Martin Luther King once said, "If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl, but by all means keep moving." I think he meant that true failure only comes when we admit defeat and give up on life; the point at which we convince ourselves that we aren't good enough, smart enough or well enough to continue on. With any luck, I hope to one day be able to draw a line from event to event, moment to moment, and I pray that the final etching of my lifetime will be one consisting of endless squiggles, angles, corners, bumps, curves and the like. Because life is a beautiful mess, after all, isn't it?