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Last Tuesday, I had the great pleasure of speaking to a group of Future Women Leaders on how to Cultivate Confidence and Self-Esteem. One of the concepts we spoke about was, to take stock of personal strengths and assets. To put this idea into daily practice, I suggested creating a brag book. It seemed this was an exercise that just about everyone in the room was going to follow through on. In case you did not get to attend, here now are the benefits and how to put together a brag book.

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Benefits
The point of keeping a brag book is to build your self-esteem, by reminding yourself of all the things that are great about you. It’s about shifting your awareness and focus from all of the supposed negative ideas about yourself. This journal serves as a quick pick-me-up anytime you are getting down and hard on yourself. It is your evidence of how excellent you are – use it as your defense any time you are being attacked by the inner critic (your small, fearful self).

The root concept of this brag book is to create self-appreciation and gratitude.  Having an attitude of gratitude, we are told over and over is a basic principle towards creating happiness. When you look at all of your daily accomplishments and successes, you begin to have happiness in yourself. When you focus on how great you are, you are greatful. As you feel gratitude for your body, which does the work, you begin to take better care of it through diet and exercise.  As you begin to feel gratitude for a happy mind and spirit, you choose to feed on only positive thoughts, words and actions. All of this gratitude makes you feel love, and in time this inner, self-love tunes you in with how the Universe, your divine creator, feels about you. See, when you do not love and appreciate yourself, you are out of alignment with the divine and your true, kick-ass self. Love and gratitude for yourself realign you to your higher self.

Nothing breeds more success than success. Nothing creates more self-pride than achievement. When we are proud of ourselves, we believe in ourselves and love ourselves. As we begin to have faith in ourselves, and our abilities, we begin to see all things as possible, one step at a time.

So, as well as cooking up a Thanksgiving feast this Thursday, why not also cook up a brag book. Here’s how.

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How to create a Brag Book

1. Get a notebook.  Pick one that feels good to you in size, weight etc.
2. Create a cover of your choice. Maybe a favorite picture of you and the title of “I Rock!”  Get creative.  It’s your book, so anything goes.
3. Tab 1: Physical Attributes. Again, you can title this any way you want. In this section you are listing all the things you love about your physical self. You great eyes, hair, feet, dimples, whatever. Go ahead and annotate a picture perhaps.
4. Tab 2: Personality Traits. List out all of the things you love about your personality and character. Integrity, kindness, good listener, problem-solver, etc. Be sure to leave some room, so you can keep adding new facets you become aware of.
5. Tab 3: Rave Reviews: For this section you will need to get your friends, co-workers and family involved. Get all of these people to write up a quick review of all the things they love and admire about you as a friend, co-worker, colleague, mother, daughter, cousin etc. This section reminds you of all your admirable qualities and how much you are appreciated and needed. Feel free to add pictures of all these people who love you.  Again, leave room to keep on adding to this section.
6. Tab 4: Accomplishments. This is the section that you are going to add to on a daily basis. Start by listing all of your achievements to date. Then, every day add 5-10 accomplishments. Paid and mailed all bills. Ran an extra 5-minutes. Made a kick-ass pumpkin soup. Posted a blog. Helped my child with her/his science project. Completed an awesome marketing presentation. Signed up for a financial planning class. Walked away from a bitch-session about the boss, going on in break room. Went to yoga. Asked Bill out on a date!  Anything, that you accomplished and feel proud about goes in this tab.

Happy bragging and Thanksgiving! If you’re with friends and family on T-Day, get them working on Tab 3!

Be love and light, always.

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