{"id":397,"date":"2010-08-09T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2010\/08\/be-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html"},"modified":"2010-08-09T12:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T12:01:00","slug":"be-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2010\/08\/be-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html","title":{"rendered":"Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you like gifts? Who doesn&#8217;t? You all have the ability to give yourself the most special gift&#8211;yourself! It&#8217;s a gift that can only come from you. This unique, cherished blessing can be yours now! It&#8217;s the gift that will keep on giving for as long as you choose to have it. After giving this gift to everyone but me in my Doormat days, I now make a conscious effort to keep giving the gift to me each day.<\/p>\n<p><b>The greatest gift you can give to yourself is yourself!<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Most people don&#8217;t get this. It took me hitting rock bottom for years to appreciate how great a gift it is to own yourself. I gave myself to anyone who gave me attention, said a kind word, offered some company, or who just put me on the spot. After years of not valuing me, I know that I&#8217;m priceless. So are YOU! Please absorb this because it&#8217;s so important <\/p>\n<p><b>The greatest gift you can give to yourself is yourself!<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><i>The greatest gift!<\/i><\/b> Living as a person you&#8217;d like to be instead of in the image of others makes the gift most precious. Having the freedom to choose your path, instead of going down the ones others tell you to go down gives you endless possibilities for your life.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>The greatest gift!<\/i><\/b> A best friend&#8211;yourself&#8211;a gift that lasts a lifetime. Best friends can come and go but when you become your own best friend, you always have the most special one. You can always be there for yourself if you choose to be. <\/p>\n<p><b><i>The greatest gift!<\/i><\/b> Unconditional self-love creates unlimited possibilities. When you learn to love and accept yourself exactly as you are, you have the greatest love of all. It will motivate you to take good care of your health and needs to be the best person possible.<\/p>\n<p><i><b>The greatest gift!<\/b><\/i> The key to satisfaction is in owning the power to control what happens in your life. This doesn&#8217;t mean controlling others. It does mean making your own decisions, setting boundaries to allow enough time for you own needs, and choosing your own course.<\/p>\n<p>Give yourself the greatest gift. Why wait for a birthday or holiday? <b>Every day is a special occasion if you choose to make it so<\/b>. Many people pursue careers, romantic partners, possessions, a great body, and everything else that people tell us will make us happy. That warps their perspective on how to actually feel happy. <\/p>\n<p>It still astounds me how many people aren&#8217;t happy, even with good jobs, good looks and trendy possessions. Maybe if manufacturers programmed &#8220;consciously be happy&#8221; into a Blackberry or other gadget, they&#8217;d remember. I&#8217;m being facetious of course, but it troubles me that so many people don&#8217;t experience real happiness. There&#8217;s a big difference between feeling revved from outside factors&nbsp; [achieving something &#8211; approval from someone &#8211; attracting romantic attention &#8211; losing weight &#8211; etc.] and feeling happy just because you&#8217;re content inside. <\/p>\n<p><b>Happiness motivates you to take better care of yoursel<\/b>f. External satisfaction is a more superficial, fleeting bits of happiness that keep you needing more. <\/p>\n<p>Are you waiting for the &#8220;right pieces&#8221; to be in place to be happy? As you get more, you often need more. That keeps happiness on the horizon but out of your grasp. Happiness isn&#8217;t a future goal. Make it an operative word for every day. Since I began practicing self-love, I&#8217;m happy most of the time. You can be too, with self-love! ! <\/p>\n<p><b>Give yourself the greatest gift&#8211;YOU<\/b>&#8211;as a happy person who loves him\/herself! There&#8217;s not other gift in the world that&#8217;s better!<\/p>\n<p><b>Please leave comments under my posts so we can stay connected.<\/b>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you like gifts? Who doesn&#8217;t? You all have the ability to give yourself the most special gift&#8211;yourself! It&#8217;s a gift that can only come from you. This unique, cherished blessing can be yours now! It&#8217;s the gift that will keep on giving for as long as you choose to have it. After giving this&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-self-love-acceptance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2010\/08\/be-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you like gifts? Who doesn&#8217;t? You all have the ability to give yourself the most special gift&#8211;yourself! It&#8217;s a gift that can only come from you. This unique, cherished blessing can be yours now! It&#8217;s the gift that will keep on giving for as long as you choose to have it. After giving this&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2010\/08\/be-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Lessons from a Recovering Doormat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-09T12:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Daylle Deanna Schwartz\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/2010\/08\/be-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving - Lessons from a Recovering Doormat","og_description":"Do you like gifts? Who doesn&#8217;t? You all have the ability to give yourself the most special gift&#8211;yourself! It&#8217;s a gift that can only come from you. This unique, cherished blessing can be yours now! It&#8217;s the gift that will keep on giving for as long as you choose to have it. 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Let Me Count the Ways, a She's appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows, including Oprah, Howard Stern, and Good Morning America and has been quoted in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, and Men\u00b9s Health. After being a consummate People Pleaser who felt unworthy of getting her own needs met for many years, Daylle found a path of self-love that enabled her to build her self-esteem and reinvent herself into a dual career. She learned to get taken seriously without being overtly assertive when she became one of the first women to start an independent record label (on a dare!) and learned to play ball nicely and successfully in an industry dominated by men. To help independent musicians empower themselves, Daylle writes music business books for Billboard\/Random House, including the very popular Start &amp; Run Your Own Record Labe and I Don't Need a Record Deal! Daylle's books have been translated into over 10 languages and are popular around the world. She speaks for colleges, organizations and corporations. Through her company, Project Self-Empowerment, Daylle creates programs and materials to help people empower themselves. One goal is to raise the money to self-publish her book, How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways and give it away for free in colleges and through organizations, to give thanks for all her blessings. Daylle uses her writing and speaking to help others find the kind of contentment and empowerment that she has.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/author\/dschwartz"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}