Celebrating You!

I’m excited to announce 6 Months to Live’s first guest Life Experiments‘ post by Arianna Merritt from Arianna’s Random Thoughts! Many thanks to Arianna for sharing her experiment and photos. Feel free to submit your ideas and life experiments as well to sixmonthstolive@gmail.com Read more about Arianna’s journey to celebrating herself and others below:

Meet Arianna Merritt from (c) Arianna’s Random Thoughts

Celebrating You: It Starts Within

I recently returned from a life-changing trip to Britain and Ireland where I learned many important life lessons. I recorded these realizations in a travel journal, and I would like to sum up my final entries as a call to action to be kinder to ourselves.

While on the plane ride home, I heard the safety announcement: “Make sure that your own oxygen mask is on first, before helping others.” The same principle can be applied to life. I believe that you can’t help others in the most effective manner if you aren’t helping yourself first.

Prior to this trip, I’d made other people the focus of my relationships, without first taking the time to nurture and to love myself. While I was always going out of my way to help others and to let them know how great they were, I would rarely do this for myself. Instead, I would focus on my flaws; my inner critic was really good at bullying me.

Arianna in Cardiff, Wales | (c) Arianna’s Random Thoughts

I was especially aware of my inner critic during the summer, i.e., bathing suit season. At the beach, I was guilty of comparing myself to others and focusing on my physical flaws. In the past, I had hid my body because I thought it wasn’t good enough or beautiful enough compared to everyone else’s. I had listened to my inner critic. But, we can’t let our inner critic prevent us from enjoying life!

That announcement on the plane back home from London had a double meaning. I saw it as a reminder to be kinder to myself. In the past, listening to my inner critic held me back from living my life to my fullest potential. The announcement was an affirmation to start afresh and be kind to myself. My experience overseas gave me a renewed sense of self. I returned feeling more beautiful, empowered, and energetic. I want these feelings to stay around, so I’ve decided to take action.

In my Psychology studies, I learned that the average person has around 50,000 thoughts per day. Imagine if the majority of those thoughts were positive!  How amazing would that be?! How would life be different? I truly believe that changing your thoughts can really impact your life.

Therefore, I’m inviting you to start an experiment with me. This experiment is not all about me; it’s also ABOUT YOU! I’m going to be making a difference starting from the inside. It is shown that it takes 21 days for a habit to remain and become part of your daily lifestyle.

Sticking with the journal theme, I am creating a gratitude journal dedicated to ourselves. For the next 21 days, I’m encouraging you to write 100 words of kindness to yourself each day.

I invite you to finish the sentence for the next 21 days: “I am a star today because…”

(c) Arianna’s Random Thoughts

I will share my 100-word journal entries (daily random thoughts) starting November 1st on my blog. I’m excited about a month of positivity and gratitude! Will you join me? A lot could happen with 1,050,000 thoughts and smiles…

Share your thoughts and link to your blog posts on Twitter with the hashtag #arandomthoughts & #6mlifeexperiments