My declaration of self-esteem

By Virginia Satir

I am me.
In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone chose it.

I own everything about me - my body, including everything it does, including all its thoughts and ideas, my eyes including the images of all they behold, my feelings , whateverthey may be - anger, joy, frustation, love, disappointment, excitement, my mouth and all the words that come out of it, polite, sweet or rough, correct or incorrect, my voice, loud or soft, and all my actions, whether they are to others or to myslf.

I own my own fantasies, my deams, my hopes, my fears.

I own my own triumphs and sucesses, all my failures and mistakes.

Because O own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By doing so I can love me and be friendly with me in all parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.

I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can corageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the solutions to the puzzles and for the ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and fell at any given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.

When I reviewed later how I looked sounded , what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting and invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say,and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close, to others, to be productive and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside me.

I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and I am okay.