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One morning I woke up, looked around at my life and wondered “how did I get to this point in my life?” I had earned my BA in Business, got married at 20, had three wonderful kids, volunteered at my church, taught the bible to teens and women at events….yet I still felt like I barely recognized myself. Who I had become? I had molded myself into who I thought I needed to be, I had let other people’s opinions of what I should look like shape me, I gave my power away to people pleasing and to making sure everyone around me was ok…..and it had cost me dearly. I paid a heavy price: I lost myself…my identity…my power to become who God had created me to be!

I am guessing that you can relate? My journey is one that is paved with trial and errors, with success and failure, with hope and despair….which is why I feel so passionately about knowing our true self so that you can take back your power, achieve your hopes and dreams, and be everything God created you to be!

 So let me ask you a question: who are you? Or perhaps the easier question to answer is: who are you not?

 We naturally think negative thoughts about ourselves, we have to work at noticing and praising the good qualities that we have.

I am a horse assisted life coach, which basically means that my office is an arena and my helpers are horses.  When a client comes to me and has a lot of self-doubt, one of the exercises I do with them is to put all the words that they choose to describe themselves on separate sticky notes. They then place the sticky notes on the halter of the horse they are working with. I ask them to look at the horse and to say those words to the horse, pretending that they are describing the horse. Most of the clients hesitate, “I can’t call the horse stupid, or fat, or ugly.” I press them further, “Why not?” The client usually responds with something like this, “Well, it isn’t true, this horse is beautiful and it is not fair to describe this horse in such a degrading way.” I have them walk the horse around the arena with these hurtful words on the horse. By the time the clients finish the walk, they realize the point of this exercise. They are precious and valuable and those words are not true about them either so why do they keep believing them? Thus begins the hard and rewarding work of discovering who they are created to be.

I wish I could reach out to each of you reading this article and tell you how precious and valuable you are. I want you to practice these three tips the next time you question your identity.

One, remember your true identity is that God created you and you are loved, chosen, secure, overcomers, not forsaken, you are seen, heart, and known!

Two, keep in mind that we are all created with our own unique identity. There is no one like you and who you are is valuable.

Thirdly, give yourself grace!

Leslie Vernick, a Christian counselor says, “Instead of rejecting yourself, accept yourself in all your humanist good and bad, beautiful ugly, parts, strong weak parts. A healthy sense of self and shame comes when we experience all of who we are, knowing we are not enough in ourselves. We still need God but that we are not less than others either, we are beautiful but broken, finite limited human beings and that find there is no toxic shame in being who you really are.

“You are worth investing in! You are enough! Maybe it is time to start looking at yourself and continue the journey of self-discovery!

You can book a life coaching session with myself and the horses at [email protected] I’m available through sessions via zoom.