I often experience what I think is a common human dilemma. We want change. We don’t know what that ‘change’ looks like, but we want it anyway.

To change, at least to change for the better, I need a plan. A destination. A goal.

As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ve set a goal of looking and feeling alive in every fibre of my being. It’s my ‘healthier, more loving me’ goal and it begins with determining ‘how do I want to look and feel’ and then mapping out the markers to bring me closer and closer to my optimum, ‘healthier more loving me’ goal.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I look like on the outside if inside, I am feeling less than satisfied with myself. Which is why I’ve created a ‘mission statement’ for my desire to look and feel exactly the way I desire.

I deserve to look and feel from the inside out in ways that the mind chatter in my head does not diminish or interfere with me loving myself completely.

Loving ourselves completely is an inside-out job.

For some people, the outside looks great, the inside not so good.

For others, it’s the reverse.

Rarely have I met anyone who completely embodies inside-outside looking/feeling the way they desire. There’s usually a ‘nose too big’ or ‘hair too curly’ or ‘teeth too crooked’ caveat to their feeling good about themselves.

Recently, a woman in a dress shop told me that the biggest complaint she gets from women over the age of 50 focuses on their dissatisfaction with their upper arms. “Nearly every woman who comes in here says they quit wearing sleeveless tops after 50,” she told me.

Of course, her comment was precipitated by my commenting on an outfit that was sleeveless that she thought I might like.

I of course, fell into her over 50 majority.

I may never grow comfortable wearing sleeveless tops (I want my goals to be reasonable and as I wasn’t comfortable going sleeveless in my 30s why would I suddenly be now?), I do believe I can and will divest myself of the slurpy, sinuous, yucky mind-chatter that undermines my calm, my sense of self-worth and my ease in this world.

I believe I deserve to love myself completely.

To get their, I come full circle — I return to loving myself the way I am, knowing that I am a work in progress, a built-by-design undertaking that will take my whole life to discover, unravel and create.

My desire to love myself completely is worthy. Exploring all the ways I can feel and live it is a beautiful journey of self-discovery I venture into every single day of living completely, lovingly me, just the way I am today, knowing deep within me, that I am a work in progress – a beautiful mysterious sculpture revealing itself to the world with every layer I peel back to discover my true essence.

We all are.