There is a habit of many of My children to recriminate themselves again and again, as if self-recrimination were some kind of vitamin you take or an insurance policy. You recriminate yourself and perhaps feel you are protected from you-know-not-what. Perhaps from some kind of accusation, as if you choose to make yourself feel bad before someone else might. Perhaps you cut yourself down so perhaps you appear modest rather than immodest, as if it were immodest to feel affection for yourself and be pain-free.

Has a state of misgiving become your badge? Do you send yourself the recurrent caution: "You could have done better today. You should have done better." Have you perhaps made a habit of feeling bad about yourself rather than feeling good? Are you perhaps so accustomed to feeling inadequate that self-recrimination has become a way of life?

Surely this is not your destiny to feel bad about yourself. Did someone once continually make you feel so bad that you have taken over their role and kept up the tradition of remorse single-handedly? Is "not-so-good-could-have-been-better" the banner you must wave in front of yourself?

Perhaps you think that is pleasing to someone. Or do you do it for your own misery?

Whatever your reason or non-reason, this habit of mind is now at an end. You do not do glory to the universe nor to Me when you undercut yourself. Your task is to appreciate yourself. Your task is to say to yourself:

"I did what I did today, and I did it the best I could. The thing is, I did it. I did not leave it undone. If I have done something, how can I say I failed? If I had not done it, perhaps that would have been failure, but even then, it is more expedient for me to say to myself: 'Perhaps it was not mine to do. If I still feel it is mine to do, then I will tomorrow.'

"My fear of making mistakes has kept me from many a feast. I worry that I will not use the right fork. Now I ask myself, 'What does that matter? What embarrassment is that?' Then I say to myself: 'If I worry about embarrassment, if that is my concern in life, well, then, I should be embarrassed. That is something to be embarrassed about.'

"Ego would tell me that I have to appear A+, and that if I am A or A-, I have flubbed the ball and so I have let ego paint me into a corner. I let ego tell me I should sit there and recount to myself the error of my ways.

"Now I will come to my rescue. I will lift myself up from the floor of my thoughts and raise myself and my thoughts to a new height. I am alive on Earth. I am here to find my way. I do not have to be perfect in the eyes of the world or in my own eyes. I just need to be. I am. I AM. I am a child of God, and I have every right to be here and to feel happy with myself. I have every right to happiness. I do not have to castigate myself at every turn, or any turn. I have to be a friend to myself. I have to be a friend who gives cheer to me, lets me know that I am all right, all right as I am.

"So what if I blunder now and again. So what if I trip? So what if I fall? I will pick myself up, wipe myself off, put my cap on aright and keep going. The one mistake I will not make again is to put myself down. From now on, I will pull myself up. I am not a martyr to my life on Earth. I do not sacrifice my sense of well-being to a misbegotten sense of inadequacy. I no longer hobble myself with derogatory thoughts. Now I put myself onto a white steed and I ride through my life as a knight in good standing to my own heart."