Bonjour Royal Friends!
Welcome to my kingdom, where you’ll find Princess Positivity Pointers for your royally happy life!
Easter and Passover holidays recently converged, holidays that remind us of renewal. In the spirit of renewal, today I want to talk to you about being careful of the address you call yourself. I hereby request that if you are prone to inner smack talk, I’d like you to consider building a new, more soul satisfying inner address that’s fortified with beauty and self-appreciation and that reflects the amazing princess you are! Let me tell you a story to illustrate….
A few months ago I was in New York City with my family for a furlough of fun. After walking around all day, we went on an adventure to find a cool new place to indulge one of our clan’s most notable hobbies: recreational eating.
We passed by a restaurant that looked like a contender.
I whipped out my cell phone to look up the reviews on Yelp. Why walk into a food establishment blind, when you can rally the army of eaters whose reviews can slay or encourage you to stay.
Of course, in order to find the food ratings for this restaurant, I had to know the name and address of the place. Strangely, I couldn’t find either the name or the address anywhere on the frontage of the establishment.
Perhaps I could have found the restaurant on Yelp by plugging in the cross streets. But, what if a new restaurant had recently arrived at that address? We wouldn’t know that, and we’d be getting reviews for the right address but the wrong name. No, I needed to know the name and the address.
Here’s what crossed my mind about the impact of a restaurant’s name which we might find at that address. If we craved amazing Italian food, we wouldn’t enter a place that called itself “Botch It Bistro.” If we hankered for upscale American, we wouldn’t step foot in a joint that named itself “Crappy Pappy’s Pancake House.” If we were obsessed with Chinese, we’d skip a joint named “Sucks So Bad Szechuan.”
I realized something that night. What happened in my mind when I didn’t know the name or number of the establishment that lived on that corner?
In a sense, if I didn’t know its name, I liberated the restaurant, and myself, from any preconceived notions of its essence. If we decided to dine there, the establishment had a chance to be all that it could be on that very night, without any baggage from Yelp reviews, any prior encounters with unsatisfied customers, any ideas of the quality of service to expect. Whatever the place could bring that night, it would stand on its own merits. Think of it. A two-star dive could bring it like a five-star palace overnight, at least to us.
It dawned on me that the names we call ourselves are like an address. They tell us where we can find ourselves on any given day. If we call ourselves bad names over and over, pretty soon, who we think lives at that address is someone we wouldn’t even want to visit. The harsh labels we give ourselves, the crappy smack talk weighs us down, messes with our potential, and hinders a clean approach to what every fabulous new day serves up to us on our life’s journey.
In order to thrive, we need to be very careful about names we call ourselves at our address. Change the name “Crappy Pappy Pancake House” to “You’ll Flip for Our FlapJacks House” and watch foot traffic flock. Change the bullying banter in your inner soul space to words that are supportive and uplifting and watch yourself flourish. And lest you think you are spewing truth and you deserve the harsh treatment, then think of this. You’ve already done the introspective work, of recognizing the need for change. Bravo! Turning a new leaf won’t start with self-condemnation. Follow the words. Call yourself the new address.
What if you got up every day, and instead of greeting yourself with an address called Screw Up Street, or Big Jerk Drive, or Thunder Thighs Place, you find yourself pulling on your fluffy slippers, sipping your first cuppa Joe and greeting the sun at “24-7 Wonderful Me Way” or “841 My Youth Is Continually Renewing Road?” What if you lived at “333 Smart Self Starter Street?” Never mind that you stuck a fork in the light socket without turning off the electricity — that was yesterday! Today’s a new day! The you who did that doesn’t live there anymore. Never mind that you burned the place down.
My royal friends, don’t keep finding yourself at an old address that doesn’t serve you well. Don’t look for yourself at an address that isn’t swanky and swell. Do what the restaurants do when they take over an old space, determined to invigorate the heart and soul of an establishment. They slap on a new coat of paint, order some new artwork, spruce up the interior — and you better believe they give themselves a new name.
From now on princess, your address is “111 Rue de Fabulous!”
x♥x♥x♥,
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Dame Diane Uniman, Aka Princess Diane von Brainisfried, is an attorney turned motivational speaker, certified positive psychology life coach and award-winning writer. She wrote Bonjour, Breast Cancer-I’m Still Smiling…Wit, Wisdom, and Optimism for Beating the Breast Cancer Blues.
Loved this post – thanks for reminding me how important it is to stop the negative self talk!