What Can You Learn About Self Appreciation From Lady Gaga?

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

No matter what you think of Lady Gaga, in this interview, she shares some really great points about being accepted by yourself and others. She says she is often misunderstood, like a lot of people are, and urges everyone to celebrate their identity.

Lady Gaga spends five minutes in the morning thinking compassionate thoughts about herself. She said her yoga instructor taught her always to try every day to have 15 minutes of compassionate thoughts about herself. Like Ellen says, she thinks the world would be a lot better place if we all put that kind of energy out there.

I would love to hear your thoughts below about spending 5 minutes every morning thinking compassionate thoughts about yourself. Do you think you could do this? I actually do it in the evening, but I think it’s a great idea to start your day off that way.

I learned “the mirror exercise” from Jack Canfield’s book “The Success Principles” a few years ago and have practiced this on a regular basis. Here is what he says to do:

Just before going to bed, stand in front of a mirror and appreciate yourself for all that you have accomplished during the day. Start with a few seconds of looking directly into the eyes of the person in the mirror-your mirror image looking back at you. Then address yourself by name and begin appreciating yourself out loud for the following things:

-Any achievements-business, financial, educational, personal, physical, spiritual, or emotional

-Any personal disciplines you kept-dietary, exercise, reading, meditation, prayer

-Any temptations that you did not give in to-eating dessert, lying, watching too much TV, staying up too late, drinking too much

Maintain eye contact with yourself throughout the exercise. When you’re finished appreciating yourself, complete the exercise by continuing to look deep into your own eyes and saying “I love you.” Then stand there for another few seconds to really feel the impact of the experience-as if you were the one in the mirror who had just listened to all of this appreciation. The trick during this last part is to not just turn away from the mirror feeling embarrassed or thinking of yourself or the exercise as silly or stupid.

Jack says the mirror exercise give your subconscious mind the positive strokes it needs to pursue further achievements and it helps change any negative bliefs you have toward praise and accomplishments, which puts you in an achieving frame of mind.