I love asking people this question and I love hearing the answers.  In fact, on my personal message for my cellphone I ask for the caller to tell me what they love about themselves.  This makes listening to my messages so much more fun and gives the caller a chance to acknowledge themselves.  I really love when people that don’t know me call, such as salespeople.  Of course, a lot of people ignore it and some people seem to think if they have answered the question once before then it doesn’t apply to them.  Once, my sister left me a message and said something like, “It’s time for a new question.”  Yet, I am pretty sure that she has never once answered it.

When people do choose to answer I get incredibly excited to hear what they have to say.  In fact, sometimes I save them because it is just so moving to hear somebody get to say what they love about themselves, especially when they are not planning on being asked a question like this.

The other day I enquired about gym membership prices at some local gyms via the interweb.  I had my phone on silent and didn’t see when someone from one of the gyms was calling.  I didn’t recognize the missed call number, so listened to the voicemail.  Dylan, of one of the gyms, was calling to invite me to check out the facilities and tell me about the specials that were going to on and at the end of the message he said and “Oh yeah, what do I love about myself? I love my family.”  I was soooo excited that he had answered, and I am super happy that he loves his family, but that really isn’t answering the question.  I called Dylan back to talk about the gym and before hanging up I said, “And by the way, I love that you answered the “What do you love about yourself?” question, but you didn’t really answer it, you know that right?”  He laughed and agreed, saying he was caught of guard by the question.  He then shared with me that he loves that he is tall, but he still wants to think about it.  Great!

I also received a voicemail this week from someone at the management team for one of the artists that I work for.  He was calling to ask me a business question and then left an amazing answer to my question, “What do you love about yourself?”.  I wasn’t sure if he was going to answer as he is a repeat caller and he has answered the question before.  Like, I said, many people act as if they are only invited to answer as first time message leavers.  He answered and with not the same answer!  Yes!  He was able to channel right now, what does he love about himself.  What comes up first, not a go-to answer but what comes up for him right now.  He then went on to thank me for having that on my message to remind him of that.  Love it!!

On day 8 of Cafe Gratitude’s logbook, which one of my clients and I did this week (we are now on day 12, yay!)   the exploration for the day is to acknowledge five things that you love about yourself.   Really, my client is the one doing the logbook and I am guiding her through it, but I still like to play along.  I chose to tweet the exploration and then asked myself the question, thinking that naming 5 things that I love about myself will slide right off of my tongue.  I did not just want to nod my head and say, yep, I got more than five things I love about myself, no problemo, I wanted to play along actively and say my answers outloud, even if I was the only one to hear it.

I called out three right away, and then I surprised myself with a long pause.   I actually sat there and thought about it, hmmm “What else do I love about myself?” I mean I know there is a lot, but suddenly expressing outloud even to myself I got stopped.    I just took a moment again, now, to ask myself again to name 5 things that I love about myself and this time they did run right of my tongue.

So, lets make it so these answers roll off our tongues all the time no matter what is going on.  I invite you to ask this question to yourself and to everyone else regularly.  When having a disagreement with someone, throw in, “What do you love about yourself?”.  When checking out at your local store, ask your checker, “What do you love about yourself?”.   When catching up with old friends and new, ask, “What do you love about yourself?”.   When tucking your kiddies in at night, ask them “What do you love about yourself?”.

What do you love about yourself, in this now moment?