My miscellaneous life in LA continued after an energizing week in Costa Rica. A wee bit tanned and very sore from tennis, yoga, pilates, surfing and running on the beach, I left the jungle at 5 am and returned to LA around lunch, and it happen to be on the day of Mardi Gras. I had to go through a quickly improvised transformation and then we were off to a party at one of our favorite venues in LA, Bootleg Theater.

“Bootleg supports and collaborates with the best of established and emerging music, theater, and dance artists to create daring multi-disciplinary live experiences that are striking, contemporary and non-traditional”

And YES, the Bootleg Theater Mardi Gras Party delivered, as usual. It started with a brilliant one-man band, excellent spoken word performances, hilarious monologs, dance deluxe, a magical jazz band, and as always, we enjoyed the gorgeous mix of people of all sorts. I just love this place!

Affirmation of the week: I Love Myself Just The Way I Am

This affirmation is one of the most important in my collection, and also the one that sparked me to “invent” this product. I don’t remember the source, but it was a couple of years ago when I was reading an article stating that over 40% of girls at the age of 13 hates their bodies. That made me flip. And also, I had to take a look at myself. How was I doing with my self-love?

For me, the issues mostly had to do with my body. I loved me, but I did not fully love the temple Me was in, at the moment. I had to admit that I had tendencies to postpone the love for myself until everything was perfect. When all the cellulite were gone, and my sexy 6-pack was no longer covered with the fluffy skin from the days of childbirth – that was the day I would start loving myself just “as-is”. So, this awakening made it obvious for me that I had to start working too.

I used the affirmation “I love myself just the way I am”. If you’re familiar with how affirmations work, you know that it does not yet have to be true when you say them. The affirmation is your “desired” feeling, your goal with the work. You want to love yourself, just the way you are.

Then you start repeating this positive message, as often as you can. Mixing loud and quiet, depending on the surroundings. The more intense you do the work, the faster this message goes to your subconscious mind and becomes your new thought pattern. But I’m telling you it’s NOT a quick fix. You can’t just show up to the gym once, you have to keep on coming.

After a while, I started feeling a shift, and today I can honestly say that I love myself just the way I am, right now. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped wanting to get stronger and more capable of doing cool stuff with my body. Before I only loved my “future-body”. Now I finally love my “today-body” as well, and once again in my life, this tool, “positive affirmations”, have helped me create a new reality.

And since I am my own scientific proof that this mind-work-out method really works, I get so extremely eager to share it with the world. If you feel me, please share this affirmation with people who need to hear this.

Thank you for reading. See you next week, love and light.

/Maria