As part of my Self Care September programme I want to start with the word VALUE and rather than look at the monetary worth of something, let’s look at how we can apply it to how we live on a day-to-day basis.

Other words we can use to describe value are merit, worth, usefulness. We can apply value to our behaviour, the principles or standards that we believe should be applied to how we live. As a Pilates teacher, coach and as a human being, I have certain core values by which I live my life. Integrity, authenticity, and love are my top three because I want to live my life honestly, genuinely and I want to act with affection, respect and find pleasure.

My actions and behaviour are all part of my mental and physical wellbeing, so whenever I feel I am not applying my core values my wellbeing starts to struggle. If something doesn’t feel quite right to me, then I stop and ask myself is this meeting the standards of how I want to live my life. And more often than not, the reason it doesn’t feel quite right is because there is something in the mix that doesn’t feel genuine, honest and doesn’t give me the love I am looking for.

Now I don’t want this to sound as if I am standing from a great height and preaching the morals of how to live life, because I am definitely not … lots of you have known me for a long time and so you will know this is NOT what I do. But if I stand in front of you telling you the benefits of doing Pilates every day, in order for this to feel right for me, I want to be practising that myself to meet my core values of being genuine, honest and showing myself and you the love we deserve.

And this is what matters most … what YOU deserve. The value you give to yourself, the way you want to live, the way you want others to see you, the way you want to serve others, because we all do this within family, friends, work …. But ultimately it’s that you deserve to value yourself. So you aren’t always at the bottom of your list of priorities, your feelings aren’t unimportant, your actions aren’t directed by others expectations, your choices aren’t bad just because they aren’t the same as your family’s, friends, colleagues.

Self-value is about what you deserve … it’s always going to be more than you believe, and it’s so very important to start now. Valuing yourself enables you to be the person you want to be, to be honest with yourself, to feel you are genuinely living your best life, and to give yourself the love and respect you so deserve. Then showing this to the world enables others to do the same, and you will feel so much better when you are ‘serving’ others in your life. I value you, so value yourself — spoken with love.