Dear Friends,

All week long I have had a song running through my mind. We have all heard this song and now it has become the God Breeze for this essay: “I Feel Pretty”.

Do you feel pretty? If your answer is NO! Then this is for you!

One of your first assignments is to get up and get dressed to shoes, fix your hair and face, so you can greet your day ready to confront anything or anyone! Are you doing this? If not why are you refusing this one simple request?

I can hear you now; “I don’t feel this is necessary, because I are not going to see anyone today but my babies”. This kind of thinking is just another excuse. All I want is for you to smile when you see yourself in the mirror. Can you do that with chicken hair sticking up all over your head? You may be able to belly laugh, but can you look in the mirror and feel good about what you see? Do you feel pretty?

Feeling pretty is more about your attitude. Sometimes our attitudes need a little help. I know many of you think that getting dressed is not important to keeping your home in order and getting rid of body clutter, but I want you do this for me at first if you can’t bring yourself to do it on your own. This system has never been about teaching you how to clean; it is about motivating you to get up and do just a little. I don’t expect you to clean all day!

My Granny always said, “Pretty is as, pretty does!” As a child, I had interrupted this to mean that if you act right you will be considered to be pretty. Now that I am grown and I have finally started to love myself, I can see a whole new beautiful meaning to this unwritten law. If you don’t treat yourself with respect and love, you will not feel pretty. Getting up and taking care of you is the most important job of your whole day. Laying around in your ‘jammies all day does not make you feel pretty. So in order to feel pretty you have to do something about your appearance. Your fairy Godmother is not going to wave a magic wand over you and turn you into a princess. Bibbity, Bobbity, Boo!

We have all had those mornings when we didn’t feel that it was necessary to get prettied up. Now that I have been doing my morning routine for over 4 years, it is next to impossible for me not to get up and dress to shoes. Even when I am sick, I always get dressed to shoes. Now I want to talk about what clothes we put on.

Do your clothes make you feel ugly? Are they too tight because you have gained a few extra pounds with the last baby? Are you holding on to your skinny clothes in hopes that you will lose the weight one day?

In the mean time you are beating yourself up over the fact that you can’t wear that one outfit that made you feel like a million bucks. That outfit yells at you each time you open your closet door. Get rid of loud, ill-tempered clutter! Don’t keep anything in your home that makes you have bad feelings. This has all got to stop! It doesn’t matter if you only have one everyday outfit for now that you feel pretty in. I don’t want you wearing clothes that are too big either!

Frumpy sweats have a way of telling our head that it is O.K. to eat that extra cookie, because no one will notice anyway. Before you know it, you will be filling out those baggy sweat pants. Any of us can look pretty and feel cute in a pair of jeans and a shirt. It is all a state of mind and having clothes that fit you properly. When you love yourself enough to only wear things that make you feel good about yourself, then you will not torture your body with clothes that are too tight and make you feel slouchy.

The idea of feeling pretty also has to do with your under clothes, favorite pieces of jewelry, a special color of lipstick or even a sweet smelling bath bar. It is all your attitude. Love yourself by just being nice to you. Pretty is as Pretty does. This morning I blow-dried my hair. I hardly ever do this, but a little poof makes me feel special. As does an evening bubble bath and a morning shower. Try it sometime. You are worth it. Now don’t complain that you are too heavy to feel pretty. That is all wrong. Pretty has nothing to do with your weight! I feel pretty and I am not a size 10. Pretty is inside of each of you!

I feel pretty and witty and wise! We know the song. Start singing and have fun feeling pretty!

You are FLYing, when you feel pretty!

FlyLady