Do you find these thoughts in your daily dialogue? “I’m not smart enough, thin enough, pretty enough, talented enough…” If you had a friend who said these things to you, you would quickly un-friend them in every area of your life. So, why do you to say these things to yourself?

These lying, “not enough” phrases are nothing more than barriers that keep you from being all you were created to be. So, what do you do?

The often unspoken definition of a woman’s beauty appears on the cover of every magazine in the grocery store checkout aisle.  Gracing the pages is a photo-shopped image of an already nearly perfect looking human being. The flawless skin, sparkling eyes, not a hair out of place, and unrealistic body type makes me want to just turn every magazine backwards so we don’t have to endure.

But having lived long enough with a whole lot of women in my life, I can honestly say that’s not the beauty I am drawn to. That is not to diminish the value of the physically beautiful women in our lives. Trust me, they really do have their own challenges, often insecure like every one of us and are capable of possessing the same traits that display the truest form of beauty.

I was listening to the radio a while back, and the three grown men who were hosting began a dialogue about punishments they were given as a child. The list was vast. They laughed through their comparisons of infractions they accomplished and the penalties they were awarded: grounding, car keys taken away, dad’s belt was among them. Then one of these gentlemen paused and said, “I’ll tell you the worst—it’s when my mom said, ‘I’m disappointed in you.’ That one was horrible.”

During my years in the music business, it became abundantly clear to me that to achieve what we wanted to accomplish, we had to have a diverse team to succeed. One would have thought the talent displayed in the musicians was all that was required. A great song easily found success, right? While it was true their abilities were the ones most evident to success, it was also the collection of all the team players that enabled us to flourish. When the individual talents were gathered and merged, it often reminded me of a big successful party. The end of the planning, execution, and delivery told all: either everyone had a good time, or if some part of the plan failed, the party bombed.