It, hopefully, strikes you as a strange idea…How to tell if I’m a good person? Huh?

I am thinking that most of you would respond…Well, even though I have some flaws I do like myself and I *am* a good person.

Good! I’m glad you can get at least that far. But, you know what? After gaining intimate knowledge of the thought habits of hundreds of people in my coaching work, I’m going to give you a newsflash.

• You are not talking to yourself like you are a good person.
• You are talking to yourself like “your goodness” is an issue still up for debate.
• You are emotionally responding to yourself like your goodness is an issue still up for debate.
• You are constantly judging yourself (as not ok) based on things you do not control.
• You are constantly setting yourself up for failure to meet your own impossible standards.

Ultimately, our sense of our goodness or okness comes from our emotional response to our own self, our own moments, and our own life.

Do you remember how it felt when you were a child and you got in trouble with your mom or dad? Do you remember the feeling of the disappointment, the withdrawal of love and affirmation and it’s replacement with anger and disapproval? How awful did that feel? You failed to meet your parent’s expectations and you were emotionally judged as not ok.

Well, now that we are grown up, we do the same thing to ourselves, many, many, many times a day. We don’t feel it as keenly, we are pretty used to it actually, but it is still the same withdrawal of love and affirmation. Every time we are disappointed in our self, or our life, we are doing the same thing.

So, what we end up doing is judging ourselves as not a good person, frequently, every day.

So, how do you tell if you are good person?

Just don’t. Don’t keep trying to tell if you are a good person or not. Don’t ration your flow of good feeling towards yourself based on results, outcomes, life events, other people’s opinions of you or the state of your body.

If you are a good person, and you are, why not always treat yourself like you are?

It means basing your goodness on the constants in life, not the inconsistent things and things we do not control.

Learning to always respond to yourself as a good person matters if you want to get good results in your life, if you want happiness and fulfillment, if you want holistic health and if you want good relationships with people.

Most importantly, it matters because you matter.

And you are good.