Tracy McMillan – Love Yourself

Author Tracy McMillan shares her personal story about learning from your mistakes in order to improve your life.

Transcript:

“My mom was a prostitute and an alcoholic. She put me in foster care when I was three months old. My dad was a criminal. He was a drug dealer and a pimp. The thing you need to know is that I came out of that childhood with one goal. To never be left. The way I was going to do that is that I was going to get married.

“I’ve been married three times. Yep. Three and divorced. What that’s supposed to mean is that I am a total failure at relationships. The places where you have your biggest challenges are the places where you have the most to give.

“A mistake isn’t actually a failure unless you don’t learn from it and unless you don’t grow. What I have found, through a lot of trial and obviously many, many, many errors, to be the thing that has transformed my life and love. That is this idea of marrying yourself. In other words, you commit to yourself fully. Then you build a relationship with yourself to the point where you realize that you’re whole, right now. That there’s no man, woman, job, circumstance, that can happen to you that’s going to make you more whole. Because you already are.

“This means you’re going to love yourself right where you are. Paradoxically, I’ve found that loving myself exactly where I am is the only way to get where I’m going. Now I’m married to the one person I really wanted to be with all along. Myself.”