In 2020, my organization, the United Nations World Food Programme, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for our work around the world to alleviate hunger. Imagine, you have a pin on your wall at home: “Nobel Peace Prize award”. How do you think you would feel like? You achieved it all? What an incredible honour? At the top of the world screaming how amazing you are? Let me tell you how I felt: I received it through the news and shared it with my colleagues and congratulated them. When my boss told me how happy he was and how inspired he was now to put even more effort into our work, I was puzzled. Oh really? That’s an interesting reaction. I continued as if it was a normal day and it didn’t happen to me.

If we don’t feel worthy to receive, no matter if its a compliment from our partner, friends, colleagues, or a promotion, we react the way I reacted. I should know better by now as I practiced meditation and self-love now for over three years. We should take a deep breath and let it all in. Like the sunlight, on a beautiful day when the sky is blue. We sit on a park bench, take a deep breath and close our eyes, to soak in the sun rays and the world can only look beautiful when we open our eyes again. Particular we as women, who are conditioned most of the time to be caregivers, we don’t know how to receive, to not care the emotional burden of everyone, to not fix things and hold things together. We are scared, when we drop, everything else we hold onto will drop and fall in front of our eyes. We need to learn to let go, to receive, to be, to stop and let all the compliments in, the beauty around us, the love that we have in our life. Then our minds are free and not encaged. Because we all know, when we sit still, there is still inner voice, that tells you: “You are okay. You are doing well. Nothing will fall apart that is not meant to. You deserve this.” Yes, I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize because I dedicated my life to serve the poorest around the world. You deserve it too and I will cheer you up from the sideline for stepping out there in the ring of life, every day, to be the best version of yourself like I will do.