Room for kindness.
I’d like to remind us that our longest relationship is the one we have with ourselves.
What if that relationship were loving, supportive, and kind? What if we knew that we’d always have our own back no matter what?
What would our lives look like then?
To see the difference, we have to look at what our lives look like now, with what we’re currently thinking about ourselves and telling ourselves about ourselves.
What this might look like are thoughts that judge, criticize, or put ourselves down.
In the below examples, it might sound like we’re saying these things to other people, but we’d rarely tell people we care about some of the things we’re so used to telling ourselves:
- I can’t believe you did that again–so stupid!
- You don’t know what you’re doing, as usual.
- Why is this so hard for you?
- You don’t deserve to have that.
- This shows you’re not good enough to be chosen.
- You’re not going to do it anyway, so just don’t even try.
- Who do you think you are?
- You’ll never get there.
It’s not surprising then, when we don’t do what we say we want to do for ourselves with this judge always beating us up or berating us along the way.
Sometimes we’re so used to hearing this judge that we don’t know it’s there or even saying mean things to us. We just take it as “normal.”
When we become more aware of what we’re telling ourselves and how we’re thinking about ourselves, we can start changing the story and narrative.
We can start being more supportive and kind to ourselves.
We can start believing in what’s possible for us. We can start believing new things about ourselves. We can start believing in ourselves.
Your turn: Are you open to becoming aware of the thoughts you’re currently thinking about yourself? What is the narrative you’re telling yourself? Why are you choosing to think those thoughts or hold those beliefs about yourself? How can you incorporate more kindness and compassion in your thoughts about you? How would this change your relationship with yourself?
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