Tag: self-trust

When you flake on yourself

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

You deserve better.

Last week I shared about the second pillar of the 3 pillars of transformative self-care – how we speak about and to ourselves. Let’s talk about the third pillar today: how we treat ourselves.

We might think we treat ourselves pretty well. We practice good dental hygiene, we get a massage every once in a while, we take vitamins, we sleep for several hours most nights, we put food into our bodies regularly, we use the stairs sometimes or park farther away from our destination to get in some extra steps. 

These are all beneficial things to do for ourselves. And what else can we do for ourselves to show that we care? 

One of the strongest ways we can show ourselves that we care is by doing what we say we’ll do – when it comes to ourselves. 

How would we feel about a friend or someone close to us who tells us they’re going to do this or that with us or for us, and then when the day comes to do it, they either call/text to say they can’t make it, or they don’t show up at all? 

  • – After the first time, we’ll likely give them some grace but feel disappointed by the outcome. 
  • – The second time they do it, we might start to question the validity of their words. 
  • – If they do it a third time, we’ll see a definite pattern here and probably feel frustrated and give up on believing them. We might even start to think that they don’t really care about or respect us. 

This would be a normal reaction to someone who seems to be unable to follow through on what they say to us – someone who flakes on us.

And yet, how often have we flaked on ourselves? Flaking on ourselves means saying we’ll do something for ourselves, but at the last minute, we change our mind and don’t show up for what we said we’d do. 

When we do this, we show ourselves that we don’t take our goals and desires seriously. We’re not caring for ourselves, and sometimes, we’re not respecting ourselves. Is that how we want to treat ourselves? 

If we want to start treating ourselves better by keeping our promises and commitments to ourselves, we can start to build trust with ourselves by taking small actions. “Today I’m going to walk around the block at 3pm.” 

And then at 3pm, we do what we say. We get up and walk around the block. 

When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a feeling of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves – no matter how small. “It feels good to do what I said I would!” Celebrate that and remember the feeling. It will help reinforce following through with future plans.

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day – it could be the same one! – until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves. 

It might not happen overnight, but it’s worth it to keep practicing. WE are worth it. If we haven’t been in the practice of keeping our commitments to ourselves, it can take time to build that up. Take that time.

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we learn to treat ourselves better in multiple aspects of our lives. We start to know what it truly feels like to take care of ourselves and treat ourselves in the way we want and deserve to be treated. We learn how to have our own back, no matter what. 

Your turn: In what ways do you want to treat yourself better? What commitments do you want to keep with yourself? What is one small commitment you want to make to yourself today that you’ll do tomorrow? When tomorrow comes, are you willing to build trust with yourself and do the thing? 

Dive Deeper: If you still find yourself not doing the thing, are you open to asking yourself if this is something you truly want to do for yourself or is something/someone else telling you “you should” do it?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Trust yourself even more

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

How you do it.

There are different ways we learn how to trust (or not trust) ourselves. One of these ways is by doing (or not doing) what we say we’ll do–especially when it comes to ourselves. 

Most of the time, we’re used to doing what we say we’ll do for other people. Likely because we know the consequences of not following through: the other person will feel let down and disappointed and possibly change how they think about us, and then we’ll feel guilty for having disappointed them and think we need to make up for it somehow.

But what happens when we say we’ll do something for ourselves and then we don’t do it? Let’s say we put on the calendar an hour to do one of the following things: go to the gym, do a yoga class, take a walk, journal, read for leisure, or cook a healthy meal.

But we end up blowing ourselves off during that hour by using that time to keep working, scroll on social media, go out for drinks instead, or do something else besides what we had planned for ourselves. 

When we’re the ones not keeping our commitment to ourselves, we feel a double whammy–we’re the ones who are let down and disappointed AND we’re the ones feeling guilty about letting ourselves down. That feels doubly bad. And yet we might not even feel the need to make up for it somehow.

Knowing this feeling, the next time we go to make a commitment to ourselves, we might preemptively avoid disappointing ourselves and feeling guilty about it, so we might think, “Why bother? I’m not gonna do it anyway.” 

And then nothing moves forward around keeping commitments and building trust with ourselves. 

That’s how a defeating mindset begins when we think about making commitments to ourselves. We diminish our trust with ourselves when we don’t commit to what we say we’re going to do for ourselves.

To build trust with ourselves, we can take small steps. “Today I’m going to get up from my desk at 2pm and drink a glass of water and walk around the office/house for five minutes.” 

And then at 2pm, we do what we say. We get up, drink a glass of water, and walk around for five minutes. When we do this, there’s a sense of empowerment, a sense of accomplishing something and fulfilling a promise to ourselves–no matter how small.

“It feels good to do what I said I would!” Hi five to self. Celebrate that and remember the feeling. 

This is how we start to strengthen the muscle of trusting ourselves more, knowing that we can have our own back. We can continue to make another small commitment to keep each day–it could be the same one!–until it’s just automatic for us to keep our word to ourselves. Until it feels uncomfortable when we don’t keep our word to ourselves. 

When we get even better at keeping commitments to ourselves, we build even more trust with ourselves. We start to know what it truly feels like to have our own back–no matter what. 

And this trust with ourselves allows us to have our own back when making the bigger decisions and bigger commitments that we want to make, to have the lives we want for ourselves.

Your turn: You make decisions based on you and what you want for yourself; no one else can make these decisions for you. When you trust yourself to have your back no matter what the outcome is, there is no “wrong” decision. Just an opportunity to learn more about yourself and what you want or don’t want. What are you willing to do today to build even more trust with yourself? 

Subscribe if you want to receive this content directly in your inbox.

Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help create a more meaningful life in which you start committing to yourself and show up the way you want? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.