Episode 5 - Self-love and why I don’t make New Years Resolutions!

Oscar Wilde Quote:

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

On being your own best friend:

When you have a friend as your inner voice rather than an enemy imagine the powerful partnership that you can forge with yourself. You simply can’t change the state you are in now until you accept who you are right now. Once acceptance has occurred you will be ready to move forward.

Use Mindfulness which is simply just being aware of your feelings and just accepting them, being aware of who you really are and then just accepting that. I mean honestly, what else can you do? The easiest path is just love and acceptance. Everything else is too complicated.

There are so many benefits in practicing self-love. It reduces stress and allows you to go through life in a more positive way that is healthier for your mind and body.  Your creativity soars when you are treating yourself with self-love, because the inner critic is locked away and your fear of failure subsides, allowing you the ability to take chances in life, knowing that if something goes wrong or there is a failure of some sort, you will be kind to yourself and treat yourself as you would a child or a best friend. In essence you are more afraid of yourself and that inner critic then anything else. Failure is always inevitable. Failure is the first step towards success, so just embrace it. If you know that you will treat yourself kindly when you fail, then you allow yourself the freedom to just try everything your heart desires and to be creative because you know it’s okay if it doesn’t work out. You know that you can provide yourself with support, get back up and try again.

 Here are a few things you can do to practice more self-love!

·       First and foremost write the words “I Am Enough” on a post it note or directly on your bathroom mirror! Look at this everyday and say it every time you happen to look in the mirror! I learned this trick from Marisa Peer who is a famous Psychologist in the UK.

·       Create a morning power affirmation. I’m awake I’m alive full of energy and full of life and today is a great day to prove it!

·       Practice a self-love meditation where you teach yourself to love yourself in a way you never have before. Check out Insight Timer or Calm or any of the med apps out there to find something you like.

·       Try to do Positive Mindset breaks throughout your day. 11am can be 5 minutes of gratitude, 1pm can be 5 minutes of listing 5-10  positive characteristics about yourself, 3pm can be 5 minutes of a self-love mantra. In the vein of self-care, maybe you can stand up and do some stretches while you do this positive mindset break!

Going back to you being the self-referral for your own happiness, I urge to try these methods and see how you feel a month from now. I can almost guarantee you will be feeling much better and your set-point for happiness will have increased. Remember to celebrate the amazing person that you are, so unique and so ready to share your gift! Wishing you all an abundance of self-love to be brought into your life by you and for you!!! xoxo

Consume less, live more! 

Transcript

Copy

Thanks for listening to “Organize your closet and your life will follow” podcast. 

If you like what you heard please subscribe and leave me a rating on itunes it will really make a difference to new podcasts like mine so please, please take a second if you can I would really appreciate it. 

You can also find me on fb ig and twitter as @mylifeinflow

Check out mylifeinflow.com if you are interested in connecting further and would like to get in touch with me on a project you are working on! Please make sure to reference my podcast in your correspondence. 

**********************************************************************

PODCAST 5 OR  - Self-love and why I don’t make New Years Resolutions!

 and how to reach your personal goals through self-love

Oscar Wilde Quotes:

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

The New Year is here. How many of you have already broken your New Years resolutions – hands up please! I know my hand would have shot up had I actually made any. I believe that for some of us with all the good intentions around resolutions, they are just not something you can dive into and sustain. For the most part, we set unreasonable goals and don’t do the pre-work to set ourselves up for success. Then we beat ourselves up, say bad things to ourselves – you’re such a loser, you dummy, you fat-ass, I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it, you are going to just stay that way forever, you you you. How often do you say these types of words to yourself. Once a year, Once a month, once a week or once a day? Really think about that for a moment. Would you say these words to anyone else? No? Well why on earth would you talk to yourself that way. I won’t even go into “words on water”, but look up Dr. Masaru Emoto and then decide how you should be speaking to yourself, knowing that you are made up of 65-70% water.

Why do we choose to put the oxygen mask on others first before ourselves? Have we not yet learned that doing that leads to burnout and then what happens? That is a long hard road we should definitely try at all costs to avoid. We need to take care of ourselves before others. That goes for new moms and dads too! Believe me, I remember those early baby days. You are literally running on fumes and without self care you might wonder why you are not feeling well physically or worse yet go into a deep depression. Always putting others first is truly counterintuitive to your own life.

Also, Don’t try to boost your self esteem by quietly bullying others or playing the comparison game in your head. This is utter rubbish and can only work for so long while also turning you into a catty, miserable human being. Also, if at all possible, try not to base your self-esteem on tangible success. Who even started down this terrible rabbit-hole. And why is it so important that when we meet someone we immediately want to know what they do instead of who they are. We do this because we have been programmed as a society to put our self-worth on what we do, how much we make and what our title might be, not who we are. You are enough exactly the way you are and you are a human going through life. You are trying different things and navigating your way through life just like the rest of us. Self-love allows you to support yourself in such a powerful way that it can keep you from depression, suicide, drugs alcohol and other destructive behaviors and negative emotions like jealousy, greed, hate, emptiness, inadequacy, fear and guilt. You get the picture.

According to the Better Health Channel:

Negative emotions can be described as any feeling which causes you to be miserable and sad. These emotions make you dislike yourself and others, and reduce your confidence and self-esteem, and general life satisfaction.
 
 Emotions that can become negative are hate, anger, jealousy and sadness. Yet, in the right context, these feelings are completely natural. Negative emotions can dampen our enthusiasm for life, depending on how long we let them affect us and the way we choose to express them.

 Holding onto negative emotions causes a downward spiral

Negative emotions stop us from thinking and behaving rationally and seeing situations in their true perspective. When this occurs, we tend to see only what we want to see and remember only what we want to remember. This only prolongs the anger or grief and prevents us from enjoying life.
 The longer this goes on, the more set the problem becomes. Dealing with negative emotions inappropriately can also be harmful – for example, expressing anger with violence.

Emotions are complex reactions

Emotions are complex reactions involving many biological and physiological processes within our bodies. Our brain responds to our thoughts by releasing hormones and chemicals, which send us into a state of arousal. All emotions come about in this way, whether positive or negative.

It’s a complex process and often we don't have the skills to deal with negative feelings. That’s why we find it hard to cope when we experience them.

How to deal with negative emotions

There are a number of coping strategies to deal with negative emotions. These include:

Don’t blow things out of proportion by going over them time and again in your mind.

Try to be reasonable – accept that bad feelings are occasionally unavoidable and think of ways to make yourself feel better.

Relax – use pleasant activities like reading, walking or talking to a friend.

Learn – notice how grief, loss and anger make you feel, and which events trigger those feelings so you can prepare in advance.

Exercise – aerobic activity lowers your level of stress chemicals and allows you to cope better with negative emotions.

Let go of the past – constantly going over negative events robs you of the present and makes you feel bad.

 Let’s go back to being your own best friend:

When you have a friend as your inner voice rather than an enemy imagine the powerful partnership that you can forge with yourself. Once I stopped all my own negative-self-talk, honestly, my life changed for the better. Now, if I find myself saying something mean to myself because I spilled something or whatever, I immediately have gotten into the habit of catching myself. Here’s an example: The other night I was filling my son’s water bottle in the kitchen and I missed the opening and a ton of water spilled in the first few seconds. I immediately proceeded to say the following to myself – You dumbass what in the h did you do dumbass? Wow, I even double-whammied the derogatory term. But, I also immediately after used the words CANCEL-CANCEL I am sorry I said that and this was just an honest accident on my part. Everybody spills once in a while and it’s okay. I get to use the water to clean my fridge and that portion of the floor right now! 

When you become your best friend, you will never be alone and you can never, ever be lonely. Treat yourself as you would a best friend because you are your first best friend of all. There is no one on this earth that should care more about you than yourself.

Be kind to yourself, uplift yourself. Treat yourself like you would the person you love the most in the world. Think about that person or persons right now. Imagine they failed at something and came to you to talk about it or get some advice from you, 

How would you speak to them? 

How would you encourage them? 

How would you comfort them?

How would you support them in reaching their goals.

How would you uplift them when they are down

Now what if this was you? Imagine that you are the one that failed at something.  You would probably beat yourself up and put yourself down for a whole day calling yourself all kinds of ridiculous names and maybe even cussing at yourself. If this is you, please stop. Act as you would to that person you love the most,  to your best friend or child or imagine how someone you love and look up to would talk to you.

How would they speak to you? 

How would they encourage you? 

How would they support you in reaching your goals.

How would they uplift you when you are down

You simply can’t change the state you are in now until you accept who you are right now. Once acceptance has occurred you will be ready to move forward.

Use Mindfulness which is simply just being aware of your feelings and just accepting them, being aware of who you really are and then just accepting that. I mean honestly, what else can you do? The easiest path is just love and acceptance. Everything else is too complicated.

There are so many benefits in practicing self-love. It reduces stress and allows you to go through life in a more positive way that is healthier for your mind and body.  Your creativity soars when you are treating yourself with self-love, because the inner critic is locked away and your fear of failure subsides, allowing you the ability to take chances in life, knowing that if something goes wrong or there is a failure of some sort, you will be kind to yourself and treat yourself as you would a child or a best friend. In essence you are more afraid of yourself and that inner critic then anything else. Failure is always inevitable. Failure is the first step towards success, so just embrace it. If you know that you will treat yourself kindly when you fail, then you allow yourself the freedom to just try everything your heart desires and to be creative because you know it’s okay if it doesn’t work out. You know that you can provide yourself with support, get back up and try again.

Here are a few things you can do to practice more self-love!

·       First and foremost write the words “I Am Enough” on a post it note or directly on your bathroom mirror! Look at this everyday and say it every time you happen to look in the mirror! I learned this trick from Marisa Peer who is a famous Psychologist in the UK.

·       Create a morning power affirmation. I’m awake I’m alive full of energy and full of life and today is a great day to prove it!

·       Practice a self-love meditation where you teach yourself to love yourself in a way you never have before. Check out Insight Timer or Calm or any of the med apps out there to find something you like.

·       Try to do Positive Mindset breaks throughout your day. 11am can be 5 minutes of gratitude, 1pm can be 5 minutes of listing 5-10  positive characteristics about yourself, 3pm can be 5 minutes of a self-love mantra. In the vein of self-care, maybe you can stand up and do some stretches while you do this positive mindset break!

Going back to you being the self-referral for your own happiness, I urge to try these methods and see how you feel a month from now. I can almost guarantee you will be feeling much better and your set-point for happiness will have increased. Remember to celebrate the amazing person that you are, so unique and so ready to share your gift! Wishing you all an abundance of self-love and hoping to chat again really soon!