Hi Moms! Happy New Year!
I saw a meme the other day that said: “Nobody claim 2022 as your year. We’re all going to walk in real slow; be good; be quiet; be cautious and respectful; and don’t touch anything.
I think that might be a great idea this year.
We joke about that all the time at our house. If someone says it’s going to be a great year, we just say, “Shhh don’t say that. Be careful.” My husband always says, “Easy.”
In the new year, we always seem to hear the phrase “New Year, New You.”
The new year is all about reinventing ourselves and setting aside who we are right now to become something even better, someone different–look better, skinnier, be better, be more perfect.
And although I do believe in personal growth and development and I believe that continually becoming something better than we were yesterday is a hugely important part of life, I believe it’s also important to love and accept ourselves along the way.
So what if this year, we started out by deciding to really get to know ourselves and accept ourselves and love ourselves for everything we are–our strengths and our weaknesses, our good parts and our not-so-good parts,
Do you really know yourself? Do you know why you do what you do? And say what you say?
I’m going to get a little vulnerable here, and share with you a few insights I’ve had into me the past little while, as I’ve done a lot of work on myself and have tried to make self-reflection a consistent practice. Like when I am angry or stressed, I tend to be a little more quick-tempered with my husband and kids. And it seems to come on out of nowhere. It even surprised me a time or two. I just snap a little bit more; I’m quicker to get upset about things.
I am not proud of this, and I wish it wasn’t part of me, and I have beat myself up for it a lot. But I have discovered that my sadness, like there’s a sadness within me, like not a depression but just that life hasn’t been going as well as I want it to or something is really bothering me and eating at me that I don’t really know about, that's more subconscious… but it’s that sadness is what is manifesting itself as anger and quick-temperedness.
So if I am extra snappy one day, I realize I need to spend some time with myself and discover what it is that is making me so sad inside. Discovering this thing about myself, instead of just always beating myself up, has been so empowering. It has actually caused me to be a lot more compassionate with myself. I sit with myself and I find the things that are bothering me, and I talk to myself like a best friend and say, “Oh, no wonder you’re so sad. That’s hard. You’ve been dealing with a lot this week.”
And now that I know this about myself, it actually encourages me to seek the help that I need. Most times I can just figure it out by myself, but other times I need to go see my good friend Kim who is an awesome Reiki Master, energy healer. That’s actually my favorite way to deal with things that I feel are too big for me to figure out myself. So if you ever would like to hear more about my friend Kim and what she does, reach out to me and I will let you know because it’s really amazing.
But my point is that, rather than pushing down our feelings and trying to change all these things we don’t like about ourselves that we’re imperfect at, with sheer will-power and beating ourselves up and shaming ourselves. Sometimes we have things that are deeper and much more subconscious than we realize.
Getting to know yourself and understanding why you do the things you do, and showing compassion and forgiveness for yourself is so empowering, and so important for your happiness.
And another thing that I believe will contribute greatly to your happiness, is once you really get to know yourself, try to accept yourself. Do you really accept yourself? Do you really accept yourself–all of you, as you are, right now? Not only just when you’re perfect?
This thing I do, this sadness that manifests itself as anger. I have learned to accept this about me, and I have also become really good and apologizing and making amends to whoever’s head I happened to snap off. My family gets me, they love me, they always forgive me, and I have decided to extend the same forgiveness to myself more easily and more consistently while still trying to be better. Just because I’ve accepted this weakness about myself doesn’t mean I can become lazy and just give into this thing I do. But with this new acceptance and crazy amounts of forgiveness for myself, I can move forward more easily and bounce back more quickly when I have a bad moment once in a while.
We are all human and with that comes many imperfections. But if you could get to truly know yourself and then completely accept yourself–accept everything about yourself–understand yourself and your humanness and how being human affects you in particular, I believe you will be a much happier you.
And do you know what else? This is going to help your kids, too. By showing them you’re human–-talking to them about how you messed up and how you’re sorry about that thing you did–is going to help them be able to accept their humanity also, so they don’t feel like they always have to be perfect; so they are able to be quicker to forgive themselves and move on.
I once heard it said that, “When you know yourself you are empowered, when you accept yourself you are invincible.”
This is something that really resonates with me because I always thought that if I know myself and my strengths and my weaknesses, that that is great and that’s all I needed. But when I accept these, which is what I’m really working on, all of the things I have called negative and others call negative about myself, it’s all part of the components that make me who I am. When you accept the things that you're good at and you’re not good at, the good side of you and the bad side of you, your pros, your cons, your virtues, your vices, that is when no one can get to you. That is when no one can define you to you, no one can really hurt you.
And what I mean by that is if someone came up to you and said, “You know, you’re such a stress case when you’re running late. You’re always so uptight when you’re trying to get all the kids out the door.” You can say, “I know I am. It’s really important for me to be on time.” Because you’ve accepted that about yourself, you’re not going to take offense because you already know that about yourself. And you’re so sure of yourself that nobody can tell you who you are anymore.
So there’s a big difference between knowing yourself and accepting yourself. But you can’t accept yourself until you know yourself.
When you accept THIS IS WHO I AM, you become at peace with yourself.
I was reading a study that said 85% of people had a low self-acceptance, which means they pretty much didn’t like themselves. Of course there are things about ourselves that aren’t ideal. But most people really aren’t sure if they even like themselves as a whole.
One of the best things we can do as moms, for ourselves and for our families, is to try to figure out how to accept ourselves and try to figure out how to love ourselves. Love who you are. And show it off to the world. We have unique talents, gifts, character strengths, and ideas that we can share with the world. What are yours? What makes you you? What makes you special?
So, I encourage you in this new year to spend some time with yourself and your thoughts. Spend some time with yourself, quietly, every day, maybe even just for five minutes. This has really helped me lately. I have started a practice of meditation, just five minutes a day is how I started. And as I sit there with myself, trying to relax, breathing deeply, repeating the mantra, “I love and accept you, Heather” with every breath in and every breath out, which I learned from an amazing woman named Brooke Snow, I have noticed a marked difference in myself. I am truly beginning to love and accept myself and everything about me.
So as you sit with yourself and try to get to know and accept yourself, ask yourself What makes you happy? What self-care habits do you think you could start that could contribute to your happiness? What makes you sad? When you are sad, what do you really need from yourself or others? What makes you annoyed? Overwhelmed? These are the questions I encourage you to ask with no judgement, only compassion. Try to talk to yourself as you would like a very best friend to talk to you. Just be curious. “Oh, that's interesting. I didn’t realize that about myself.” Be curious and kind. Get to know yourself. And then try to accept exactly who you are. Appreciate who you are. Just try it. And you might actually have the best new year yet.
Just remember: When you know yourself you are empowered, when you accept yourself you are invincible.
Thank you for joining me today and I’ll talk to you next time!