It’s a new year and you made it through the holidays. This is a very important time to be kind and gentle with yourself. You are not who your parents, partner, children, some friends, think you are. I mean you are but you are not just that. You are so much more than others outside of you could possibly know. You are strong, flexible. loving, kind, and funny, and a lot more. Take a minute a close your eyes and think about a time you felt really good about yourself. Really let yourself get into that picture. What do you see, feel, hear? See the smile on your face, the knowing in your eyes as you get in touch with the fact that you are exactly who and what you need to be to be the best you. Really let yourself get into the scene you have created.
Step into it and let it fill you up. Whenever you are feeling low go back to this picture and once again, see it, feel it, listen to it and enjoy it! It will change your mood very quickly.
Changing the inner dialogue, you have with yourself about yourself is the first step in loving yourself and treating yourself with kindness and respect. Once you have practiced this enough it will become automatic and you will notice how much better you feel and how more enjoyable your relationships with yourself and others will become.
It is important to remember you have the ability to be the best version of yourself. You start with treating yourself with Kindness and Respect. You don’t sweat the small stuff and everything is small stuff. When you make a mistake, you take note and learn from it and move on. Mistakes are learning tools. There is dignity in failure. It helps you to know what not to do next time and gives you information about what to do next. A friend of mine believes there is no such thing as failure. She believes it is Feedback. It is a nice reframe.
Courageous people try things and when they don’t work, they try something else. They do not spend time beating themselves up. Beating yourself up doesn’t help you move forward, it’s a way to punish yourself for learning. Not many of us are good at things the first time we try them. It takes practice and lots of mistakes to get really good at most things. So why stop the learning process by hurting yourself with put downs.
Being kind to yourself is about thinking positive thoughts about yourself. When you fantasize you see yourself as the hero, the story line goes to a positive place. You stop the negative thoughts by being vigilant and reframing any negative thoughts about yourself that come up.
Try it for a few weeks and notice how good you feel. It works for me!
Laney Coulter, is a Board-Certified Hypnotherapist with an office in NW Portland. She specializes in confidence building.