Inner Dialogue - What Do You Say To You?

Greetings my beautiful friends, have you had a peaceful and delightful fortnight?

I am completely refreshed and energised after a beautiful weekend away, so let’s dive right back on in there!

How we speak to ourselves (in thought or out loud) has a lot to do with our baseline stress levels.

Do you often find you’re harshly berating yourself, saying or thinking things like “you fool”, “idiot”, “lazy”, “poorly timed”, “disorganised”, “messy”, etc.? We are our own harshest critics, and believe it or not, our own words are usually the ones that hurt us the most. Mostly because we are the most insistent and vicious in our critical words, and we can’t easily walk out of the room and leave our brain back there complaining – it’s with us all the time. J

From early on we learn to strive for affection, recognition, approval and ultimately validation. Awkwardly, the less desirable side effect has been that we have become rather cruel to ourselves in that pursuit. We also learn language patterns that automatically make ourselves or someone else wrong! Words like “should” or “can’t” take all our power away, and most often don’t feel all that good. It’s really interesting to start listening to how often words like these are used in a single day.

‘Narcissism’ and ‘Ego’ have become common words with socially negative connotations. And I agree, in their true definitions, the energy is not all that positive. However, due to a chain of confusion, misunderstandings and misguided expectations, positive  and beautiful things like ‘self love’ and ‘self respect’ have been mislabelled into negative things too. Being ‘selfish’ has somehow become frowned on because surely it is 'more important to take care of everyone else before you take care of yourself'?!

However, my simple question here is: how can you truly take care of another if you are not able or willing to properly care for yourself?

I look at self love from a different stand point than what is the current social expectation, but I like it and want to share it in case you like it too.

SELF CARE is equivalent to First Aid.

Let’s all think back to the last time we completed a First Aid training course. If you did one 20 years ago, you would have learnt the “DRABC”. 10 years ago you would have learnt the “DRABCD”. Within recent years you would now know it is “DRSABCD”.

Ah I love those acronyms, and how they’ve evolved during my studies…!

There are a few common letters that have carried through the whole 20 years but my focus is on the very first letter – D for Danger.

In First Aid terms, this is to remind us that – yes there’s a maimed person on the ground needing help. But what maimed them? Can it maim me too? 

If I get hurt, then I certainly will be less useful to that person, and worst case scenario I’ll just add myself to the list of people incapacitated and needing First Aid!

So! As a direct comparison, an emotionally maimed person will have a much harder time helping someone in need, than one who has been taking care of themselves. So be kind to yourself, and in return, you will be kinder to others!

In terms of a summary GEM for this week, I’d like to rely on a pioneer in the field of teaching people that it is OK to love themselves – Louise L Hay. Decades ago she developed the “Mirror work” technique, and this week your homework is one of her basic exercises. Below is a positive thing to say to yourself (affirmation), and I want you to look yourself in the eye with a mirror as you say it.

“[your name], I love and accept you, exactly as you are.”

When I first started genuinely doing mirror work, I ended up in tears far more often than I’d expected. And that was awesome! The fact that I would cry when I spoke kindly to myself meant that I was letting go of a lot of old rubbish that I had been hurting myself with. The trick is to do it regularly. Do it until you believe it, then do it some more J

BE KIND TO YOURSELF. If you find that you simply cannot bring yourself tosay the above affirmation, don’t be disheartened. It’s actually much more common than you might expect. If it’s too much, try something gentler, as a first step. Something like:

“I am willing to like you. I am willing to love you”

Giving yourself permission to be kind to yourself is an incredibly beautiful and empowering thing to do.

If this exercise resonates with you, I strongly recommend getting yourself a copy of Louise’s book “You Can Heal Your Life”. It’s a beautiful book that has reached and helped millions of people. There is also a film about this book and Louise if you’d rather watch something instead of reading.

And with that, I wish you a beautiful and joyful week.

In love and light, be peaceful.

Annalise