Love yourself?

We read a lot about self love and self care and we all know that it plays a pivotal role in our lives, it defines the quality of our relationship with ourself, which in turn sets the tone for our relationships with other.

Self love allows us to make the right choices for us whilst honouring and respecting others but knowing that we have to care for ourselves in order to make our lives work well, in order to THRIVE not just survive!

Where do we learn self love? How we were loved allows us to know, to feel love & that is dependent upon our parents quality of love & self love, so in reality most of us probably need to learn what ‘self love’ looks like on a personal level!

What feels loving to you?

When do you feel most cared for?

What is it you do that allows you to know you matter?

What do you do on a daily basis that says ‘I care about me!’

What could you tweak in your day to make space for you?

When will you start doing this?

If you were only allowed to choose one car to last all of your life, what would you choose? How would you look after it? What would you do to ensure it ran well & was fit for purpose?

Well you are given one body and one incredible brain & what do you do to look after it? ensure it works well for you?

How often do you take extra good care of you?

Do you sit down & reflect on what world make you feel calmer, healthier or more at ease in your life?

Do you know what would allow you to feel more comfortable in your skin, more trusting of your mind?

Please take some time whenever feels right for you & just ask yourself, what would make me feel more me today?

Allow yourself the time to know that self care is the foundation to self love & both mean taking time to ensure you look after you, mind, body & soul!

How far?

How far have you come?

Take moment and reflect, where were you a year ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago?

What are you doing, have you created, are you being that you have wished for before?

Where did this part of your journey start? What was happening for you?

Have you taken time to allow yourself to recognise where you are today?

Life can get so busy just managing the day to day or planning the future, where we want to be, that we very rarely stop and celebrate how far we have come, how much we have grown, healed, changed and the transitioning within.

Life is a journey and one that has an ending, so how would it feel if we really got to ‘feel’ the ok, the good and the great and the everything in-between. Each step on our path plays a role in who we are becoming and what we have created and are creating.

Take 5 minutes and do a timeline of how you got to today, and then just allow yourself to recognise the beauty of each chapter in your journey.

When we make space to recognise the steps, gratitude and appreciation can guide our journey. Through the more difficult times we find an inner strength and belief as we allow ourselves to see we have grown through hard times and challenges before!

Many people acknowledge how far their favourite team have come from last season, how much their child has grown, how much money is in, or not, their bank account but how many people stop and celebrate the ‘art of becoming’ the journey to today!

Just for today take time to really honour you and your journey ….

Happy?

I know I have been guilty of expecting others to make me happy, I recognise that I have placed my happiness on many occasions in the hands of others and then been really upset, disappointed & let down when they didn’t make me happy!

The more therapy I have both engaged in & facilitated the more I have recognised, we all have an expectation, a belief that someone else, other than us has a responsibility to make us happy! Now I can see how risky that really is, it is like we are driving the car knowing exactly where we want to go but we let someone else take over the steering & we don’t tell them our destination!!

Our happiness, is based on our choices, our understanding of what makes us feel, grateful, connected, seen, heard & cared for! Initially we have to learn to recognise what, who, where & how we feel happy & these will change as we change!

Take a moment & reflect;

What do you do that feels good?

What allows you to feel ‘connected?’

What, who, where are you grateful for in your life?

When do you stop & just recognise all that is in your life?

Where & who allows you to feel seen, heard & cared for?

When do you stop & notice ‘happy?’

Do you ever take time to really immerse yourself in the good in your life?

It is all too easy to think we want more, or different or see that others are appearing happy, social media is a great distortion for that~ but if you actually just PAUSE & reflect & acknowledge all that you are, all that you care for, all that you enjoy, all that enhances you, you might be surprised at your life!

Write down;

What are you grateful for today?

Who are you grateful for today?

We read that when we are grateful it changes how we feel, this is true because until we acknowledge; who we are, what we have created, how far we have come, we will never recognise the good in our life, so we will never CREATE appreciation for our life, so then how can we feel ‘happy, well or content’ if we are not grateful!

We are never taught that happiness is a state of mind, of the way we think & we have to create the foundations, the understandings to allow it!

We are taught, to get good grades, to get a degree, apprenticeship, job, to earn money, to want for things, materialistic requirements ~ we are taught to chase the illusion of happiness but not how to be happy!

I hope you create happiness for you by looking at your life & finding gratitude within the moments, the memories & the day to day experiences!

It is NOT personal…

I don’t know about you but I have in the past struggled with feeling deeply hurt by other peoples’ actions, lack of actions, their words or lack of words, what they say and they do not do, on so many occasions I have wondered what it was that I did for them to behave in that way, whether it was they let me down, forgot something important for me, didn’t reply to a text, or said one thing and did the opposite.

Along with my experiences I hear in therapy so many people deeply wounded by their parents, partners, friends, lovers and children and in every interaction there are two sides to the story and there is the each individual’s perception!

I have learned to understand that nothing anyone else does is because of me, the way someone treats, talks to or acts to me is ALL about who they are and is NOTHING to do with who I am!

The common theme in many experiences is that we accept people’s bad behaviour and insults more readily than we experience the great and good in relationships, the compliments, is it not time to accentuate the good stuff and learn from and to let go of the ‘stuff’ that is not ours to own!

When we take a moment and stop and look at the situation, the person’s behaviour, we can recognise the truth, our truth in the situation.

Maybe we can even accept that if we love and care for this person we can find the courage to be real and talk with them;

how it is for them ~ what is going on for them that they behaved in this way

explain how it felt for you and what it meant to you

together find a way through to learn from the situation

When we get hurt due to someone else it is for us to resolve our pain, to look within and ask ourselves;

What is the story I am telling myself?

How does it feel to be here, victim or victor? bitter or tender? negative or positive? Pessimistic or hopeful? resentful or resolving?

What would make me feel different?

How could I let go, learn and grow from this situation?

How can I create a new attitude?

We always have a choice, even if at first it doesn’t feel like it, every experience can allow us growth if we choose to create it!

How can you change your story to support you to heal and grow?

Simplify life, you decide?

When we simplify our lives, we slow down, we create space to feel our way through, we allow ourselves the time to be present, to acknowledge more of who we are, what we have created, along with what we enjoy!

It is so easy in this highly connected, fast paced world to live in a state of busy, overwhelm, on the edge of our nerves, a ‘to do list’ that follow us around reminding us of what we have not done, feeling stressed becomes a habit, a normal way to be. Once we have created this life of too much, then we are chemically overloading our body and mind with the stress hormone cortisol. Our stress, worries and busy become overwhelm, and our brain learns to make too much cortisol we are now unconsciously neurochemically addicted to living at this pace and slowing down in itself feels stressful.

Busy can be a fear based distraction, a habit we learnt either from parents or to survive. a difficult time.

Busy is to be constantly driving in the fast lane of the motorway, highway, never getting to see where you are or what is around you….

To create calm, we have to learn how to relax, to slow down, to make time and space to allow our bodies to rebalance.

To simplify, is to create ease, to live within your energetic means, to understand that your energy is a currency is to learn to respect that to feel well, calm and thrive you have to learn;

to say NO

switch off technology

add ‘calm time’ to your life

go to bed earlier, wake up earlier or later

make space for you in your life

If busy is how each and every day is, when we reflect we will notice that our life was fast and perhaps we didn’t get to enjoy the good stuff because we were occupied by ‘doing human not being human, too busy, both in our heads and day to day lives!

Take a moment and just ask yourself;

Where does your life feel too much?

Do you feel overwhelmed and if so how does this impact you and your life?

Where can you simplify life to make it feel easier?

What would a ‘slower’ life look like?

What is the first step, can you practise this?

What do you think the benefits for a less busy life are for you?

Only you know when life is feeling too much and only you know what you need to find balance within yourself and each day. By taking the time to pause and reflect you get to choose the quality of your life and you decide how you spend the ‘currency’ of your time!

May you decide to ‘pause’ today……

Live from love or fear?

Do you live from a place of love and trust or fear and catastrophe?

As children we are taught unconsciously by our parents to trust the world and all within it or to be fearful of everything around us, this impact the quality our thoughts, which is turn dictates the ease of our life.

Many people are taught that the world is a scary place and that the worst will happen and so they are programmed to live from a place of fear, worry, anxiety, stress and attempt to overthink everything in order to be prepared for the ‘worst case.’ However the worst case that has been imagined very rarely happens, in fact take a moment right now and think about all the worries you have invested hours of your life thinking about…

Did they ever come true?

Did your worrying help you to navigate a way through?

Do you live from a place of fear, attempting to think through all of the ‘what if’s?’

Does living from this place of worst case thinking make your life easier?

Once we start overthinking everything, once we have trained our mind to misuse our imagination, we are then stuck in the habit, our brain is now neurochemically addicted to living from a place of ‘high stress,’ fear. In order to break the pattern we have to practise calm, we have to start the process of talking to ourselves and being honest about what we are thinking, challenge our thoughts….

is this really a good way to think?

is this thought helping me to feel good?

is my brain just behaving ‘habitually’ if so time to create a new habit!

It is up to you to recognise the role of your thought and how they impact the quality of your life.

Take a moment, maybe read out loud and ask yourself love or fear?

Fear tells you to hide your true self

Love tells you to stand up and shine

Fear wants perfection

Love is perfectly imperfect

Fear tells you being right is the way to stay safe

Love knows that safety is an illusion

Fear argues for your limitations

Love takes a stand for your greatness

Fear wants more

Love knows there is always enough

Fear thinks pain is a weakness

Love sees pain as an opening

Fear wants guarantees

Love TRUSTS

Fear tells you to protect yourself

Love tells you to be vulnerable and open

Fear wants to know why? when? how? what if?

Love allows

Fear wants to confine

Love wants to let go

Fear wants to hold on

Love wants to surrender

Fear wants to be wanted

Love knows it is

Fear judges

Love accepts

Fear tells you to sacrifice

LOVE reminds you it is a GIFT..

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.’ Winston Churchill

Being aware of what emotion our thoughts start from love or fear, allows us to notice our beliefs and attitudes, when we pay attention to these, we can then create a growth mindset. Challenging our thoughts creates more open mindedness and then we allow ourselves the gift of the ability to change, heal, evolve and ‘become’ more of our true selves!

Life changes?

Each and everyone of us has been through numerous life changes, some good, some bad, some traumatic, some we have chosen, some we have had no power over but all of them have impacted how we who we are!

We have all managed to survive these experiences, perhaps changed because of them, maybe we choose to change or maybe the experience changed us and we are still living with the behaviours we created to cope, to survive!

When we are hit with huge change, the impact can be far reaching, it can impact our mental health, the way we think, being thrown into chaos, the unknown, can create worry, fear, overthinking, anxiety and stress, our brain goes into the ‘flight, fight or freeze response’ to cope! Far to often we then stay in this place, the apprehension, disconnection, or maybe overcompensating can stay with us, we have now created a habit that is hard to break and our coping mechanism becomes our daily place of mental living! It is like getting stuck on a roundabout and never choosing the exit off!

Change goes against human nature, we love patterns, we are creatures of habits, our brain is a pattern matching organ and it feels ‘safe’ repeating what we do. Even though many of our mental habits are limiting and hold us back!

We can allow life changes to blow our life apart to create room for the unexpected, the new and a different way to be or maybe live. These times of change require us to dig deep, to build resilience and to walk through the fear, with courage and create change from the changes. There is no courage without fear.

I lost my first child late in pregnancy, close to his due date and it was both heartbreaking and life changing, somewhere deep in me as I witnessed the smallest coffin being placed into the ground, I knew that I had two choices, bury myself under the pain or find that part within me to create change as his legacy! It was a messy process, full of heartbreak but it was life changing, I retrained, I moved out of the city, I ditched habits that held me back and I invested in creating a new me. 19 years on he is my game changer, he allowed me to dig deep and to find that part of me that was buried under ‘safe’ and patterns of limiting habits!

We can therefore allow the pain of change to change us, to grow through and from the experiences, we can become more than we ever imagined and realise that by fearing change we fear growth and the very essence of life.

Whether it is a relationship breakup, a job loss, a death, friendship betrayal, chronic illness or diagnosis, whatever the change, you can create changes within to support you.

Take a few minutes and just reflect;

How do you feel about change?

What do you need to support you through change?

What have you been taught about change from your family?

Who is a good person to talk through your feelings, thoughts with?

Can you learn to share your feelings, to get more support, what would be step 1?

What changes in your life would make you feel more alive?

What is holding you back?

How do you think?

The way that you think creates the quality of your life and regularly I speak with people who feel like they have little or not control over what they think, in actual fact they have a lot more than they think! Our thinking styles are habits, patterns of behaviours, some we have created, some we have been taught consciously, at school, with our parents, culture, society and friends and some we have picked up unconsciously…..

How we think defines the quality of our life, if everything is black and white, right and wrong, good or bad, we are limited in how we view our world. The choices we have or the experiences we go through are all felt relative to how we think about them. If we can learn how to keep an open mind, learn how to have our beliefs and opinions but become curious as to other ways to see our world we are able to learn, to grow and to evolve.

One person whose relationship breaks up may feel the deep loss and then question, overthinking, analyse and direct every thought trying to find the reasons, the clarity, maybe even wanting to blame themselves and thereby trapping themselves in a thought process that has them feeling anxious, stressed and incredibly lost.

While another might feel the sadness and loss and redefine the situation by saying;

what can I learn here?

what will I do differently next time?

what didn’t work for me?

how can I make changes to grow and learn from this?

When we learn to use ‘the supercomputer’ our mind, the brain to work with us, we are able to create a world where we can always find the ‘growth’ we are always able to use each and every situation to heal and evolve.. in this way we become mentally and emotionally resilient.

Do you use your mind, your thinking to support you?

So whether it is a throw away comment someone says, a teacher at school being mean, your lover being thoughtless, a family member triggering you, a situation at work, you always have a choice, you can always find the lesson for you to grow, to become, to learn!

How you think is up to you! Choose to update the way you use your brain to support the life you want!

This moment – presence, feelings!

Feelings are our emotional satellite navigation, they let us know how we are, how we are emotionally, they highlight where we are struggling, perhaps lost, maybe confused or just in the ‘unknown.’

‘Emotions play out in the theatre of the body. Feelings play out in the theatre of the mind.’

Our feelings can be a really powerful guide as to what is not working in our life. Feelings can let us know where changes need to be made, where we hurt, where areas of our life aren’t enhancing us, where relationships and people are creating hard work~ we can either take time to feel, reflect and choose to support ourselves to ‘feel’ differently or we can get lost in thought and make life even more difficult. We can overthink, we can create worst case scenario and feel worried and anxious or we can do nothing and stay stuck and life can feel relentless……

The weather is a constantly changing state, we trust there will be sunny day, the snow may fall and the rain will come, and we accept that these are all natural, our feelings are exactly the same, they will come and they will flow through us if we let them!

If we are able to allow ourselves to ‘feel‘ even the uncomfortable feelings, the unsettled, the deepest grief, the hardest heartbreak, the ‘unsafe, safe’ we allow ourselves space to become more, to feel more, to grow, to create a deeper, richer texture to life, the more we feel, the more we can experience the good stuff, the love, happiness, gratitude, ease, calm, appreciation.

When we close ourselves down to our emotions, our feelings (some people have been taught to believe this is strength) we then also close ourselves down to the good feelings, we numb out the pain and the pleasure!

The six basic emotions are; anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise!

If we let ourselves feel the above emotions without having to understand fully, without having to make them ‘safe’ just trusting that like the weather, this too will pass, then we give ourselves the gift of all of the good emotions too!

Take a moment and reflect on;

Which emotions are too difficult to feel for you? Why?

How did your parents ‘feel’ about emotions? tears? sadness?

Where you made safe to feel? Was it safe to feel growing up?

What can you do to feel safer to feel?

What is the belief you have about these ‘difficult’ emotions?

How do you let yourself ‘feel?’

Does thinking help you ‘feel?’

Can you think of an experience that you know was emotional that you ‘dealt’ with?

If you were to hear your life story as if it were someone else’ or watch it as a movie how would you feel?

my previous blog explores further ’emotions’

When you are present in each moment, more aware of your feelings, you allow yourself to FEEL your life!

Your journey…

All of us experience life in so many different ways, and all of us will go through pain, loss, change, confusion and heartbreak! We will hit crossroads in life and not know which way to go and may feel stuck, we will find ourselves in situations where people who love us also cause us deep hurt that we feel so deeply life can become too hard, sometimes facing the day ahead can be a mountain to climb.

These times are when we have to really feel our feelings and then acknowledge that we need more support, more kindness, more care. Many people hide their feelings not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to share as it can feel too vulnerable. In these emotionally tough times we get to choose to do for ourselves what we would want to do for someone we love deeply. It is at this time that ‘holding space’ for ourselves becomes the most difficult thing to do but would be the most healing!

How do you hold space for yourself? take a moment and reflect upon;

Who allows you to share how you feel and honours it?

Where do you feel ease, calm and safe?

What allows you to connect with the most loving part of you? Is it friends? exercise? music? creativity? getting out in nature? time alone?

When do you feel more comfortable with the uncomfortable feelings?

What would you do for someone you love in your situation?

Do you try to think your way through feelings? Does it really help?

All of us will go through really difficult times in life, we will all at some point feel overwhelmed, lost, uncertain of our future and it is in these times we can ‘grow through,’ we can take the opportunity to look within and become more of who we want to be, allowing us to create more dreams.

We can create opportunities out of the challenges!

Through my work as a therapist I meet people who go through so much pain and as they heal they become more than they ever knew they could be and it is such an honour to witness their journey, their courage and their relationship with themselves!

So, as my therapist would say, I invite you ~ to look at an area of your life now and ask where can you grow to become ‘more’ you…..