What’s the relationship with yourself like?

There was a situation in my own life recently that reminded me that sometimes it can be hard to fully accept ourselves.

We like pieces of ourselves or parts of ourselves or some traits or some things but it's not always easy to fully accept or appreciate the whole person. 

When we feel less than satisfied with ourselves or who we are we tend to look outside ourselves for validation and reassurance that we're acceptable and of course it doesn't work.  If we're lucky we might find some relief in the short term, we might have a loving husband or a close friend that tells us how wonderful we are and makes an effort to help us feel better but you know what, if we don't really feel that way about ourselves, if we don't fully accept ourselves, all the parts of us, you know the parts we like and the parts we don't like, it really doesn't matter what someone else says because what we tell ourselves is “yeah they are just saying that because they love us” or  “it's not really true” or “if they really knew me they probably wouldn't say that”, or some other version of self-depreciation.  

That is what the brain does this is how the brain works you know, we have a thought - we have a feeling, and we take action including, cognitive actions, these actions will always support the original thought and then the result of course in this situation is we reassure ourselves we are not good enough.  So, we actually invalidate ourselves and we are kind of robbing ourselves of developing ourselves as our own best resource.

As I mentioned initially, I was reminded of this because I was in a conversation with a person and something he said to me triggered a response in me that caused feelings that I recognised from when I was younger. I felt defensive, angry, and resentful as they were pointing something out about me. I don't know if it was true or not, I don't even really remember what they said I just remember how I felt and I felt pretty annoyed. I didn't say anything, I realised I had been triggered and that my response was larger than this moment, but in that moment as I became aware of what was happening for me, I realised that I had hear this criticism before, that how he spoke to me is how I spoke to myself sometimes.

I started to look at my relationship with myself, I was a bit surprised because I thought I had a pretty good relationship with myself.  In reflection I do with the parts of me I like. I decided to book myself in for a coaching session because I don't know if you've ever heard the saying “when you're inside the bottle you can’t read the label” well I knew because it was about my relationship with myself it would be a bit like that.  It was going to be too messy for me to wade through the quagmire without some support 

The most beautiful thing is as I went through this coaching session, I was able to notice that to have a good relationship with myself, the kind of relationship that is unaffected when another person decides to point out your flaws, I needed to accept all parts of myself.  You know the good, the bad, the ugly, the unhelpful and the helpful.

As I opened myself up to that, as is often the case, a couple of much more helpful thoughts, that I'm going to implement as I move forward, came to mind. I noticed that for other people I'm always very accepting it just doesn't matter what they do or say. I think because the thought I have when I'm with other people is that “they are allowed to be whoever they are”, “they are allowed to have whatever experience they're having”, but I realised that I didn't offer those two thoughts to me.

I wondered, how would I feel if I actually thought to myself, well I'm allowed to be who I am, I'm allowed to have the experience I'm having. Then I had a bit of an epiphany, I love it when that happens, that was, the combination of both what we like about ourselves and don't like about ourselves is what make us uniquely who we are. Let me say that again, it is the mixture that makes us uniquely the individual that we are, that give us our own perspective and balance, we want to embrace that, not reject it. 

I realise it is so important that we appreciate the things we don't like about ourselves. We wouldn't be who we are as an individual without that combination. The way we love and care about others, the value we offer the world, wouldn’t be the same way without that combination.

We're not meant to be perfect, we're not meant to like every single piece of who we are, if we did, we would lose what is our uniqueness.  This change in perspective has really allowed me to fully appreciate what is my combination and it feels really good.

I hope this helps someone today because I know when I allowed myself to find this knew way of thinking with support from a Life Coach, all of the anger and the resentment that I had been feeling dissipated, and a feeling of peace settled in.

Would you like to look at the relationship you have with yourself, perhaps you instinctively know that the most important relationship we have in this life is the one we have with ourselves but hesitate to invest in yourself because it feels selfish.  I promise you it is not, it is the best gift you can give yourself and all those you care about, because when you have a healthy relationship with yourself it is improves every other relationship in your life.

I have paid thousands over the last few years to be coached and become a Life Coach so that I can offer coaching to others at a very affordable price. You can purchase my Coaching package for only $497.00.  It’s a holistic program that supports self-exploration from a place of kindness, compassion and appreciation so you can create more fun, laughter and love your life.

If you would like to know more you can go to my website www.pampoole.co.nz and join my email list or if you haven’t already taken advantage of it, book a free, no obligation enquiry call by clicking on the link below.  

I appreciate you all, thanks for reading, and have a great week. :)