Step into Yourself-Step into Your Life
Cultivating a Relationship with Yourself
Your most important relationship in life is with yourself. How you treat and take care of yourself is directly related to how you think about yourself.
Cultivating a good relationship is critical to your process of becoming who you are, becoming all you can be and living the life you dream of.
We have prepared out physical environment for our journey but now you must build a solid foundation to deepen your relationship with yourself and expand out into having a relationship with life itself.
To have a good relationship with yourself you must have self-respect, self-value, self-acceptance and self-care. You must make time for yourself, meditate, and be present and mindful. You must listen to, understand and care for your needs. You need to be able to hear the wisdom within you.
The three key elements of cultivating a relationship with yourself are journaling, self-care and present moment mindfulness.
Journaling
Hopefully you have already started journaling during your sacred time but if not it is time to begin to get into the habit. For those of you who are already journaling – great. Here we are going to go a little deeper into the methods and techniques of journaling.
In journaling you begin to develop a relationship with yourself. Here we communicate and listen to ourselves, we contemplate, dream, excavate, discover, uncover, our deepest beliefs, thoughts and feelings.
How you journal will depend on what you are trying to accomplish or discover. There are many types of journal keeping, Idea Journal, Personal Journal, Vision Journal, Art Journal, and Self-Discovery Journal. You can combine different types of journal writing into one journal.
- Date the entry.
- Start writing when you are ready, write when and how you want to
- No critics are allowed in your journal. No worries about neatness, spelling, grammar etc. Avoid making judgments.
Your journal is for spontaneity, creativity, and discovery. Try using the different kinds of journaling processes, the different techniques and the suggestions. Stay open. Expect the unexpected. Wonder-Wander-Speculate.
Present Moment/Mindfulness
- The present moment is powerful.
- You must be present with yourself and present with your life.
- It is the only way to cultivate a true deep meaningful relationship with yourself.
- Mindfulness is a way of being.
- It must be integrated into your everyday life on every level.
- Living mindfully is key to becoming your true self and living your best life
- Mindfulness is being in the present moment, being aware of what you are doing, thinking and feeling, to get the most out of each and every experience.
- Mindfulness can be applied to any and every activity you are doing.
- Mindfulness is paying attention to the task at hand – to what you are doing and thinking in the present moment. (Even if that is excavating the past or recalling a memory).
The two most important components of mindfulness are present moment and attention. In developing mindfulness you direct attention to the experience in the present moment.
The present moment is the access point into your deepest self – Your Being- at your fullest potential.
Things Mindful people do
- Take walks
- Pay attention to their breath
- Turn daily tasks into mindful moments/paying attention to the activity they are doing
- Focus on one activity at a time (no multitasking) then take a break and return to activity or begin a new one
- Know when not to check their phones-have times they phones and e-mail/computer are not in sight or turned off, stow phones when talking or interacting with other people
- Seek out new experiences, try new activities, foods, go to new places, change up their routines
- Go outside-spend time in mother nature-nourish and reboot your energy, renew sense of wonder and awe, awareness, awakens senses
- Feel what they are feeling-accepting the moment and what is not resisting what they are feeling or control it-accepting both negative and positive feelings and remaining even keel to cope with the emotions and situation in a mindful way
- Meditate
- Conscious of what they are putting into their body/mindful eating/ focus on the act of eating using their senses-sight, smell, taste
- Pay attention to what they feed their minds- less tv, social media, etc.
A mindful life is lived from our core engaging in every moment and every aspect of our self and living from our soul-our inner being-our authentic self
In order to live from you authentic self and to live fully you have to be present with yourself and present for your life
Mindfulness alone – without doing anything else- can change your being and your life. Without it any and all of the following actions will not result in connecting with and living through your true self. If you do not cultivate mindfulness then you will not benefit from the self-discovery process.
Mindful living will be the foundation of your day, your process, and your life.
Self-Care/Self-Nurturing
Self-Care means taking care of your needs at every level, mind, body, spirit. Self-nurturing is paying attention to needs and taking the time to nurture and nourish our spirit. As women we often push ourselves physically, mentally and emotionally depleting our spirit.
Most often if we do any kind of self-care it is only focused on the body, and specifically with eating and exercising. But most often we even neglect that too. If self-care is limited than self-nurturing is nonexistent. We believe we have no time for frivolous self-nurturing activities. We have been taught that it is selfish to have our own needs, wants and desire beyond our physical health.
It is vital that we take care of ourselves. If we do not then we are telling ourselves we are not good enough. Worse we are distancing our self for our relationship with our self. We are not engaging in a relationship that enhances our being.
Some ideas for self-care/self-nurturing activities
- Listen to my favorite music
- Enjoy a long, warm, bubble bath
- Go for a walk
- Watch the sunrise/sunset
- Do something adventurous
- Read a special book or magazine
- Sing/hum/whistle a happy tune
- Swing/slide/teeter/totter
- Play a musical instrument
- See a special play, movie or concert
- Draw/paint a picture
- Swim/float/wade/relax in a pool/on the beach
Conclusion
Cultivating a relationship with yourself takes time and effort. You must make the time.
If you do not do any more of the program you will eventually become true to yourself, you will be aware of how you feel, what you desire, what you need and make choices and decisions accordingly.
By simple cultivating a relationship with yourself through journaling, mindfulness, and self-care/self-nurturing you will become more content with your life.
These three practices can change your life.
But you must cultivate these practices consistently, thoroughly and conscientiously.
In her Memoir, Through the Woods to the Sea: A Journey of Becoming Me, she shares her story, her life, and her journey of stepping out of life to create one. It is one of emotion, hope, perseverance, letting go and beginning again.
