Tag:

Self-compassion

Love Yourself

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Why is loving yourself important?

Tell me, do you love yourself? Or, does the whole notion of loving yourself make you feel uncomfortable? Many of us believe that loving ourselves is not only vein and selfish, but also weak. So much so that we actually use self-criticism as a motivating force to drive ourselves towards success.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. This is because well-being has more to do with your relationship with yourself, or the lack of it, more so than anything else. A huge part of which requires that you love and accept yourself for who you are, in each and every moment. And that’s because its self-love that gives you emotional resilience and makes you really strong. Its self-love that allows you to feel worthy and that gives you unwavering confidence – allowing you to be the best you. This includes allowing yourself to dream and chase your dreams. Its self-love that provides you with the desire and long-term motivation to treat yourself including your body, with the respect, love and attention that you deserve, as opposed to relying on willpower which is fleeting. Its self-love that enables you to feel whole and complete, instead of remaining eternally unsatisfied – as if something is always missing.

And so, the more you value and love yourself, the more you are able to make better choices and therefore create abundance in every area, including your relationships, your career, your finances and your entire sense of meaning and purpose in life. In other words, loving yourself allows you to honour your truth/worthiness of what you want. And so, unless you really love yourself, then you will never achieve true successful in life.

What is loving yourself?

To love yourself means to fully accept, to trust, to honour, and to be at complete peace with yourself in each and every moment. To love yourself unconditionally means just that – to love and support yourself without any conditions attached. This doesn’t mean that you have to like everything about yourself – think about all of the people in your life like your kids or your partner – they have aspects which you don’t like but you still love them. It’s about doing the same for yourself. It’s about recognizing/seeing your perfection amongst your imperfections. In this way, loving yourself is about feeling empowered, by bringing forward your wholeness, in order to be the best you and live your best life.

How do we love ourselves?

Let me ask you this… What if the very source of the unconditional love and gratitude comes from within? Well it does, and in order to truly love and honour who you are, then there are two main ways you can do this. One way usually results in a lifetime of self-sabotage and never ever leads you to greater self-love even thought it may fool you that you do love yourself. The other, is a fast track to loving yourself like no other, and it results in 100% full and unconditional love for not only yourself, but also towards all others also. To learn what this is, and to begin loving yourself unconditionally, then join my 3 keys holistic health and fitness program at www.h360.online

February 26, 2019 1 comment

Empower Yourself

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What is motivation and why is it so important?

Motivation means having a reason to act or behave in a particular way. We can have the best of intentions but without motivation nothing happens. Being motivated is integral for taking action and facilitating change in any area of your life, including towards your health and well-being, which is the focus of this post.

Very few of us are really motivated:

Most of us struggle to not only find motivation, but also to keep it too. Just think about how many times you have said to yourself either ‘I can’t find the motivation,’ ‘I can’t stay motivated,’ or ‘I was motivated but then I lost it.’

Why we find it hard to maintain motivation:

So why do we find it so difficult to become and stay motivated? The reason is because we are not in alignment with who we are (our true-self). As a result, we tend to go about motivation in the wrong way, including by having an over-reliance on external goals, as well as through constant self-criticism.

*An over-reliance on external goals – This includes things like doing a fun run, or getting in shape before summer or for a birthday. The problem with being motivated by such goals, is that even if you do eventually reach them, at some point or another, your mind will no longer see a reason to continue the behaviour, and so the motivation stops. This occurs because your behaviour is often merely a means to an end, and never truly the reward itself. The result being that you need to find something else to motivate yourself, and also continuously try to summon up enough will power to stay motivated with it again. Don’t get me wrong, having external goals is not the problem. They only become a problem when you use them as your main source of motivation, as opposed to being motivated from within.

*Constant self-criticism – This is the carrot and stick approach – the carrot is ‘I want to feel good about myself’ and the stick is ‘I don’t want to feel bad about myself.’ This is a fear-based type of motivation – I am not ok if I fail, therefore I must try harder and succeed so I will be ok.

Many of us think we need self-criticism to motivate and keep ourselves in line. And whilst some amount of constructive criticism is useful in motivating ourselves to change, most of us do this in a non-constructive way. This is the nasty, harsh, belittling, you’re worthless, you’re bad, you’re no good type of criticism. This language may sound extreme, but if you were to actually write down (especially on a bad day) some of the things you say to yourself, you would be surprised at both how nasty and how frequent it really can be, eg. I’m fat, I look ugly, I can’t do that, etc.

The problem with this approach is that whilst it may initially motivate us, it often leaves us feeling stressed out and even depressed which is not exactly the most conducive mood for motivation. It also makes us lose faith in ourselves. If we constantly tell ourselves ‘I’m no good, I’m not worthy, I can’t do it,’ then we don’t feel confident to take on new tasks. The more we do it the more we become aware of failure – ‘I’m not even going to try because the consequences of failing are just too devastating – it’s better just not to go there.’ And so, we become less inclined to try and to keep on trying.

So why do we do it then? Well one of the main reasons why we are so attached to our self-criticism is that even though it is so painful, it’s because it gives us the Illusion of control. Think about it, how often have you said to yourself things like ‘I shouldn’t have failed.’ This implies that while it is theoretically possible that you will never fail… it’s because you have done something wrong… you shouldn’t have done this, you shouldn’t have been that, etc. We love the illusion that it is theoretically possible to be perfect. To never have things go wrong, and do anything we want to do. However, the reality is that we don’t have full control over everything, but yet we still criticize ourselves for it. We think if, ‘well maybe if I just tried that little bit harder, I could be perfect’ and that is not reality.

In order to learn where real motivation should come from, and in particular empowering yourself towards achieving anything you desire, then join my 3 keys holistic health and fitness program at www.h360.online

September 9, 2018 0 comment

Put Yourself First

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What does putting yourself first really mean?

Putting yourself first has nothing to do with being selfish. Instead, it is about living your life in a way which enables you to achieve and maintain balance and well-being.

Many of us are really bad at putting ourselves first

Every day in every way, I see examples of people not putting themselves first – and mum’s are especially like this, because of their nurturing and caring role for the family.

Why is it important to put yourself first?

By putting yourself first, it is possible to achieve and maintain balance and well-being in your life. If you don’t put yourself first, you will put others ahead of you, and this will detract from your own balance.

There are lots of ways to put yourself first – and if you are serious on doing so, then join my 3 keys holistic health and fitness program at www.h360.online

March 10, 2018 2 comments