Your Relationship with You and You

We all have a relationship with ourselves. This may sound foreign but it's a true thing. We talk to ourselves in our head. We treat ourselves nice or mean. We have a relationship in every sense like we would with a friend.

Think about someone you love very, very much.

• How do you think about them?
• How do you treat them?
• When they need you or ask you for help, do you show up for them?
• Do you speak kindly of them and uphold them?
• Would you lay your life on the line for them?
• If you make a plan to go on vacation or spend time with them do you show up?

Or do you ever at the last minute say, " Nah, I don't feel like it"?

Now ask yourself all those same questions, with you in the subject line.

Are you getting completely different answers than the question referring to the person you love?

Why is that?

Do you see that you do indeed have a relationship with you?

• When you decide to set a goal or plan for yourself how do you treat yourself?
• Do you talk to yourself the way you would if it were the person you loved? 
• Do you have the same level of compassion when you make a mistake?
• Do you encourage yourself to keep trying to matter how hard it is with love?

If you are like most of my clients and myself it's very difficult to do this for yourself. The very mistaken, and very unuseful way we treat ourselves is with disdain and contempt. It's with self-loathing and the constant berating of ourselves.

Let's look at this through a different lens. 

We set a goal to stop eating a specific food that makes us feel bad and doesn't serve us. And of course it's not easy and we find ourselves doing the exact opposite of the goal we set. 

Now what?

The stream of negativity starts.

When you speak to yourself like this, how does it feel?

It feels terrible!

Then when we feel terrible, we start to eat! After we have eaten our way through a pile of food, we set another goal to start the first of the month, on Monday to never eat crap food again!

How many times have you done this? It doesn't work and it is ridiculous. 

The next time you set a goal, make it realistic.

Understand that of course you will mess up.

Plan for failure, and set yourself up to love yourself through the failure.

Speak kindly to yourself like you would your loved one if they had done the same thing. Make your goal always to treat yourself like you would your favorite person in the whole world.

You might even skip the part of messing up!

You may even start to make choices that are always in your best interest.

I dare you!