Welcome back to our brand new guided interactive series – How to Flourish! If you’re joining us for the first time, make sure to go back and check out the previous week’s articles so you don’t miss a thing. This week we’re talking about what we call you Self Health, aka your relationship with yourself. This is often the biggest missing piece that we see in our coaching practice. So don’t sleep on this one!

How to use this guide:

• For the sections entitled “questions” or “practice,” you can approach these a few different ways. You can just allow your thoughts to flow in a “brain dump” style journaling session, or using voice notes. Feel free to keep these to reflect later or even delete them once the thoughts are out of your head! You can also work through these questions with a friend or partner. 
• It may be helpful to do this work in short sessions daily or a few times per week. Get comfortable, make a cup of tea or coffee. Put on a soothing playlist or enjoy some quiet time. 
• You can also feel grounded by doing some deep breathing before you get started! An easy exercise to begin with is inhaling for 4 and exhaling for 6, pretending like you are blowing out through a straw. This will help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, aka the “rest, digest, recover” part.

Your Self Health

Self Love is Productive, Self Criticism is Not

Somewhere along the way, many of us seem to have gotten the idea that being kind to ourselves is unproductive. We tell ourselves things like “I thrive under pressure,” or “I need to be hard on myself to stay motivated.” We somehow believe that being nice to ourselves will make us “soft,” as if that were a bad thing. Or we fear that it will make us “lazy.” Gasp.

But have you ever noticed that you’d probably never treat your friends like you treat yourself? Or that the things you tell a friend are much kinder than the words you use with yourself? Once again, what thoughts will help you keep going? Probably thoughts of encouragement towards yourself right? And can you see how much it matters to focus on those instead of anything else?

Self Love is Scientifically Proven to Make you More Motivated

There’s a whole other discussion that we can have here about thought patterns, habits, and programming from how you grew up (read about it here!). But for now, it’s important to know that self love and compassion has been scientifically proven to make you *more* productive and help you reach your goals. So no worries about that here. But we will also remind you that your worth as a person has nothing to do with being productive or reaching goals. It has everything to do with the fact that you’re worthy already.

Self Love Actually Feels Good

Not to be discounted is the fact that self love actually feels good! It feels like inner peace, like being whole, and like you’re finally not fighting against yourself. It feels like a soothing balm that you’ll wonder why you never took the time to try before. Knowing you’ve got your own back and that you accept yourself means you can finally feel enough as you are right now. It’s the only thing that allows you to stop the chase, get off the hamster wheel, and take a deep breath.

We’re All Chasing Feelings

This also feels like a great time to share that with any goal, beyond the goal on the surface, all we’re really chasing is the feelings we *think* we will have when we reach it. Sometimes we get the feelings we longed for. But other times, we reach the goal and still don’t feel how we hoped.

But, did you know? You *already* have access to all the feelings you’re attaching to something external and in the future. They are already inside of you now, and you can experience them now.

Practices like visualization can give you almost immediate access, and science tells us that the brain states of visualization and actually experiencing are extremely close. You can also feel these feelings by shifting into an abundance mindset, practicing gratitude, and being compassionate with yourself now.

Self Forgiveness and Letting Go

Sometimes once we have begun the process of doing “the inner work,” we realize there are lots of things we have thought or done that were not helpful or supportive.  We also might realize that these things have contributed greatly to our unhappiness. When this happens it’s important to practice self compassion and acceptance, and even take another step. You need to forgive yourself. And you need to let go of what has happened previously.

You’ve Done the Best You Can

You have always done the best you can with the resources and what you knew at the time. They say that when you’re at 40%, if you can show up at 40%, then you’re actually showing up at 100%. Consider how this could be true for you.

Reframe Failure and Forgive Yourself

Forgive yourself for mistakes you’ve made and the things you didn’t know at the time. You’re learning and growing, and you’ll even make new mistakes. This is all okay. Some people even say that the more mistakes you make and the faster you make them, the faster you learn! Failure can be an opinion. So think about what will help you keep going? What mindset will help you move forward? Is there something you need to forgive yourself for in order to do that? Something you need to let go of? And how much better can you feel once you do?

How to Get Started with Self Love

If you’re used to being hard on yourself, this all might sound foreign. As you read, you might realize it makes total sense. But you also have a fierce inner critic and you’re used to it. And you’re thinking, okay that sounds nice for someone else, but how can *I* actually change this?

We’re glad you asked! SO much more is coming on this topic on the blog. But here are a few simple things you can do to get started today.

Here’s 3 ways to get started today:

1. Literally give yourself permission to love yourself as you are, right now – Yes, make this literal and tell yourself these very words. Either in your mind or out loud.
2. Look in the mirror and say, “I love you!” – No one is looking, just try it 🙂
3. Create a mini self love journaling practice – Ask yourself – How can I be 1 % kinder to myself?

And that’s part 6! We hope you enjoy taking time for your own self discovery as well as the homework assignments and the resources.

Next Steps

Feel free to reach out to us via email, instagram (or comment below!) with any insights, questions, or breakthroughs! We would love to hear what you love and what you’d like to see more of.

Come back next week for Part 7 of our interactive Flourishing series! Next week we’re going deep into Presence and Resilience, and how to increase your capacity for both.

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Looking for more personalized support on this journey?

Want to go deeper? As we always say, it may be called “the inner work,” but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to do it alone. We would be honored to be your guides! Book a free session with either of us here. It may be the most valuable thing you do to move forward in your personal development journey!