The Power of a Healthy Relationship ... With Yourself

I signed up a while back to an email newsletter called "The Journal Prompt" (It's Canadian too! Yay!). Each week, they send a newsletter that includes not only a few journal prompts to get you thinking but also things like a motivational quote, a poem and some other inspirational tidbits.

This week's quote was fantastic and I wanted to share it:

"The most powerful relationship you will ever have is the relationship with yourself."

~ Steve Maraboli

I shared another quote in a past post here on the Zen Blog about exactly this topic, and I'm doing it again because so many of us (myself included) need to hear it.

Do you know how many clients say things that are completely putting themselves down, negative and in no way shape or form helping their progress?? MANY!

"I'll never be able to do 'x'..."

"I suck at this..."

"If I could just stop being lazy..."

"If I could just not eat 'x'...."

The scary part is, this is out loud to another person. So how bad is the internal conversation!?!? What's their internal voice saying day after day to them? We tend to have a much harsher inner critic than the voice that is heard by others.

Yet none of these people would talk to a friend (or others) this way... Yet do it to themselves multiple times per day, everyday.

But we don't give that aspect of our health and wellbeing the time of day do we? We just continue to let that inner bully run rampant on us, day after day, month after month and year after year. Think about that!! Imagine if I (your Coach) called you lazy, stupid, old, useless ... every time you came to the studio for a session; You'd be gone after just a couple sessions. And that's only 1-3 hours per week that you would see me. Yet we continuously allow this inner voice to drag us down every... single... day without putting focus on learning to control/manage/change it.

Flip the Internal Script to Cultivate a Better Self-Relationship

If you find yourself struggling right now with something health related, perhaps shifting the focus to more positively interacting with YOURSELF will help. Begin by catching yourself dragging yourself down. When that inner voice says "You're so friggin' lazy" for example, awknowledge the thought but then ask yourself; "Would I talk to my best friend, child, spouse or family member in this way?" (I highly doubt it). Instead, use that opportunity to practice how you WOULD speak to someone you cared about about the same situation - "You're not lazy. You've had x-y-z on your plate the past two days, you've had to get this project done at work, plus you had a dentist appointment to get to after work today. You've had alot going on! But you did do 'x', which is something!"

I recently had a client talking about "getting back to her old self". She's had a rough go in the past while, and it's been very much focused on the negatives. Her inner voice is loud in this case. When I asked her what "her old self" is to her she named a few things that she used to "do and think" that she considers "being her old self". When we continued the discussion, I pointed out to her that everything she just said she's been doing her reaction was "Oh! You're right!". It's exactly what we're talking about - letting ourselves love ourselves. Treating ourselves no different, if not BETTER than we'd treat a loved one or someone we care about.

Start Building / Re-Building that Relationship with Yourself

I think one of the problems in our distraction oriented world is that we DON'T listen to ourselves to even have the opportunity to build a relationship with ourselves. Think of it like an on-going date, but you're on your phone distracted the entire time. Pretty hard to build a relationship with the person you're on these dates with when you're not paying attention isn't it?

You can't build a strong self-relationship if you are CONSTANTLY dragging yourself down, putting yourself down and focusing on the negatives. Be REAL with yourself, but be constructive - Like a coach (hey! I know a Coach!). Don't belittle yourself every day for everything that isn't "perfect" or "what you're supposed to do". Yet also don't make everything so sparkley and bright that overlook areas you need to improve on.

Listen. Be realistic. Be patient. Be a friend... to YOURSELF.

You may be suprised where that takes you.