Last week I was talking of the tendency a lot of us can have of feeling that we are not good enough, that we may be seen through as being an ‘imposter’. This week we turn instead to how we might connect with a feeling of love and appreciation for ourselves.
As part of the Mindfulness and Compassion course I’m on we have set up a whats app group chat where everyone posts info. One person is sharing some mindfulness cards they have, taking one out each day. A few days ago the card was for recording a love letter to yourself. At first it seemed like a strange and slightly awkward idea but I decide to try it and it was very powerful.
If you would like to try it the suggestion is to record a message saying everything you love about yourself:
- abilities
- your sense of purpose
- strengths
- ways you are kind
- ways you inspire others
Then listen to it several times over the next week. See how t changes things as you listen. So often we are looking for the affirmation, praise and acceptance from outside but what is it like to hear it from yourself?
In conjunction with this I am participating in a coaching course and the assignment in this module was to write down ten moments that give me a sense of pride, to have a sense of celebrating my achievements or things I feel good for having done. I found it incredibly hard! After the first few I really could not immediately think of anything and it was really powerful to spend time looking bak over my life considering things that I might have a sense of pride over. This then combined with recording the love letter to myself.
If you would like to try this, set aside some time when you will not be disturbed and allow yourself to remember times in your life where you felt a sense of achievement, satisfaction in what you had done or a moment that felt like a significant milestone for you.
Making these things conscious is a powerful way to counter the unhelpful autopilot of self-criticism or lack of self-worth. If like me you struggle to reach 10 it is also a good pointer to how the end can be more focused on lack than recognising and remembering success. And even if it feels hard to reach 10 it is worth spending time allowing things to come into you memory, however small it may seem, but that feels like something you can have a healthy sense of pride over. You may just find by the end of it that there’s more than you would have thought!
