How many times have you called your best friend fat? Or called them an idiot? Or that they should know better? Or thought over and over about what they did wrong? I don’t know about you, but I’m not friends with people I talk to or think about like that and I hope you aren’t either, or you may need to rethink your friendships.
The thing is, we don’t talk to our best friends like this, but we think it’s ok to talk to ourselves this way. This really doesn’t make any sense when we can start to take a step back and consider the truth and consequences of statements like these both internally and externally.
The truth is generally much less harsh than we are telling ourselves. The truth is, usually nobody is worried about the thing you think you did wrong even a little bit. The truth is, we have just gotten into a habit over the years of blaming and judging ourselves, but we don’t have to believe everything we think.
The consequences of being unkind to ourselves are, when we are negative and critical to ourselves it continues to send negative energy to the situation, and increases our shame. We feel worse, which makes it even harder to move forward and change our negative patterns. It decreases our ability to help ourselves, help others, and shine our light into the world. It doesn’t have any positive side effects whatsoever.
Our brains are wired to look for the negative, even about ourselves, and some people’s genetics or life experiences can tend to increase this tendency as well. The super cool thing is that more and more research all the time points to our ability to change our brain, and our DNA, including the tendency to decrease our negative and self-critical thinking and shifting it to more kind and self-compassionate thoughts.
We all get triggered sometimes, and are all works in progress, but the more work you can do on your thoughts in the meantime, creating a baseline of peace and self-acceptance, the easier it is to get through those triggers, slowing down and reframing to more kind and truthful thoughts. We are all human and always will have challenges, but the secret is, we are more in charge of the way we think and feel than we think we are.
The better we get at understanding and implementing kinder ways of thinking about ourselves, the easier it also gets to not depend on and have unrealistic expectations of others to fill the hole that self-love can leave. If we don’t love ourselves, an unreturned text, or a perceived snub by a partner or friend can feel like a knife in the heart. If our whole sense of worth is based on how much love we think we are getting from other people we will always be disappointed.
Not that we don’t need people in our lives who love and support us, of course we do. We just always need to love and support ourselves first and more than anyone else. When we are our own best friend, we can show up for those around us in a more healthy and generous way, rather than feeling needy or angry when we don’t get what we think we need from them.
Being our own best friend doesn’t mean isolating from others or being selfish. It isn’t being in denial or being mean. It does mean always caring about yourself deeply. It is treating yourself at least as well as you do others in your life. It means prioritizing your peace and happiness and nurturing it daily. It means asking yourself how you are and what you need often. It is easy, you already know how to do it with other people, it just takes some practice to shift to remembering you are always your first and forever friend.
Some ways to stay connected to your own inner best friend are:
- It’s always to start with awareness. Noticing when you are out of alignment, not feeling quite right, depressed or anxious. This generally means you are misaligned in your thoughts about yourself in the moment. Taking a moment to check in with what you are thinking and forgive any judgmental thoughts, put your hand on your heart and take some deep slow breaths, bringing in the loving energy of the universe.
- Checking in often with yourself to see how you are feeling and what you need. If you were taking care of a small child, or your own best friend, you would check in on them frequently to see how they were feeling and what they need. Placing your hand on your belly button, several times a day, and asking “what am I feeling right now?” Acknowledging and validating any feeling that comes up rather than judging it. Again, you would never get mad or judge your friend for having feelings, so don’t do that to yourself either. Gently saying to yourself “It makes sense you would feel that way, it’s ok to feel any way that you do” helps the feeling be heard and understood, and dissipate much faster than judging it or not acknowledging it. And then asking yourself what you need right now and doing your best to make it happen.
- Finding moments of kindness towards yourself throughout the day. Picking at least one thing a day that is just for you, and over time more little loving gestures will come up as well. For example, taking a hike in the forest even if you have laundry to do. Or taking 20 minutes to meditate in the morning rather than thinking about everything hard you have to do that day. Or meeting up with a friend for tea, and asking your husband to pick up the kids that day. The more you can do kind and loving acts towards yourself, it helps to reinforce that you matter. You are worth taking time for. You are loved.
- Surrounding yourself with things you love. This is unique for all people. What do you love? For me personally I love plants, flowers, crystals, and Hawaii among lots of other things. So I have plants and flowers everywhere in my home and office, I have crystals on my body usually as well as in my home and office, I have reminders of Hawaii like a little dancing hula girl (her name is Leilani) in my car, and pictures of Hawaiian vacations in my home. Again, everyone is unique, so find what you love and surround yourself with it as a reminder that you are so loved and precious.
- Love your quirks! Everyone is unique and we should celebrate our differences. I used to judge myself for being shy, and caring too much about my appearance. I now embrace my abilities and sensitivities as an empath, and realize my caring about how I look is something adorable about me that helps me transmit loving energy to humanity.
- Self-loving talk. This is very important. Practicing gentle and self-loving internal dialogue all day long is the way to rewire your brain towards a permanently more self-compassionate way of being. Looking in the mirror in the morning and acknowledging how proud you are of yourself. Telling yourself all day long “you are so special” “you are a great friend” “you did so good on that presentation,” etc., helps increase positive feelings towards yourself and the positive momentum going forward of your growing self-love.
- Acknowledging your successes. A good place to start integrating these things in a practical way is to practice writing down at the end of every day 3 things you were proud of yourself for that day. The list can start growing longer over time, but starting small, and actually writing them down can help to shift your neural pathways towards positivity, and encourage you going forward to look for these opportunities more throughout the day in order to get the reward later of writing them down, acknowledging how awesome you are, and getting that little hit of dopamine that makes you want to do it again and again.
- This may seem hard or even impossible. But it’s not. I’ve heard clients of mine many times say things like “this is just the way I am” “I will never like myself” and “It’s too hard to change my thoughts. I have also seen these same people and others make huge shifts in the way they feel about themselves. The main factor in my experience on if this will happen or not for someone is their belief on if it is possible or not. If they are in the mindset that it will be hard, and probably won’t work, they are much less likely to put in the practice and then their beliefs about themselves don’t change. People that are successful in starting to be their own best friends at least have a little hope or curiosity in the beginning that it might be possible to change, and they really want to try. If it seems really hard right now, practicing an affirmation multiple times a day such as: I’m learning to love myself more and more every day, can get things started. This is true, easy to believe and helps create a lot of forward momentum and motivation to change self-perception.
This is one of the parts about my work I love the most. I haven’t always been my own best friend, but I definitely am now. I know it just takes dedication and practice in our belief systems and behaviors over time to change from being our worst critic to our very best most loving and nurturing friend. I hope you have fun on the journey!
Read more about Relationship Issues with Shana Olmstead.
Shana Olmstead, Intuitive Consultant
I see my life purpose as helping people to awaken to the truth of their divine nature, the powerful spiritual beings that they are. I have assisted hundreds of clients in my therapy practice to wake up to the understanding that we are all made of source energy, and are here to increase our consciousness and joy to help the evolution everyone on the planet. I am so excited and inspired to continue helping people through their own awakening! Contact me to schedule an appointment in person in Kirkland, Washington or for a phone or video consultation wherever you are located.
