How to be your own best friend
Imagine this; your best friend comes to you in a crisis. They’re feeling sad, hurt, angry, upset. What’s the first thing you do? Perhaps you put your arm around them (pandemic notwithstanding) and give them a hug, tell them you love them and that everything is going to be okay.
We’re so good at doing this for our best friend, but why don’t we do it for ourselves, the one person we spend all of our time with. We often treat ourselves with disdain, criticism, judgement, apathy, loathing and downright meanness.
Think about the problem you are trying to solve and ask this question. “What would your best friend tell you to do?” It's one of my favourite questions to ask my clients. They always have the answer. What if that best friend was you?
What if you were already your own best friend?
The human brain has evolved to keep us safe and alive. It is motivated to seek pleasure, avoid pain and use as little effort as possible. This is a great model for keeping us alive but in today’s world where we are oversaturated with pleasure it’s not such a useful tool. We seek pleasure constantly in the form of food, pornography, Netflix, shopping, anything to fill the void of feeling lonely and empty. That lonely empty feeling sounds like a warning alarm to the primitive brain, which thinks that lonely = pain = danger and imminent death. So we fill the emptiness with pleasure. We do anything to buffer away our pain. But we want SO much more than this. We don’t just want to stay alive. We want to THRIVE.
“The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Because no matter what happens you will always be with yourself.” Diane von Furstenberg
In order to thrive we must grow and evolve into the next version of ourselves. To do this we have to overcome the primitive conditioning in our brain which was designed to keep us alive. We can overcome it with our willing application and commitment. We overcome it by moving out of our comfort zone and directly into our growth zone. Putting ourselves in the growth zone involves feeling discomfort on purpose. If we’re not uncomfortable we’re for sure not growing. This is the discomfort of putting ourselves out there, knowing that it won’t cause us harm. This in turn gives us self confidence, and demonstrates that we can rely on ourselves to keep ourself safe and have our own back. What better way to be your own best friend?
Improving your relationship with yourself has benefits in every other area of your life. When you have a better relationship with yourself you can have better relationships with other people. You can have a better relationship with your money, with your physical health, with your job. But I’m not just talking about a better relationship with yourself. I’m talking about the best relationship with yourself; being your best friend. Being the one who has your back. Being the one who is going to love you and take care of you no matter what.
You only have to go to instagram to find out what society thinks self-care and self love is; a pamper session, a shopping trip, letting yourself off the hook, not pushing yourself too hard...not pushing yourself at all...but the fun things, the easy things are really a way of avoiding our emotions, of not allowing ourselves to grow. I think the ultimate in self-care is putting yourself in harm's way and I don’t mean standing in the middle of the road or exposing yourself to danger or drinking too much. I mean doing things like launching Facebook groups. Knowing that we’re not going to die that some people won’t like what we do but as long as we like what we do that is the most important thing.
Do you celebrate your successes?
So let me ask you; do you celebrate your successes? Do you even know what your successes are? we are so conditioned to look for all the things that we’ve done wrong, for all the mistakes we’ve made and to beat ourselves up for those mistakes. In my experience this is never a good way to get ourselves to improve. We miss out on all our achievements. Somedays getting out of bed is a victory, recognising someone that we’ve helped, amount of revenue that we’ve created or that we stuck to our food protocol. Celebrating what is working literally changes the shape of our brain. It floods the body with feel good chemicals and teaches us that we can rely on ourselves for praise acknowledgement and recognition because, let’s face it, we can have every single certificate and qualification in the world, we can have a big pile of money, we can have a skinny body, we can have diamonds and pearls but if we don’t have love for ourselves first and hard, none of it is enjoyable, none of it is worth having and none of it feels good.
All the reasons your life is already so amazing
Let’s start with a list; 30 reasons that your life is so amazing. The first thing your brain will tell you is that I can’t possibly do that. It’s easy for Jo, she’s special. She’s a special unicorn who is blessed with an amazing life. No, no, no. I’m no different from you. I’m not special. I’m very, very ordinary. The only difference between me and you isn’t it I’ve decided to be my own best friend. I’ve decided to love myself on purpose and it’s exercises like this very one that I’ve practised again and again and again because I know that consciously turning my attention to something that feels better will lead me to feel better and the more I feel better the more I do things that serve me which in turn produce things I want in my life instead of things I don't want. This is how I’m creating my life deliberately. Loving myself, being my own best friend is the essential first step. You can’t wait until you’ve achieved everything you want and then decide to love yourself. We’ve got it all backwards. You have to love yourself first, to feel good first.
I love to teach people how to feel good
I love to teach people how to feel good and how to solve their problems by being their own best friend. Working 1-2-1 with me as your coach I'll take you through a bespoke 12 week program which will leave transformed and happy with your new best friend. You can schedule a free consultation here. It’s a life-changing 60mins that you won’t want to miss, so click this link and book now.
I’ve spent the last few years learning how to be my own best friend and I reckon that this is something we could ALL do with learning and practicing, would you agree? It’s a PRACTICE which takes practice and this facebook group is a place where we can do that. Do come and join the group, everyone is welcome!
Maybe you’re not feeling the love right now? That’s ok, stick around because I’m going to teach you how to feel it more often than not. We’re learning as we go.
My aim here is to lead by example, and to hear from you all too. You are warmly invited to engage with the content, to post questions, to take part in the exercises and challenges, and to receive guidance and support from me and from your own best friend; YOU.
