Be Your Own Best Friend

June 28, 2011

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Before we may have any kind of fulfilling relationship with another, it is imperative we develop a healthy relationship with ourselves; to change the unhelpful attitudes we may hold about ourselves. So without further ado, I would like to suggest that you take a few moments out and do this first very simple exercise:

Go up to the nearest mirror and look at your reflection. Go on. If someone’s in the room go into the bathroom and close the door. Don’t be critical. It doesn’t matter if your hair is out of place. Simply smile and acknowledge yourself. Maybe you have not been very kind to yourself in the past. That’s OK. You can make it up to yourself from now. Give yourself a saucy wink and a knowing smile and just say, “Hi, (your name)”. If you feel like giving yourself the thumbs-up sign feel free and when you are ready come back to the book.

Experiment with this and even though you may feel silly or uncomfortable at first, it is a very effective way of increasing your self-awareness and self-esteem. Try it in the morning the “new” you great dat. Usually we just look in mirrors to do our hair, shave and put on make-up or to give ourselves a hard time because of that spot that seems to be neon-lit, the hair that just won’t do what it is supposed to or the figure that is not what we think it ought to be.

We know that no-one scrutinises us the way we scrutinise ourselves, so why do we do it? It’s almost as if we don’t demand perfection from anyone else but ourselves. Or is it that we just feel we are not quite good enough? Good enough for who? Sometimes just tell your reflection that you are just fine. The way you look, act and feel contribute to making you the person that you are. You don’t need to be perfect, just be yourself. I am always puzzled when I occasionally have one of, what I call my ugly days. I look at my reflection and even though I know it is the same face that I approved of the day before, I don’t feel happy with what I see. The only thing that is different is how I feel within. I really need to be gentle with myself on those days!

Another way of being good to ourselves as well as increasing our self-esteem is to allow positive feedback. How do you cope with compliments? Do you accept them gracefully with a simple “Thank you” and smile or do you reject them as undeserved? Although I don’t think it is peculiar to this country, I think the British reserve, the self-effacing stiff upper lip that we have been brought up with, has a lot to answer for. It’s almost seen as a virtue to put ourselves down, never to be seen to blow our own trumpets. So as not to seem big-headed or egotistical, we can often go completely the other way and put ourselves down.

I know that in the past if someone said to me, for example, “Your hair is looking nice today”, I would cancel it out by saying something like “Well, it ought to with the money I spend at the hairdressers!” Likewise, I would cancel out a compliment such as, “That was a job well done” by saying, “Not really I could have done better.” Sound familiar? Rejecting compliments out of hand is a bit like saying that you don’t deserve to accept a beautiful gift that someone has chosen carefully and wrapped with love. We would not do that to someone, would we? Honest compliments are such positive feedback so allow yourself to feel deserving and feel good about yourself as a result.

Accept the compliment gracefully; this will help the person who has complimented you to feel gratified for having done so, and allow yourself to receive the support that can be so valuable at times. Commit yourself to a week of accepting compliments and flattery with a simple “Thank you” and a smile. If you feel any resistances coming up, stay with them and look at them. You can learn from them. They will give you clues as to where your negative beliefs about desirability are coming from.

Value and Appreciate Yourself. Make a list of all the things that you love about yourself; your traits, strengths, skills, the ways you do things or don’t do things. Head a page with “WHAT I VALUE AND APPRECIATE ABOUT MYSELF IS …” and see what happens. You may feel very awkward about doing this but try to keep going until you fill the page. If you find difficulty doing this, imagine you are one of your close friends or family and try to see the qualities that they value and appreciate about you. Honest self-appreciation is quite different from the bragging and boasting that we were probably all told when we were children is so wrong. You owe it to yourself to acknowledge your strengths, assets and skills as well as the weaknesses and areas of your personality that you wish to change.

Give positive feedback. Of course, the other side of receiving compliments is to give them back. We all know the warm glow that we feel when we have allowed ourselves to receive some positive feedback. It’s good to be appreciated. It’s also so good to give someone else that warm glow by honestly appreciating them. It sometimes takes a bit of courage to do it but it’s so rewarding. We may refrain from praising people for their appearance, achievements or personality because we fear that we might feel inferior in comparison or we just feel awkward or sill doing so. However, when we do allow ourselves to do it, we can create a warm, supportive and friendly environment in which all concerned can learn and grow. Your relationships can become more intimate

In many of the workshops that I have facilitated, we have done the “Appreciation Circle”. This is a Gestalt Therapy exercise where the group sits in a semi-circle facing a single chair (the hot seat). One by one each member of the group sits in the hot seat and listens while the others in turn say three things that they appreciate about them. These don’t have to be particularly personal things but they do need to be specific. For instance, if someone wanted to give a compliment about the person’s smile instead of simply saying, “I appreciate your smile” they would say what it was about their smile that they appreciated. Perhaps “I appreciate your warm, friendly smile.” Everybody finds the thought of sitting in the hot seat terrifying but they have all said afterwards that it was so valuable, not only to receive compliments but to give them too.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful it would be if those people who work in teams such as salesmen or actors would do the Appreciation Circle on a regular basis? Often so much is focused on the negatives; why the sales targets were not met, why someone’s performance was not as good as it might have been. I feel sure that it would be more productive if, even just once a month, the team could focus on the positives in their work?

Don’t be so hard on yourself. Another aspect of the self-effacing attitude we can have concerns our successes and achievements. How many of us are so good about owning our failures but not so ready to own our successes? We play them down; don’t want to ’brag’. Why can success sometimes be as embarrassing as failure? Perhaps this goes back to when everyone seemed to focus on the negatives when we were young. If we got seven out of ten in the class, the attention was on the three who got wrong, not the seven who got right. If we had been good all day but indulge in five minutes of mischief, we may have suffered admonitions about it for hours afterwards.

Sometimes we may strive to be perfect (whatever that means) or are trying to live up to impossible standards that we set ourselves. When we fall short of these, we feel that we have failed ourselves or others. We can be so hard on ourselves; far harder than we would ever be on anyone else. All the compassion, empathy, love and support that we offer to other people can often be withheld from the person that is nearest to us – OURSELVES!

I often say to clients in therapy when they are beating up on themselves in some way, “Just imagine that there is a “you” sitting in that chair over there and you have just heard that story from them. Now tell me what your reaction would be”. They never say, “I would tell them they are stupid” or “I would tell them they are a failure” or any such insensitive condemnation. They very often say that they would like to go over and give them a big hug and tell them that they are OK, that it’s alright to make mistakes and to be gentle on themselves.

Allow yourself to be gentle with you. Sometimes when you notice that you are being hard on yourself, that you are putting yourself down, just imagine that somebody else is in that situation with all the same emotions and thoughts you are having.

• Imagine how you would react to them.

• Would you feel compassion?

• Would you love and support them?

• Would you be their friend?

Become your own very best friend. You may have had an imaginary friend when you were a child. That friend was just an aspect of yourself that you loved and had fun with. Imagine that now you have a little friend within you. Stop fighting with yourself and treat that inner friend (yourself) as you would treat anyone who needs love and support to help them grow and develop on their life’s path. When things go wrong give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Don’t automatically blame yourself.

You know that to feel secure in a friendship with someone you need to feel safe and sure that the other person will support you. This provides a secure emotional environment for you knowing that they are there for you no matter what. Build your inner security from knowing that you can depend on yourself to support you no matter what, even when the going gets tough. When things go well; give yourself a pat on the back.

Stop picking on yourself. Why are we so hard on ourselves? Why do we insist on perfection? Why can we accept it is okay for anyone else to make mistakes but not us? Don’t constantly look for flaws and defects of character so that you can beat yourself up when things don’t go quite right. We are not supposed to be perfect. It really is alright to make mistakes. So stop criticising and belittling yourself and instead treat yourself with kindness and loving care. As long as you are battling with yourself you will be creating inner conflict. Treat yourself kindly and politely. Think of the process as being more like this – feeling good about yourself will help you change and grow rather than changing and growing will help you feel good about yourself.

Release the pause button. Why do we postpone our happiness until some goal has been achieved? “I will be happy when I get that job, have money in the bank, drive a flashy car, have a relationship, own that new outfit, buy a cottage in the country with roses round the door.” We don’t have to have the pause button down on our life. We can choose to be happy right now; to love and accept ourselves now with all our strengths and foibles. We can choose to acknowledge and feel good about what we have already. We can choose to be kind to ourselves. We have as much right as anyone else to make mistakes. How else may we learn the lessons we need to learn in life?

Love and accept yourself. Relax and know it is okay to be who you are and where you are. Take some time every now and then to focus on the positive aspects about yourself; your intelligence and creativity, your sensitivity and compassion. Think about all you have achieved; not just in material or tangible things but in your personal development. You have come a long way. When you stop insisting on your perfection, you will discover the wonderful, good and strong qualities you have all the more easily. You will also start to appreciate all the blessings you have in your life just waiting for you to take notice.

Loving and accepting yourself just the way you are does not mean not wanting to grow or better yourself. It just means you accept where you are now as being where you need to be. Feeling good about yourself will actually help you to grow and change. When you can learn to trust in yourself to be supportive, you can relax more in the world around you, take things more in your stride and be able to slow down enough to enjoy the wonders that are always around you. Sometimes with all the hullabaloo of modern living, we can overlook the beauty of a birdsong, the majesty of an oak tree or the peacefulness of silence. Cultivate a true friendship with yourself and loving friendships with others will follow as sure as night follows the day.

Make a commitment to be loving, nurturing, kind and gentle to yourself. Renew it each day. Then watch your life transform to reflect this. Notice how those around you begin to react to you in a positive, respectful and loving way. Feel the joy of simply being you.

Written by Sue Vaughan http://www.svaughan.co.uk