Hey #007: How to be kinder with yourself & become your own best friend?
3 daily practices to get aware of your own kindness 👇
A day before I scheduled to write this edition’s first draft, I received an email from one of the HeyEmotions readers. They shared their current life situation and asked a few questions.
As I read their questions, I had a change of mind. And I ended up changing today’s topic.
Now I’ll share how to be self-kind and befriend yourself. As always, I’m gonna share what I’ve learnt from my own life. It’s YOUR choice to accept or reject it :)
Kindness doesn’t come easy.
When you’ve never known WHAT it means to be self-kind, implementing the HOW of it seems impossible. Yes, it’s self-love. Yes, it’s self-awareness. Yes, it’s self-compassion.
But HOW REALLY?
Before understanding how to become self-kind and befriend oneself, it’s important to understand WHAT is self-kindness.
Self-kindness is not the absence of negativity towards self. It’s the presence of positivity, support and care towards self even when or especially when negativity seems to take over.
When you start being self-kind, you start discovering a home within you. A home that’s forever there to take care of you, to accept you, to love you, to support you regardless of any what, when, how, why and where.
In simpler terms, this home is your BEST FRIEND ❤
When you start befriending this best friend, you find it easier to practice self-kindness. And the beautiful cycle continues.
In my journey of finding my best friend within, I’ve realized:
The first step is not about how you treat yourself. It’s about paying attention to HOW YOU FEEL when you’re not kind with yourself.
Putting it into action. When we’re not kind with ourselves, intentionally or unintentionally we:
take ourselves for granted
abandon ourselves
neglect our needs
judge ourselves for anything and everything
remind ourselves, “It’s me who is always wrong. And everyone else is right.”
scoff at ourselves for our own goals and dreams
berate ourselves for being “too loud” or “too weird” or “too dumb”
justify ourselves for why we don’t deserve friendships and love
If you notice, each of these link to some kind of a lack, directly or indirectly. A lack of what we wish to have. But we feel like we “can’t” or don’t have it. Be it a jacked body, self-confidence, happiness, great friends, love, a good career, success, secure finances...etc.
When we’re not being self-kind, we interpret that lack as the reason for not being deserving of any kindness. Due to this “non-deserving” feeling, we become less and less self-kind.
And it becomes a hell-loop. Never-ending. Self-fulfilling.
More we look around, the more we notice people having what we don’t have. And the more we feel lack and insecure. Ultimately feeling we don’t or can never BELONG.
Due to the absence of self-kindness, this feeling of non-belongingness makes us even sadder as we realize - “There’ll always be something that I’d want to have but wouldn’t have while others would have and enjoy it.”
You see, the reason for the struggle to be self-kind lies in the fact:
We’ve made self-kindness dependent on the fulfillment of lack.
It’s like:
“Only if I attain what I want to have, I’ll feel worthy enough to reward myself with my own kindness.
For it doesn’t make sense to have something without proving myself to be worthy of it.”
It’s the classic “punishment-reward” system.
Like the outer world, we’ve adopted the punishment-reward system in our inner world.
To have X, we feel like we’ve to first prove ourselves deserving of X. If we prove ourselves, we can have X as the reward. And if we fail at it, we can’t have X as the punishment.
X can be anything in the context of the inner world: self-love, self-acceptance, self-appreciation, self-understanding…and of course self-kindness.
Sadly, we keep ourselves deprived of our endless inner reservoirs of love, understanding and support, thinking that there’s a guard sitting at the entrance of each of those reservoirs whose work is to evaluate our score-cards. Then depending on the evaluation, it’ll let us in.
I don’t know if you realize this yet. But this is messed up big time.
Because there’s NO guard.
To dive into the ocean of self-kindness, you just have to jump into it regardless of what you have or haven’t achieved.
You don’t have to fulfill ANY lack to become self-kind. Become self-kind and all lack will start fulfilling.
For when you’re kind with yourself, you find your best friend walking beside you at every single step. The best friend who you’ve been searching for and who you think will appear when you achieve this or that.
Your best friend is NOT a “trophy.” It’s your home. It’s your happy place. It’s your kindest version. It’s already there within you. So ditch the punishment-reward system from your inner world. Break-up with it. It’s THE toxic relationship.
This is the only realization you need to be self-kind and your own best friend.
Now your job is to put this realization into practice. Daily.
How? Do this:
1) Set 3 reminders in your phone, each for morning, noon and night.
In all reminders, ask the question “How are you feeling right now, [enter your first name or how you like to be addressed by your friends]?” Then write down the answer in your diary. Prefer physical diary rather than digital one.
This is called regular check-in. The only difference is: instead of a friend checking-in with you, you’re checking-in with yourself. This helps you to access your feelings which allows you to know yourself. After all, you can’t befriend someone without knowing them. Right? ;)
2) No matter whatever happens, make it a ritual to give yourself a pat on the back once a day.
When I started doing it, I remember I used to feel stupid. But I kept doing it because I knew I’d never feel stupid to pat my friend’s back. I don’t pat my back just because I’ve “achieved” something. I pat my back for reminding myself how much worthy of self-kindness I’m, regardless of what I achieve or don’t achieve.
I just patted my back. Felt like doing so. And now I’m smiling. Haha. What are you waiting for? Give yourself a pat on the back. Smile, too! 😄
3) Say to yourself “I’m here with you. Forever. WE got this.” And mean it.
Believe it or not, your relationship with yourself is THE most precious relationship in the world. Not your relationship with your parents or your partner or your siblings or pets. It’s you with you.
So say it outloud to yourself. Not in your head or heart. Use the spoken words and MEAN IT. Just like how you say it to your friend with all the compassion and zero doubt. It makes all the difference.
Don’t wait for some troubling situation to say these words. Remember, self-kindness is not dependent on any outer situation. It’s always there. You’ve to get in touch with it WITHOUT any reason. That’s the whole point.
Use these practices daily. Repeat them as many times as you wish in a day. And you’ll realize:
“I never lacked self-kindness. I lacked the awareness that I always have an abundance of self-kindness.”
Gaining this awareness is what the journey of self-kindness and befriending oneself is all about. It’s a life-long journey which is full of highs AND lows. At every high, we need to enjoy it fully. At every low, we need to get back up (with kindness).
Still the best part is: whether it’s a high or a low, it’s ALWAYS meant to pass.
ALWAYS.
From the bottom of my heart, I wish you very best as you begin and continue walking the path of self-kindness. It’s worth it.
EVERY. BIT. OF. IT.
I’ll see you next Thursday,
Ashi
(Find me on LinkedIn or Twitter)
ps: Thank you so much for choosing to share your ideas, questions, suggestions and dilemmas with me, folks. We may be walking our individual journeys. But sharing our experiences reminds us how uncommonly common we all are.
Pat your back, please :)
Wow! Deep and thoughtful words.