Category Archives: Self Care

Self-Love ≠ Selfish

I see so many people beating themselves up, it makes me crazy. I’ve done plenty of that myself, so I consider myself an expert in self-judgment. By necessity and because of an ache deep within me, I have also spent years investigating and studying what gets in the way of people accepting, honoring and loving themselves, and learning how to cultivate self-love.

Self-love is accepting and embracing and having compassion for and honoring and being all of who you are. It brings openness and authenticity and elicits behaviors that support self-care. In fully loving yourself, you can be your full self. As Mary Oliver puts it in her poem, Wild Geese, you “allow the soft animal of your body to love what it loves”.

There’s a “relaxing into” that shows up when you let go of any notion that you should be someone else, that who you already are somehow isn’t enough, that you aren’t completely lovable, that you aren’t already amazing. As a Chinese Proverb says: “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.”

What beliefs do you need to let go of in order to stop blocking yourself from loving yourself and being yourself and doing what you love?

 

Do you tell yourself:
  • I’m not ____ enough (not good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough … you get the idea)
  • If I say “no” to things that I don’t really want to do, the people I love will stop loving me
  • I have to ______ (take care of everyone else, make sure everyone else is happy, sacrifice for my children, work all weekend … again, you get the idea)
  • I should…
  • If I don’t do what everyone else is doing, I won’t fit in and will wind up all alone
  • If I take care of myself, people with judge me and think I’m selfish
  • If I do what I really love, I’ll never be able to support myself financially
Who told you it isn’t okay for you to be kind & compassionate & loving toward yourself?
Who told you that you aren’t amazing exactly as you are?

 

And why in the world did you believe them? 

 

The truth is that you deserve your love and your care as much as anybody else. Self-Love ≠ Selfish. And the only way you can really show up with love for the people you love, with insights and creativity at work, and as your best self in the world, is by being loving toward yourself. 

 

Heed the wise words of Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield: “If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”

 

How can you begin to love yourself?
  1. Let go of any beliefs that compromise your ability to love yourself. Just realize that those beliefs aren’t serving you, and you no longer need them.
  2. Turn toward yourself. Remember to breathe deeply. Pay attention to how you are feeling throughout the day.
  3. Tell yourself that you are loved beyond measure and cherished, dearly.

If everyone in the world were really fully loving themselves, then everyone in the world would fall in love with you too. That’s the natural outcome of self-love.

Share Button

8 Amazing Practices to Start Your Day in a Fabulous Way

Have you ever had one of those days when you woke up and everything seemed to go wrong? You check email on your phone and find that something at work has just blown up, you trip over a toy that your daughter left in the middle of the floor the night before, you realize that the suit that you really wanted to wear for an important meeting is still at the cleaners, you can’t find your wallet or your keys, and you just want to crawl back under the covers and make the entire day go away!

In my years of working with people to transform their lives, it has become really clear to me that the way we begin each day really does set the tone for the entire day. What I also know unequivocally is that we can set ourselves up to have a better day — each and every day.

Here are 8 practices that really work. 

  1. Wake Up To Greet the Day! – Your natural biorhythms cause your metabolism to kick in as soon as it starts to get light. Why not live in a way that is more aligned with what your body naturally wants, and wake up as the sky starts to turn from black to gray to greet the day?
  2. Practice Gratitude Before You Even Get Out of Bed – Before your foot hits the floor, think about all the things in your life that you are grateful for. These things can be as simple as the fact that your pillow is soft or your comforter warm and cozy or as profound as the fact that you actually woke up to see and live another day. What are the things about you and your life that make you feel fortunate or even blessed?
  3. Write Morning Pages – Many people find it helpful to write “morning pages” which is really just a practice of journaling first thing in the morning. Write down on paper whatever is rumbling around in your head. Just let it flow, and write at least two handwritten pages before you go on with your day.
  4. Meditate Yourself into the Right Frame of Mind – Note that I said meditate, not medicate! There are lots of different meditation practices that people find helpful. Vipassana meditation is the practice of observing the breath and coming back to it every time your thoughts carry you off somewhere else. Transcendental Meditation is the practice of repeating a mantra over and over again in your head. My favorite meditation practice is the practice of Metta. Metta is Pali and means loving-kindness. It is the practice of cultivating compassion by wishing everyone well, beginning with yourself and extending to all beings everywhere. If you want to learn more about the practice of Metta, you can find Metta meditation instructions here.
  5. Spend Some Quiet Time Alone – Pour yourself a cup of tea and just sit. Enjoy the feeling of the warm cup in your hands. Look out the window and watch the birds flying around. Just breathe.
  6. Get Your Body Moving – First thing in the morning is a great time to practice yoga or even go for a run. If you work out first thing in the morning before eating you will burn more fat. When you finish your workout, be sure to eat some protein, as it will help your body build muscle mass.
  7. Go To a Place That Nourishes You – This can be a room in your home, or even the corner of a room, that you have set up to be clutter free and relaxing or inspiring. You may try putting candles in the space, or making a vision board to hang there. For me, the place that most nourishes me is the beach, and I am blessed to live close enough to it that I can get there pretty easily. My favorite way to start the day is to run or walk along the beach at dawn. When I am there, I just focus on taking it all in. I watch the waves break, see the seagulls soar, and when I get there early enough I often spot pods of dolphins or even sea lions. When I see them, I like to think of it as the universe giving me a gift for having taken responsibility for making the most of my day!
  8. Make the First 90 Minutes of Your Day Sacred – Make the decision that you aren’t going to let anything that happens in the first 90 minutes of the day get under your skin, upset or even bother you. It may not feel like it, but it is absolutely a choice. Why not give yourself the gift of starting your day in a fabulously wonderful way? You’re worth it!

You don’t need to adopt every practice. Try the ones that resonate most with you, and watch to see what happens.

 

Share Button

Waking Up

I love waking up early.

Sometimes when I wake up early, I go to the gym. By 7am I’ve done my workout for the day, and feel awake and alive and energized and ready to take action. I get so much done those mornings. My internal fire has been stoked and I move forward with purpose and passion. By mid-day, I’ve accomplished lots, and that sense of achievement, of having completed projects or made substantial progress on them feels amazing.

Sometimes when I wake up early, I lie in bed and “meditate”. There are days on which irrespective of what time I go to sleep, I awake just after 4am. Those are definitely days when I lie in bed and meditate. Instead of getting up or trying to fall back asleep (we all know how effective that can be), I simply turn my alert awareness to myself, paying attention to what shows up, and allowing it to move through me. I feel the coolness of the air, notice the pervasive quietness that surrounds me before even the birds have started to sing their daily songs. Thoughts come and go, and I watch them without giving them energy or getting caught up in and by them. There are thoughts that have the power to pull me to get quickly out of bed to take care of something, but instead of heeding those thoughts, I just allow them to float through and past me like a big white puffy cloud passing through the clear blue sky. I come back to myself. It feels like coming home.

I “meditate” from a place of sleepy softness on days when I don’t go to the gym. At least for a few minutes, a few breaths. I simply lie in bed and feel the energy coursing through my body. I can feel the smallest movement, the smallest shift within me. I soften to myself and my experience. In those moments, I feel such gratitude for the way my body does all that it does without me directing it to do anything, without me needing to control or push it. As I breathe, I feel the expansiveness that is always available, but that I sometimes lose sight of and don’t feel. I feel open and receptive and warm.

And then, there are the days when I write. I begin from the open, receptive place of having taken a few moments to breathe and open and feel the aliveness that is already within me. I pick up a pen or my laptop, and I write. No agenda, no goal — I write for the sake of writing. I write for the sake of expressing whatever arises, I allow whatever comes. It’s a practice of creating space for my own voice, my inner voice. It’s a voice that I don’t always heed or even hear, and my practice of writing helps me touch into it and listen.

I used to put so much pressure on myself when I sat down to write. I used to so judge what I wrote, or worry about how others would judge it. I wrote poems and would compare them to poems by authors I love, like Mary Oliver or Rumi. It was as though I thought that in order to be an amazing poet, I needed to write like them. But I can’t really effectively write like them. And if I tried, I’m sure it would sound forced or measured. That’s what always happens whenever we try to be anyone other than ourselves, isn’t it? I love the Oscar Wilde quote, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

Here’s a poem I wrote back in 2001 after a dear friend and colleague encouraged me to write often, during a conversation we had on my last day at the company where we worked together.

Write Soon

Write soon, and often
He said to me
As I packed up
The last of my things

I had read,
Even memorized
The words of those deemed poetic
Ones the world found wise

Felt my heart ache
Tears well in my eyes
Had my soul touched
By those who know not my face

The power of words
I understand well
But what, I wondered,
Had I to say?

There I sat, silently
Pen in hand
The pressure to produce
Weighed mightily

Anxious, again
Paralyzed by my fears
If I reach out, bare my soul
What will people think?

And who I am, after all,
To believe
My words are worthy
Of someone else’s time?

Is it their approval
That I seek?
Am I hoping for them
To validate me?

Let go, and observe
The pen now begins
Words just come
Flowing freely

My heart poured onto the page
Memories captured for all to see
They are welcome
To take what they need

But when I write
I write for my sake

May you find ways to create the space to nurture yourself, to wake up and tap into the wisdom that is already there within you, if only you stop for a moment to listen.

Share Button

Honoring Life

My mom is 90 years old, and she is in the process of dying. Her body is weakening, she has lost most of her interest in food, she spends a lot of time sleeping, and her breathing has become more shallow. I don’t know how much longer she’ll live.

I love my mom. I have been grieving her death for the past several months, since I began to really acknowledge and accept how severe her Alzheimer’s has gotten, and that so much of what made her such an amazing force in my life — her internal strength and resilience, her strong work ethic and commitment to make a difference in the world, her passion for helping people in need, the joy she got from taking care of the people she loved — is no longer apparent in the woman she is today. This is the woman who took my dad coffee in bed every morning during the 48 years that they were married until my dad passed away in 2006. She is the one who used to put my school uniform in front of the forced-air heating vent every morning when I got up and got into the shower after discovering how much I loved and delighted in putting on something that felt warm like a good embrace before heading off to school. Even as a high school student, I recall being in awe of how many people randomly approached me to tell me what a difference my mom had made in their lives. She spent countless hours for decades doing volunteer work to help Armenian refugees get settled in Southern CA. These people, and others who she willingly opened her heart and extended a helping hand to, told me that they would never be where they were if it weren’t for my mom. She had stepped in to help them when they felt scared and overwhelmed and were grieving the loss of everything that was familiar to them and she supported them to feel safe and comfortable. I vividly remember thinking that if anywhere near the number of people whose lives my mom had touched could say something similar about me, I would feel like my life had been well-lived. She inspired me and supported me and loved me with every fiber of her being — even though I wasn’t born from her womb.

I remember when her mother’s Alzheimer’s got so bad that she didn’t recognize my mom (who visited her daily) when she was standing right in front of her. As my mom’s  Alzheimer’s has progressed, I have been thankful every time I called her on the phone or showed up at her door and she recognized my voice or my face. At the same time, spending time with her is like interacting with the shadow of who she used to be. She asks the same question repeatedly, only moments after I finish answering it. At least, I used to think, she’s physically healthy. And even if she doesn’t remember what just happened, or even the names of her sister’s children, at least she is able to be present, here and now. Both those things are no longer true.

Now, she is present for short glimpses, and then just seems to disappear into a fog or some faraway place. It breaks my heart to watch her body shutting down now, much as her memory has shut down progressively over the past few years. I feel at a loss of what to do to help her passing be peaceful and easy. There are moments when I am so overcome with grief and sorrow that it is all I can do to be with my own feelings of sadness and even anger and frustration. I want to drop everything and stay by her side until she dies, whenever that may be. And yet I keep hearing her voice echoing in my head from conversations through the years during which she repeatedly told me, “I don’t want to be a burden on you. I want you to live your own life and do what you need and want to do for yourself. Please don’t worry about me.” She must’ve spoken the word “burden” more than a hundred times.

So, as the tears subside, I stop to ask myself, “How can I best love and honor my mom? Really, how can I best honor and love her?” Should I stay by her side, where I have been for the past week, and put my life on hold? The people at the facility where she is living tell me she’s doing alright. She is comfortable and being well cared for. With a deep breath, I realize that the best way to honor my mom is to honor what she has always stood for and believed in: passion, joy, love, and the strength and commitment to do what needs to be done and make a difference in the world. So I kiss her gently and tell her I’ll call her soon, knowing that she’s ever present in my thoughts and will always be in my heart. “I love you, Mom,” I tell her. “I know,” she responds, “you’re my precious girl.”

Two days later, when I call her for the umpteenth time to check in on her and tell her that I’m thinking of her and I love her, she surprises me with a moment of poignant clarity. “You sound sad.” she says, as I fight to hold back the tears I can feel welling up in me. Then she says, “Everything’s going to be okay, darling mine. Everything is going to be just fine.”

Share Button