4 Ways To Be Kind To Yourself First
Self care starts with respect, not massages or presents
Are you your own friend?
Friendship needs to be based on respect.
The root of a relationship is the most important part. We can’t make the mistake of thinking that friendships based on anything other than mutual respect are healthy.
Unfortunately, healthy and happy relationships are not normal! This includes the relationship between your conscious and subconscious minds, between you and yourself.
With respect, we can work out disputes, set boundaries, and address individual needs.
Do you respect your subconscious mind? Do you even think of it as more than your slave boy/ girl, forced to follow your every need and whim? Do you take your own needs into account?
Many people never consider respect as something they need to have for themselves, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a huge and highly important thing.
Sure. You can order your mind around and expect it to do everything you want, right now, without any care the cost. You don’t have to worry about making sure your soul’s basic needs are met. You can just bark out orders and wait. And then you’ll be frustrated when it stumbles and doesn’t have the ability to get it done for you.
Making Demands of Your Subconscious Mind
“Remember this important date for me! Make sure I don’t forget to buy her a card for out anniversary!”
“Bring me the memory of last Thursday afternoon! Where did I put that file on the Unobtainabilium Project? What?! You lost it? You moron. I demand that you remember now!”
“I demand that you run things more efficiently around here! Why am I not able to sleep straight through the night, without these annoying bad dreams and waking up three times?”
“Servant! Why did you let me overeat again? How come you’re so weak? You let me down again! No wonder I’m such a fat slob, you are sabotaging me with your subconscious cravings!”
Your subconscious mind has a lot of things on its “mind”
It has a lot of high priority projects that have to be done on time. Nothing but deadlines all day long, or you’re literally DEAD. Take breathing, for instance. It runs that breathing stuff, almost all the time. It keeps those lungs inflating, and deflating. Your subconscious slave works steady at making your heart pump. Running all of these processes takes a lot of energy and unseen communication, none of which are your conscious problem. As energy demands and activity levels change, it adjusts the whole thing to “just work”. Apple didn’t invent the concept, nature did. That subconscious mind spends all day and all night, getting shit done.
That’s just the beginning.
How about all the other hidden processes of our bodies that we take for granted? Like digestion, body temperature regulation, hair growth, and blood sugar levels. Delicate operations regulating the neuropeptides and hormones. Immune system functions to keep out disease.
Pattern recognition lets us do things like walk outside, drive cars, climb stairs, and avoid weirdos on the sidewalk. Speech takes a big chunk of processing power too.
There’s are so many intricate processes going on. We should be more grateful for our body and subconscious mind.
We’re like the CEO of a company that sits in his penthouse office by the window and looks out over the city, thinking about how lazy the guy in the maintenance department is because he didn’t get the air conditioning to drop the temperature one degree colder. Meanwhile, that poor maintenance worker just unplugged a toilet, changed countless light bulbs and chased some pigeons out of the ventilation shaft opening.
How Can We Make Sure That Everything Is Firing On All Cylinders?
We don’t show respect for our own subconscious mind, and the body that it has to support. We need to make things right.That starts with a little effort. We need to step up a bit.
So what can we do? Are there concrete steps we can take to love ourselves a little more? Absolutely! Let’s start with the basics.
1. Take Care of Your Body!
All of those processes and routines the subconscious mind has working to keep you healthy and above the dirt take resources like calories, vitamins, minerals and oxygen. If you want to show some respect for your body’s ability to be ready whenever you need it, you should try to give it what it needs.
Try to balance out the potato chips and snack food with green leafy vegetables as often as possible. Respecting your body means giving it life affirming food as well as sugary rewards for your pleasure centers. Taking steps to make sure you eat healthy things shows your subconscious mind that you care.
The same thing goes for exercise. The subconscious mind loves to move and play.
Your body gets off on running, yoga, lifting heavy things, and walking.
The evidence for this is in how exercise can help with mood and depression. Studies show exercise to be more effective in some cases than medication for affecting mood positively. Getting your body sufficient exercise really tells your soul that you care about what kind of shape it’s in. In other words, you love it enough to make the effort.
2. Show Up When You Say You Will- For Yourself, too!
If a friend agrees to meet me for coffee at 10:00 AM, then I will show up at Starbucks or wherever we agree to meet. I will be there right around 10. And I expect my friend to be there too.
If he couldn’t make it, or was going to be too busy, then a phone call or text before hand would be great. And I would do the same thing — text him and let him know so he isn’t sitting there waiting.
If he wasn’t going to be able to meet and he knew it, then the right and respectful action would be to not agree to meet that day. That is called respecting other people’s time.
Do you respect your own time? Do you show up when you say you will? Or do you make excuses and not even warn yourself that you are skipping out on your own plans?
3. Don’t Break Promises To Yourself
If you aren’t going to follow through, then don’t promise yourself that you will. And to your subconscious mind, a schedule can be a promise. Setting an alarm for an early morning, then just hitting snooze, tells your subconscious mind that you really didn’t care about getting up.
If you were supposed to get up to work on one of your important personal goals like fitness, writing or meditation, then blew yourself off at the last minute because you “didn’t feel like it,” what’s the message? You just told your self you really aren’t all that important.
Do this for days or weeks, and you will be better off not even setting that alarm. You are showing an extreme lack of respect for the most important person in your life: yourself.
I used to be guilty of this. Here are some of the ways I skipped out on myself in the past:
Detouring away from writing another article or chapter to “just watch Netflix for an hour” and then sitting on the sofa for 5 hours straight
Cancelling an alarm at 6:00 AM and sleeping in
Making a plan to go for a solo hike and cancelling on myself because it’s too much work to get out the door
I’m still working on this one. I need to avoid promising myself too much and not delivering. If I really don’t want to get up at 6:00 then why an I wasting my time? If I did a lot of productive activities today and I know I won’t be able to force myself to do more work, then I should just let myself relax for a few hours.
But if I planned that hike and nothing is stopping me but inertia, I need to get up and just do it. I know that I will be glad I did.
4. Support Your Dreams, Don’t Trash Them
If you always dreamed of learning to paint, but keep putting off even giving it a try, you aren’t being a very good friend to yourself now are you?
This is an imaginary couple friends talking. Just you and your subconscious, walking around inside the landscape of your own head:
Subconscious: “ I would love to try a painting course! Can we?” — excited little hop in your step and big smile
Conscious: “That’s a pretty expensive hobby. And we are probably terrible at it.” — arms crossed and frowning
Subconscious: “But it would be so fun and creative! I want to give it a go even if we suck.” — arms outstretched, still smiling
Conscious: “We have too many things we need to get done. Maybe next spring.” -Starts walking again briskly
Subconscious: “You always say that. It’s all work with you, every day.” — follows behind, slumped shoulders and head down
You can’t always just do the things you “have” to do like work and such. You need to show up for yourself too. Always ducking out on your own dreams and ambitions leads to deep unhappiness, depression and such. This is the stuff an excellent midlife crisis is made of. I had one of those and it was no fun. It was a gray and seemingly endless year of suck.Why did I enter that dreaded midlife crisis phase? Because all I did was work and sacrifice and give up on my own dreams.
Don’t be that person that suddenly realizes they always did what the world wanted and never showed up for themselves. Be your own friend.
Be kind to you first. Save the world after.
If you get right with yourself, you will be more effective, more empathetic and a better friend to others. It starts with you.