Developing a healthy, loving relationship with yourself

 

        Having a strong, healthy relationship with yourself is critical to your own happiness.  It is also essential to having good relationships with others.  When you have a strong relationship with yourself, you will be self-confident and love yourself in a healthy way.

        When I first started teaching computer skills at a community college, I was unsure of myself as a teacher as I had never taught in a community college setting before.  I was working with a life coach at the time, and she suggested I write things I love about myself as a teacher every day.  I don’t remember whether we had a certain number of characteristics about myself as a teacher to write each day.  When looking back at my journal, it looks like I wrote about 4 things I liked about myself as a teacher daily.  Sometimes more and sometimes only 3 things. 

I wrote in detail why I liked this characteristic of myself and gave specific examples of this characteristic. Doing this daily for the rest of my first semester teaching really changed my view of myself as a teacher.  I saw all I had to offer.  I saw how not having as much knowledge and experience as a teacher who taught for 20 years already had positives too.  I got to know myself better through in-depth journaling about all I had to offer.  I had to brainstorm and study myself and observe myself to find all I have to offer when I didn’t see it at first. It improved my relationship with myself and how I felt about myself. It was a creative writing task as well as a task that made me more self-aware.

Anyone can do this task.  It just takes willingness, commitment and reflection.  You don’t need to do this about your job.  You can write about yourself in general. After writing about what I loved about myself as a teacher for about 2 weeks, I got a second journal and wrote in it what I loved about myself as a person in general.  I kept writing about myself as a teacher and also daily wrote about myself as a person.  I am not sure exactly how long I did this before I compiled a big list of what I liked about myself, but probably about a year later.  I read through my daily entries and created a list a list of 134 things I love about myself. 

Just knowing you have that many things you love about yourself will boost your self-confidence even if you can’t keep the details of the list in mind off the top of your head.

Let me share a few tips of how I did this:

1.    Each day I did this I simply reflected on that day and what was positive about myself that day.

·        What did I like about myself?

·        What did I do well that day?

·        What positives does this say about me as a person?

You don’t have to accomplish something major.  Any minor thing about your attitude while you did your dishes or your commitment to exercise.  You might like several things about yourself related to one activity (this is how you come up with 134 things).  You might like that you exercise regularly.  You might like that you keep to your exercise goals and don’t give up when you get tired.  You might like your positive attitude towards exercise even if you get tired.

2.   You might list a general characteristic like courage, strength or determination.  You might list this same characteristic on multiple days but each day you list different specific examples of this characteristic in action in your life. All the different examples will help you become more self-aware and understand the depth of this characteristic in your life.  As you write different examples, you may find new specifics you will love about yourself. It is really a fun process, a revealing process, and a powerful process.

3.   Choose a special journal to write in that is decorated nicely and a picture you identify with.  My what I love about myself as a teacher journal said on the front cover: “Shoot for the Moon.  Even if you miss it you will land among the stars.”  My what I love about myself in general journal cover shows a picture of a woman on a side view with a rainbow of colors coming from her, butterflies, feathers, etc. Harder to describe, but it reminded me of my beauty within in so many ways and areas.  You don’t have to use a special journal, but I recommend it.  At least keep all your entries each day in the same notebook whether it be a spiral notebook or a special journal.  Keeping all entries together will help you later compose the big list of all the things you love about yourself.

Good luck with composing your daily lists and big list eventually!  I’d love to hear about your experience with this.  Unfortunately, with google blogger (the blog software I am currently using) only other google blog owners can post comments.  But feel free to email me your thoughts and if you’d like me to share your comments with the bigger community that reads this blog, let me know and I will post your comments.  I plan to change blog software in the spring so you can easily post comments.

Copyright, Sandie Edwards, December 14, 2022.