Although we need to make judgments to navigate the world, excessive judgement can put up walls between ourselves and others, and inhibit natural and authentic interactions. If we temper judgment with acceptance we stand a much better chance of being able to think and act appropriately and compassionately.
I have met people who fall too much on one side than the other and both can cause problems. Too much judgment and too little acceptance can make our standards unattainably high or lead to us alienating others. Too much acceptance and too little judgment can lead to getting taken advantage of, or finding ourselves in difficult situations. So we need to get the balance right. As I mentioned before, having real acceptance doesn’t mean we can’t be discerning.
Accepting People
One quality that always helps in our acceptance of other people and things is compassion. The exercise below is very simple as I would like you to just read through some statements and mull them over.
Exercise: Reading Through Statements of Acceptance
I am in no better position to judge others than they are to judge me
Other people are not trying to be the person I want to be, or live life the way I want to live it.
Every adult is responsible for their own lives and happiness
Every person has the right to be free to be themselves, whether I approve of their choices or not
It would be too much responsibility to make great choices for myself, as well as evaluating other peoples’
The situation is as it is, if I can accept that I may find the best way to move forward.
It is very hard to fight other people, weather, events and life. It is best to find a way to go with the flow and use whatever is happening to my advantage.
Some people are a bit crazy, but why judge them for it; it is not like they chose to be crazy.
Some people are idiots. Luckily it is possible to judge them and accept them at the same time, also accepting your judgment of them.
Are any of the above difficult for you? Maybe one seems to make sense, but you feel some resistance to it? Just notice your feelings. No need to do anything about it right now except try to notice when something comes up in the future that is relevant to the statement and watch your reaction.
Accepting Situations
Sometimes a situation will come up that we just cannot stomach – it feels irreconcilably wrong or unfair, perhaps. Our reaction to it and any anger is designed to give us the impetus to act, and many are worried that feeling acceptance will diminish the power we have to do this.
However, if we can cultivate the ability to feel acceptance of what is going on, whilst simultaneously harnessing the power of the anger or dismay we feel we have a much better chance of acting wisely.
I suggest that instead of thinking of acceptance as passivity, we step back and see that it can encompass all the ways of being and feelings. We can accept that the situation is happening, accept our feelings, accept our anger, and make a plan.
To sum up; being controlled by our reactions puts us in a weak position and having acceptance and being conscious puts us in a strong position.
Embracing the Challenge
Depending on the situation, one tactic we could try is embracing the challenge that the situation presents, knowing that each difficult situation presents us with an opportunity for learning and growth.
Exercise: Embracing the Challenge
For this exercise you will need one difficult situation and a pen and paper.
Firstly write out the whole situation, including any details you think are important and also how you feel about it. If you want to do something more creative, you can even draw it.
Now when you have written or drawn everything you want to, try and step back and see the situation as a whole. If it helps, you can imagine being far above it. Write down the first things you notice.
Then wonder to yourself if there is one thing that might make it better, what would this be (whether it is realistic or not)?
Now picture yourself above the situation as if you were an eagle flying overhead. It might be easier if you use the third person (he/she) when thinking about this as using the word “I” can draw you right back into the situation. When you are seeing the whole situation calmly, ask yourself (with an open mind) what opportunities there are to learn from this situation, or how you might grow.
Now, with a really open mind – whimsical even – wonder what would a really wise person do in this situation?
Take your time with this exercise – it is not always easy to work on things that are emotionally charged. Hopefully you will learn how to derive some benefit from a difficult time and use it to grow.
Acceptance is an important life skill and although it seems really simple, it can be one of the hardest things in practice. So don’t give yourself a hard time if it takes work – just try to accept how you are doing and keep going!
Depending on what culture and family we are raised in, we will have had different emotions marketed differently to us. Happiness, success, generosity and humour may have been given out in colourful, glossy brochures, brought out and shared around and generally celebrated. But anger, rage, bitterness or grief may have been scribbled on a used bit of paper, screwed up and thrown at people or hidden away like a guilty secret, never to be spoken of.
From an early age we learn to be proud of, and show-off, some emotions, but to feel shame or worry about others. Unfortunately, because we are so young it makes it really hard to question what we are learning. We just take it all on board like little sponges.
By the time we are old enough to be autonomous and out in the world on our own many of us have a set repertoire of emotions we accept, those we aim for, some we reject and some we hide. This can limit our whole experience of the world. How happy and excited do you let yourself get? Or how angry, bitter, jealous, excited, aspirational? This section is about learning to accept all of our emotions, which may help us to experience more range in our lives.
Rumi, a wonderful 13thCentury Sufi poet wrote this poem about accepting our feelings:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks [1]
None of us can truly know ourselves without being able to tolerate fluctuations in mood and the sometimes painful awareness of our darker feelings and impulses. This gives us a true picture of who we are; flawed, human, not always on top of the world. And from this acceptance we give ourselves permission to be human, to fail, to dislike people, to be irritated, to be joyful. Acceptance and permission are two sides of the same coin.
And as Rumi said, there is often a message in our feelings. Why are we feeling that way? What side of our personality is trying to express itself and what is it trying to say?
For this section we will focus on creating a feeling of space and welcome. Then, when you do feel an emotion you would normally resist or suppress, you will have a tool to help you let it be, let it express itself and let it go or evolve naturally.
Accepting All Feelings
In the universe, there is room for everything. Nothing can actually start to exist without the space for it to come into. And there is matter and its opposite; anti-matter. In Chinese philosophy there is yin and yang, in everyone’s vision there is dark and light, and in time there is night and day. There are a lot of connected opposites floating about. But we have a tendency to judge one thing as “bad” and its opposite as “good” – instead of both of them as both good and bad.
We may take a sensible judgment like “anger is not useful in this situation” and then make it into a rule: “anger is not useful in all situations”, ignoring the fact that it can be a force for good. So we do not make room for everything within us; we make space for only the emotions we are comfortable with. The rest get pent up, become physical tension or pain or affect us in other ways because they cannot express themselves or help us in the way they are meant to. So for the exercise below we will be practicing creating an open space for any feeling that wants to come into and through us.
Exercise: Spacious Welcome
Sitting or standing where you are, I would like you to be aware of the inside of your torso. Sense its state, and whether there is any tension or pain. Just breathe and accept those sensations.
Now imagine a sense of having a spacious room in your whole torso, full of light. It has a lovely breeze blowing through open windows, filling the room with fresh air. Keep that sense of spaciousness and try to have a feeling of accepting the way you feel right now; body and mind. Just let everything you feel be there, with a sense of welcoming and space.
If you have an urge to struggle or resist, just keep breathing and accept that urge – let it be there. Do not try to fight it but have the sense of saying “welcome” to it and continue breathing and visualizing. If any emotions come up, let them be there also, without trying to change them – just accepting them.
It can take a lot of courage to feel an emotion we think of as negative (and even some positive ones) without trying to change it. I recommend you stay with it for a while, letting it be, so that you can really get to know it and see it in its entirety.
This is something we need to practice day-to-day and will most likely be a work in progress.
I want to stress again that accepting a feeling does not mean accepting a situation that is wrong or a boundary that is crossed. On the other extreme, it also does not mean feeling entitled to act out or vent our emotions recklessly onto others.
It means accepting the feeling enough that we can understand it and let it fully develop and express itself. Only acceptance gives an emotion the space it needs to communicate what it has to say, and we often find that when we have understood and possibly expressed it fully, it is completely resolved and leaves us feeling clearer and lighter.
Acceptance at its most basic level could be defined as seeing something for what it is and not needing to fight it. This does not mean giving up or letting people walk all over us but accepting a situation, person or feeling as they are (or we could say allowing ourselves to see them for what they really are). Then if we need to take action we can, but with a clear view of what we are dealing with.
I have broken this discussion up into 3 articles:
Self Acceptance
Accepting our Feelings
Accepting Other People And Situations
Because it ended up being a bit too long to fit into one! This article deals with self acceptance, but free to skip to whichever sections you think are most relevant for you. As always if you are already feeling vulnerable seek professional help instead, and if you start feeling overwhelmed at any point stop straight away.
Self-Acceptance
Are you happy with all the different parts of yourself as they are? Or are there parts of you that you judge, try to distance yourself from, hide or suppress? It is a rare person who loves every part of themselves, but it is a wonderful goal.
To some this may sound arrogant or egocentric, but best relationship we can have with ourselves is built on a foundation of self-love and acceptance.
Years ago I went to see the Dalai Lama talk and it was such a wonderful experience. I felt the peacefulness and love radiating throughout the room and several times looked up to see him looking at me. I felt a deep and strong connection when I looked into his eyes. And I never once got the feeling he was paranoid about his bingo wings. You could do much worse that have him as an example of self-acceptance. And I assume that for him, as with everyone else, it takes effort to maintain, but it is well-worth it.
Self Acceptance Meditation
In this section I will take you through a very simple visualization you can use for helping to boost self-acceptance. As it is very short you can use it when standing in a queue or on public transport (but not whilst driving or using machinery of course).
Exercise: Self Acceptance Meditation
Sit (or stand) comfortably.
Breathe in a natural and relaxed way
As much as possible let tension drop away from your body
Visualise a bright, shimmering point of light in front of you. Without knowing why, you are certain that it is absolutely perfect. It can be whichever colour and shape you like.
Feel the harmony in contemplating something that is perfect.
Visualise it moving towards you, this perfection. At a certain point you realize that it is you – you are perfect.
The light enters your chest and creates a field all around you, a field of your own perfection.
Give yourself permission to feel perfect in this moment by saying to yourself “I am perfect in this moment, right now. I am more than enough”. Feel a warmth spread out through your body as you think that and let yourself feel the love that accompanies it.
Keep feeling this for as long as you like and when you want to stop, just softly open your eyes.
You can do this exercise whenever you like, several times a day even. Doing this exercise does not mean that we do not have flaws, or that we have to ignore them. Rather, we accept ourselves as we are, right now. There is no human in the world without flaws; but accepting them means we can work with them, instead of alienating a part of ourselves through self-criticism and punishment.
I recently discovered this man by stumbling across him during random internet research. Morihei Ueshiba 植芝盛平 was the founder of Aikido, but before he did this he had studied various martial arts, fought in the Russo- Japanese war and joined a sect called Ōmoto-kyō (thought to have been an off shoot of Shinto)1. One of their main principles was working towards world peace, so in spite of being the head of a school of fighting, one of his main teachings was cultivating a peaceful life.
Some of his sayings that have lived on after his passing are very beautiful, here are some that may interest you:
“The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter – it is the Art of Peace, the power of love”.
“The Art of Peace is medicine for a sick world. There is evil and disorder in the world, because people have forgotten that all things emanate from one source. Return to that source and leave behind all self-centered thoughts, petty desires, and anger. Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything”.
“True victory does not come from defeating an enemy, true victory comes from giving love and changing an enemies heart”.
“Nonresistance is one of the principles of aikido. Because there is no resistance, you have won before even starting. People whose minds are evil or who enjoy fighting are defeated without a fight”.
“As soon as you concern yourself with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you”.
In this youtube video he talks about his approach to his own aikido practice and to life. Even if you do not practice aikido (I don’t either) you may find his philosophical views interesting.
I like his story partly because it exemplifies one of the main principles that comes up again and again in self-development; paradox. Things we perceive as opposites often go hand in hand, are complimentary even. In this case – the man most likely to be able to whoop your ass is the person who least wants or needs to.
One of Ueshiba’s sayings was Masakatsu Agatsu. The combination of Masakatsu (true victory) and Agatsu (the victory one achieves over oneself) makes up the meaning of the phrase: “The true victory of self-mastery.2” If nothing else, this should sum up the core of what self-development work really means. We are taking responsibility for ourselves.
I’ll leave you with just one more quote:
“One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train”.
There are so many aspects to this seemingly simple concept that I have chosen to pick out just a couple from the book: self-love and self-esteem.
We are going to look at what they are, why they matter and a couple of ways of working on them.
What is the Difference between Self-love and Self-Esteem?
These two concepts are really interconnected, but there are key differences that make it important for us to work on them separately at least some of the time.
Self-love is unconditional; we love ourselves as we would a baby. Not many adults can run around naked, weeing and pooing everywhere and still be loved, but a baby can, and that is what self-love is. It comes with truckloads of acceptance and no need to prove anything or even have bladder control.
Self-esteem is about us thinking that we are good and valuable, so it does have an element of evaluation in it. With healthy self-esteem we may feel we are attractive, competent, interesting, worthwhile, amongst other qualities. We know we are valuable and look at things in a way that confirms that (rather than confirmation of the opposite as with low self-esteem).
Why We Need Good Levels of Self-Love and Self-Esteem
It is essential for our health and happiness. Narcissism is on the rise, and although this may seem an extreme display of self-love, it actually reflects a deep uncertainty of our worth. If you have good levels of self-love and self-esteem, you don’t go fishing for that on social media, using the perfect selfie as bait.
Self-love and self-esteem are also essential for:
self-care
healthy relationships
accepting ourselves no matter how we act or what we are doing
loving ourselves even if we do not fit society’s idea of perfection or manage to rise to unattainable standards of wealth or beauty.
If we have low self esteem we may even get ill (sick), in fact low self-esteem has been linked to immune- and cardiological-disorders. No pressure!
Working on Self-Love and Self-Esteem
A cursory look around self-help books and online articles will show a lot of people value external and practical ways of boosting self-love and self-esteem. Although I think that there is a lot of value in improving the external aspects of our lives, for this section I really want to focus on internal work.
This is because the roots of our attitudes to ourselves are within us, and improvements in self-esteem may not last if they depend on keeping up certain habits or changes in our environment. Self-care is hugely important, but knowing that we deserve it vastly more so.
In the two sections below I have included one exercise each from the book, I hope you enjoy them!
Working on Self-Love
Just think: “wow, I am amazing” and now notice your reaction. Is it internal laughter, discomfort, complete agreement? With self-love there is nothing to prove, nothing you could possibly do to get more love. You are just enough as you are. An advertiser’s nightmare. A tiny baby’s reality. OK, let’s have a go at the first exercise.
Exercise: Calling in a Self-Love Mentor
You know how little children can have invisible friends? We are going to intentionally create one for ourselves. This friend is going to be our self-love mentor; both a teacher and a mirror reflecting our own love back to us whenever we think of them throughout the day.
It can be a unicorn, an angel, a 6ft teddy bear, a purple monster. On a more mundane level we could call it a tool for focusing our attention in a specific way. But this mentor is far from mundane, they are brilliant. You can have them look like and be literally anything. Glitter explosions may go off every time they move, they may be a superhero with special powers; whatever feels right to you. If you have no clue what they should look like, I would go with a capybara.
Please close your eyes, take your time and visualize the perfect self-love mentor for you, in as much detail as possible. You can try imagining them in the room with you. Throughout the day, as often as you feel like, you can tune in to them and see how they are responding to how you are acting or how you are feeling about yourself. Their job is to send you love and accept you unconditionally, seeing you as the best version of yourself. They are all for you.
Visualise them looking at you with complete love, acceptance and appreciation for the entirety of who you are. Then let yourself see them through your eyes and bask in that perspective.
I want you to regularly visualize this mentor standing near you, maybe once a day. Send love from your heart to them and the instant it reaches them feel it reflect back to you, strengthened and doubled in volume. Even though your first few steps towards self-love maybe tentative this mentor believes in you and is there to model the perfect way to give yourself love.
You can change the image of this mentor if you choose, but at the end of the day what you pick is not too important, so do not worry. The most important thing is your sense of their way of being, which is perfect self-love and self-acceptance. Deep within us all is the knowledge of how to have self-love, our mentor is simply with us to remind us and help us to get to that state.
In the future when you feel ready you can simply send all of that love to yourself, feel it within yourself, without the aid of a mentor. But until you are ready to accept love for your own sake, you can work with your invisible friend to help fill you up and to teach you how it is that we can have nearly perfect self-love.
If you want to, you can draw your mentor or describe them. You can also journal about your progress, including details of what comes up for you when you feel love, any blocks or emotions that are triggered, and if there are any areas of yourself that you feel are hard to love. For fun you can write a message or even a letter to yourself from your mentor, giving you feedback, and you can write a letter of appreciation to them. Getting in touch with an invisible friend gives us a way to access a part of ourselves we don’t know that well, so get to know them as much as you like! It’s all you at the end of the day.
Working on Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem may be seen as the route of many of our issues in society today, even contributing to mental and physical health issues. You would think that growing up relatively privileged in the West, safe, educated and with a bright future we would all be full of self-respect and esteem. Unfortunately the opposite seems to be true.
Do not be hard on yourself if you have realized your self-esteem is low. Maybe it is hard to believe that we deserve all these resources when so much of the rest of the world is poor. Maybe it is the way we were raised, or the social norms that surround us. Whatever the reason, working to improve it as it will have a great effect on our quality of life.
Exercise 1: Inner Child Work for Self-Esteem
Because our self-esteem levels have their roots in our childhood experience, it makes sense to do some work with our inner child. We may say horrible things to ourselves, that we would never say to a friend or a child, so working on boosting the self esteem of our inner child also helps us to bypass that negative self-talk.
1. Sit or stand somewhere you are comfortable, where it is quiet so you can do the visualization in this exercise. Picture yourself as a child in your mind’s eye. Whichever age feels right is good, but if you are not sure, then pick 4 or 5 years old. Visualise your clothes, your chubby little hands, your round face, your mannerisms.
2. Now say hello to this child in your mind. They may come up to you and want a hug or to sit on your lap, or they may be content to stand or play where they are. I would like you to imagine sending them love, from your heart. This love surrounds them, as with a warm blanket and you can actually feel them accepting this love.
3. Now I would like you to tell your inner child what you really like about them. If you want to, you could write out a list of statements and then one by one say them to the child. With each statement really see the child’s reaction. You might see them swell with pride, or feel warm, feel secure. They won’t be about achievements (such as you won that award), but things you like about their personality and maybe even appearance. The statements might look like any of these:
You are really funny
You have a wonderful sense of imagination
You are very clever
You are very brave
I like your hair
Just to name a few.
4. And now that you have done that, sense the child’s state, how they are feeling. Now repeat the exercise, but every time you say one of the statements to the child have them repeat it back to you, and try to really take it in. Imagine that if you cannot accept the compliment, the child will not be able to believe it, as you are the same person. So really try and let that positive statement in. After each statement that you give to and receive from your inner child, repeat it from both of you as a “we __” statement.
For example, you say to your inner child “you’re very brave”, she says the same back to you, you bask in that for a moment together and then you visualize both of you saying “we are very brave”.
5. You may find that when you are doing this exercise you feel some kind of block. Maybe it is hard to visualize yourself as a child, or it is hard to remember yourself happy, or you find it hard to find compliments or accept them. Wherever your block is, the first step is to accepting that it is there and to accept the emotions around it. Send a feeling of love to this block or blocked feeling. If you cannot work around it right now, try and accept that too.
I highly recommend that you journal about this exercise. You can include the phrases you told your inner child and yourself and what reactions you felt. You can then repeat this exercise in the future and compare the results.
Motivation for Increasing Self-Esteem
Here are a couple of thoughts that may help motivate you to do this work:
We can be role models for others, especially the younger generation and inspire others to be kind to themselves.
We can build our lives, careers and relationships on a solid foundation of kindness and respect. For example; a friendship between two people with good self-esteem is a meeting of the minds and sharing enjoyment, but low self-esteem can lead to over-attachment based on fear, competitiveness, rivalry and/ or a need to keep the other person down at our level.
It helps us to have great intimate relationships. Rather than expecting our partner to fill us up, we feel we have permission to take care of ourselves.
We can ask for what we want and need and really believe that we deserve it.
So I hope you have learned a couple of useful things about why and how to be kind to yourself and I really hope you put it into practice. Kindness starts at home, and then ripples out to everyone else. This is genuine love and kindness and you will really feel a difference when your giving and receiving comes from a place of satisfaction and grace.
How often do you think about your body in a day? Are you aware of it at all, except for when it is painful or tense?
And how would you define body awareness? Would you say it is:
good proprioception
co-ordination
dexterity
balance
knowing how healthy we are
sensing tension or hydration
taking care of our bodies
keeping our bodies good-looking
keeping our bodies youthful?
The truth there are many different aspects to body awareness including the above and more. Connecting to our bodies lets us know about movement and health, but also allows us to connect to instinct, intuition and emotion.
If we know how to listen, our body can tell us what food it wants, what exercise it likes, what posture is good for it, what people it likes, how much rest it needs, where it is comfortable, what feels safe and more. Our bodies have a kind of intelligence of their own and in order to get in touch with it them we need to be able to hear what they are saying, rather than just letting the mind run everything all the time.
This is very different to the mind-over-body approach most of us are brought up with – the body just serves anything we want to do. We make it exercise, rest, slouch, sit – it is our servant. A body-centred approach brings our bodies into the forefront and with that we can learn a lot more about ourselves, including how to keep ourselves happy and healthy.
In my book there are a few different exercises for connecting to our bodies, but for this excerpt we will focus on just one. I will also discuss some other ways you can work on increasing your physical connection below. This is a journey that will not happen overnight.
Learning to listen to our bodies (and other people) takes patience and humility. I recommend that you enjoy it, rather than trying to rush to a result. The connection happens while you are aware of and experiencing your body. Take your time.
As with all of the exercises on this site, please only do it if you are feeling well enough, and if you start feeling overwhelmed at all, take a break and if you need to seek professional help please do so before continuing.
Physical Movement and Appreciation
Loving our bodies is very hard for many of us, and culture does not always support a full-on love affair with our bods, so we will be actively working on this in this section.
Before we dive into an exercise, I’d like to point out a few things that may seem obvious:
Our bodies have carried us through our whole lives, often without even complaining very much. Think of how much airtime our minds get. Now compare it to how much attention our bodies get – for most people this is not even close.
Our bodies have dealt with all of the late nights, early mornings, sudden workouts, long workouts, hours on the sofa, horrible stress, hours hunching over phones or laptops we have inflicted upon them. How much gratitude do we give them?
Every time we damage ourselves or get ill our bodies work to recover; they try as hard as they can to be healthy and strong for us. Do we appreciate them?
Can you think of a time you were ever as dedicated and tirelessly hard-working as your body? I think for many of us some appreciation is long overdue!
The following exercise is designed for use when you are fit and healthy, if you are not able to do it relatively easily then just do the appreciation side of it, and leave the physical side until it is safe to do it.
Exercise: Body Awareness and Thanks
For this exercise you may want to be somewhere private and wear comfy clothes.
Just stand and move your body a little. Notice any tension, pain or restriction and gently move in a way that helps (but do not push through any pain).
Let a general sense of love and appreciation spread throughout your whole body as you think of everything it does for you.
Ask your body if there is any movement it would like to make and make it. Keep and open mind and do it with the intention of listening to your body and making it feel heard and appreciated. Enjoy the sense of connection to your body.
When you feel like it have a moment of stillness. Be comfortable in yourself and stay aware and open to your body. Let a feeling of warmth and love grow in your heart and spread out to your whole body, bathing it. Feel your whole body fill with a feeling of appreciation and gratitude.
You can take this opportunity to say anything you want to to your body. You may think “sorry for being so down on you for having a bit of cellulite/ not having enormous biceps” or “thank you for keeping me safe and letting me go anywhere I want to go”, for example – anything you really feel. I suggest you keep it positive, as this is about creating a better connection between you and your body, but if you need to express anything negative feel free to let that out too.
As you continue to sense this feeling of love and appreciation with your body, you can ask your body what it would like to have more of, or what it would like to change in your day-to-day life, and wait quietly with an open mind for the answer.
Take a moment to notice how you feel. Does your body feel happier? Told you it had its own kind of intelligence! Keep working with it to keep strengthening your connection.
Conclusion
There are loads of great ways of enjoying and connecting with our bodies, I urge you to find one or several you enjoy and make them a regular part of your life. Here are a few, but I recommend just trying a couple out, especially ones you feel drawn to:
Walking
Running
Dancing
Stretching
Exercise classes
Yoga
Pilates
Acrobatics
Aerial dance
Swimming
Touch rugby
Rugby
Tennis
Football
Golf
Frisbee
Boxing
Tai Chi
Kung Fu
Qi Gong
Circuits
Cross Fit
Ju Jitsu
Karate
Taekwondo
Mime
Acting
Climbing
Parkour
and more
There are also some great therapies that can help you to access more of your body and have a deeper connection to it:
Many types of Massage
Acupuncture
Assisted stretching
Craniosacral
Somatic Experiencing
TRE
Osteopathy
to name a few
It is important to tune in to our bodies often enough to keep our connection strong. If we create a partnership with our bodies I believe we will stay a lot heathier and have much more fun, so a little regular effort is well-worth it for the benefits we will get. Enjoy your body!
Ughh feelings – always changing, often confusing and often out of reach of our conscious minds; getting to grips with them can be hard!
But being able to know how we are feeling is an essential life skill. I’m not even talking about knowing what to do with them – just to know what they are, and this is already above average for the general population. Really we should learn this in school, rather than in the therapist’s office for a select few.
In this brief overview we are going to look at 3 of the reasons that feeling your feelings is important, 3 reasons we may have stopped and a couple of ways to get in touch with them.
Reasons to feel our feelings
Not being aware of our feelings can make us ill (sick) – it has been linked to higher mortality, chronic health conditions and physical pain.
In order to deepen relationships we need to be emotionally intelligent; this has a big effect on our success at work and in our personal lives
We cannot know ourselves and have a meaningful life without being able to get in touch with our feelings.
Reasons we may have stopped feeling our feelings
It can hurt and if we push feelings down then things stay “manageable”
We want to avoid conflict – better to ignore our own anger (and needs and desires) than to rock the boat
This can keep us stuck and out of touch with ourselves
Ways to get in touch with our feelings
Sense Your Body
When doing the exercise below try to stay as open-minded as possible and not get “into your head” too much. The goal is to connect with the feeling itself, not let our mind tell us what it is.
a) Sit somewhere quiet and comfortable, breathe and relax your body.
b) Notice if there are any sensations in your body that are more in the foreground, more obvious.
c) What is that feeling like, is it; warm, cool, light, heavy, a ball, spread out, tense, relaxed, does it have a shape, or a colour?
d) When you feel it quite clearly, say “hello” to it in your mind, and ask it if it wants anything/ has anything it wants to say. Wait with an open mind for its answer.
e) You can converse with this feeling, find a way to give it what it needs (in real life or through visualization, as relevant).
This is the abridged version of the exercise, but a really good starting point for getting in touch with your feelings. If you get stuck you can revisit this later, if it is new work for you it takes a little while to get used to.
2. Know the Words
One of the main problems my clients have when talking about their feelings is that they do not know the right word for what they are experiencing. If we are not brought up in a very emotionally-aware environment it is likely our vocabulary will be limited to very simple feelings; good, bad, stressed, sad etc.
If you are wondering what you are feeling, why not have a look at Gloria Willcox’s “Feeling Wheel” below which represents many of the common emotions, and try and find yours.
Once you have found it, accept it and acknowledge it within yourself.
Beyond the exercises above it is important to try and cultivate and open mind and an ability to accept what you are feeling. If we have made a judgment that certain feelings are unacceptable they go straight on the reject pile and play havoc under the radar, instead of just speaking to us like they are meant to.
I just want to leave you with the thought that emotions are the things that bring the world into colour. They can be subtle, nuanced and surprising. They make us human and life worth living. What are you doing to make space in your life for your feelings?
“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
In this article I want to talk about the things that I have found help and hinder working on ourselves in my professional and also personal experience.
I have found that many seemingly different issues and concerns often have their roots in a few areas that are foundational to us being happy and healthy. These are a great idea to work on, rather than only focusing on whatever surface problem has popped up recently.
Broadly speaking these areas and abilities include:
Being able to tune into our feelings
Being aware of our bodies
Being kind to ourselves
Having a good level of self-esteem
Being able to accept whatever we are feeling
The ability to take enough time
Knowing what is authentic to us
Having clear minds
Knowing our values
Having the right balance of structure (i.e. our beliefs) and flexibility (i.e. the ability to adapt those beliefs as needed)
The ability to give and accept love
I’m sure there are more that I have missed out, and then there are a lot of peripheral other ones, for example; regular exercise, good diet, making good decisions, having great relationships. However, there are so many other things that impact our lives and I want to focus on the main things that impact our progress with our own development.
We can easily approach self-development in a way that actually hinders our progress in the long-term. The following examples are patterns I have seen many times over:
Some engage in self-development work to try to improve themselves because deep down they feel they are not enough. So no matter how much they work on their self-development, it never feels like enough.
Others of us may be wonderfully focused and physically and mentally aware, but not kind to ourselves. This makes the more vulnerable parts of ourselves retreat out of sight – becoming impossible to work with, leading to a stalemate.
Some of us may be in a rush to arrive at our destination already! But nothing reinforces progress so much as recognising our achievements and kindly giving ourselves the time we need to process everything and let the changes filter through our whole being.
Or the people who are wonderfully astute mentally, but have little connection with their bodies and see them as superfluous to the type of development they are interested in achieving? They will always be pulled back by lack of connection to their bodies, which are an incredible resource.
Or we may be constantly striving to give love to others, but only able to accept a little in return. We might feel comfortable working with people who are perceived as less fortunate in some way, so that there is no risk of having to open up to a reciprocal relationship. Without the ability to accept love we will lack the internal space that is needed for great self-development work, and we will probably also not fully believe we deserve to be happy and taken care of.
Do any of these ring true even a little? We would all rather play to our strengths and this often means there are some surprising blind spots in us, areas we typically work around rather than look at directly. And I get it – it’s really hard for all of us to look at areas that we may not like or that make us feel vulnerable, but if we continue to avoid them they will always hold us back. So why don’t you have a look at the above list slowly, and have a think about which one you least prefer, would rather avoid. That one should be your focus.
Before I mentioned the quality of “internal spaciousness”. Sounds a bit strange doesn’t it? Like a cavity in our torso or something. This space is not a negative feeling of emptiness inside us, that is a completely different thing. This quality is a little hard to describe, but let’s compare a few things that increase or reduce the spaciousness inside us:
Increase
Reduce
Acceptance
Harsh judgement/ rejection
Self-esteem
Self-criticism
Allowing time
Rushing on too hastily
Being open-minded
Being very closed-minded
Breathing fully
Shallow sips of air
The feeling that you get when reading the first column can show you what having internal spaciousness feels like (and the second column, the lack of it).
What this space does, is allow us to be completely and fully aware of our feelings and experience. It gives emotions the space they need to transform and express themselves, and thoughts the space they need to fully develop. This spaciousness can be thought of a little as the flexibility people allow within themselves, but it also requires kindness to ourselves too.
So be kind, be spacious and don’t forget to celebrate your successes! Self-development is a long road and it shouldn’t be all grind, or all just in one direction to the detriment of all others. And above all – at least sometimes – it should be fun.
When I am asked what I do, I have habitually refrained from saying I work in self-development, and not just because I don’t really want to hear all about someone’s problems when I’m at a party. More so, because it is a pretty broad category that is hard for people to get a hold on.
So why in engage in self-development? Aren’t we good enough just as we are? Well I believe we can be good enough and still work on ourselves because life is about learning and expansion. Although they say that if you are standing still you are falling behind, I believe we should engage in this work out of love of exploring more of life and ourselves and enjoying new challenges, rather than out of fear.
What self-development is could be defined differently for each of us at different times throughout the day. Is it self-care? Yes. Is it having the courage to ask someone we like out on a date? Yes. Is it trying to move beyond our comfort zone. Yes, but it is also knowing when to give ourselves a break and rest.
So many things can be involved in our own development, because it is about living life to the full, taking care of ourselves, being self-aware, trying to be good people, create meaningful connections, work towards a purpose, be expressive, be creative, be kind and have fun. So… just all of life then.
It does not have to be doing yoga, being skinny, reading the latest self-development book (I take that back, please read mine!), doing charity work – it does not have to be anything. It just is anything that makes us more fulfilled, balanced and self-aware people.
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