Self-reflection invites self-awareness, and self-awareness enables you to better regulate your emotions.
From this, we can get a deeper understanding of why we feel the way we feel and make positive steps towards change and growth.
Better emotional regulation equates to less anxiety.
Less anxiety means a more peaceful, contented, and stress-free life.
Remember who you were before 'they' told you who to be...
You give away your forgiveness, patience, empathy, understanding, encouragement, and compassion to others easily but not yourself. Why…?
Surely you yourself are as worthy of your own love as anyone else?
Using Positive Affirmations
One of the underlying problems of low self-esteem, is indeed our own inner dialogue. The way we talk to ourselves.
It’s one thing being raised or surrounded by people all your life who make you feel less than, and tell you that you will amount to nothing, it’s entirely another once we internalise these opinions and make them our own, reciting them to ourselves in our minds, repeatedly.
If negative criticism and the low opinion other people can affect our self-esteem so much it causes anxiety and depression, then it would logically make sense that positive self-talk and constructive criticism would have the opposite effect.
But if we depend on this from other people, we could be waiting an eternity, not to mention if it can be given by someone else, it can just as easily be taken away, leaving you at square one.
Learning to talk to yourself in a positive and loving way is a key element of self-discovery and healing, and using positive affirmations daily plays an integral role this process.
Sprinkle in an attitude of gratitude and you are already starting to remap that emotional blueprint you carry in your mind.
Rewiring Old Software
Pretty much every device you use from your laptop, tablet, or phone from time to time requires a software update. We can think as the software on a device that controls its operating system, a framework that supports all it’s functions and applications. You’re probably reading this right now on your phone.
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Think of your emotional blueprint as your software, your default operating system, and the hard drive where the software is installed is your sub-conscious mind.
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Through self-awareness, we can start to recognise maladaptive behaviours (functions) in ourselves, and using mindfulness, we can create the space to then access our hard drive, the sub-conscious, to analyse our emotional blueprint – our software.
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For most people, this software, let’s call it version 1, has been installed since you were very young, and whilst it served you well as a child, it’s now outdated as an adult. There is nothing sadder to see than seeing a fully grown adult display the emotional behaviours of a child.
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Like devices, the best way to keep them operating well is to apply regular updates, and you are no different. Self-work itself involves regularly challenging yourself mentally and emotionally, growing, evolving, and making sure your software is constantly up to date.
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To get that to that place we need first to replace the old software completely, with a new platform, think of it as replacing a mobile phone from late 90’s to the latest device.
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Your new device can be kept regularly updated through continuous little software updates, but your old device, well, it was great in 1997, but 25 years later, it’s pretty much obsolete. It may still fundamentally a phone and you are still fundamentally you, but it’s time for an upgrade…
