With more people knowing about self love through social media, people are getting frustrated because they’re like, I don’t really know how to love myself.
Here’s something I want to share with you. Knowing about self love, is like knowing of a language.
You know may of French (that’s if you don’t know French), but you don’t know how to speak it yet if you have never practiced it.
Self love is the same thing, if you have never practiced it, how can you be good at it?
So I’m going to show you a practice today, not doing affirmations, or go to to spa.
Exercise : acknowledge your feelings.
Set a timer for 5 min, in the comfort of your own room, sit down, and breathe in and out.
Turn your attention inside your body, and notice what you’re feeling.
If you’re at an early stage and you don’t know what the feeling is, notice how your body feels like.
Maybe you feel short of breath, or tingling in your chest. Or energy going down your arms.
And once you notice it. Repeat this sentence, soft enough only to yourself, yet loud enough for you to hear:
“It’s ok for me to feel this way”
Or if you know the feeling, “It’s okay for me to feel (anger, disappointment, frustration, sadness)”
Repeat until that deeper part of you felt heard and understood.
Maybe tears may come. Or maybe you want to scream or hit something. Whatever comes, let them out.
Don’t stop yourself, let it finish.
Then to finish, thank yourself for doing it.
“Thank you for seeing me, thank you for acknowledging me, thank you for being with me.”
Try this and see if you have any questions. You can always send me a message or comment.
Sending you lots of love.
When we grow up, there may come a time when our decisions are going to conflict with our parents’.
But a lot of times, our parents ended up saying a lot of horrible things, like, “You’re selfish!” “You’re a sl*t” (for those of us who end up with a bf) or even threatening that they’ll unalive themselves.
Because we grew up in that environment when we were young, so we may think that it is “normal” or acceptable. Or we may think we deserve it, and the only way is for us to change.
But just because it’s always been like that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it acceptable.
No one, including our parents, has the permission to treat us poorly.
In order for us to deal with such situations, we will need to learn to deal with the mixed emotions, ie guilt and fear, so then we can figure out where we stand to set boundaries.
Because here’s the truth, if we don’t stand for ourselves, if we don’t respect ourselves, no one ever will.
Want to go on this journey? Get my free ebook, “5 Steps to stand up to anyone”.
You can also send me a message or book a time with me.
You’re not alone, let’s do this together.
I’m no stranger to comparing myself with others, I’d to deal with that since I was a teenager. And since working on it for the past 6-7 years, with being the age of 45, I’m at a place where this inner critic is less harsh on me.
To give you a better understanding of how it feels like. It’s as if a monster leaps out from inside my chest, and it would drag me down this deep hole where I couldn’t get out for days.
And many times, when other people achieved something, I just couldn’t get myself to celebrate them or be happy for them.
So here are 5 things I worked a lot on.
1 process my disappointment. To be able to sit with the part of me that constantly wish I’m “over there”. No matter how much I worked, it’s still not enough.
2 learning to deal with the pain and hurt from my parents’ interactions with me
3 found people who were genuinely happy for me and are proud of my achievements
4 be able to fully receive those compliments given to me by said people
5 I had to celebrate my efforts (not the result).
Want to get out of the comparison loop too? Here are two exercises I would highly recommend.
Learn to acknowledge your feelings and process them, esp the disappointment in yourself
Practice celebrating your efforts daily.
I hope this video helps you.
Sending you lots of love.
I had a meeting with my accountability partner tonight, and she said, I wish things are easier.
I’m sure many people would say that. And at the same tjme, if things are easier… would we actually think life is easy?
I mean it’s either we may become complacent, or.. we may find some other hard things to complain about…?
So what if life is meant not to be easy?
I mean there are two camps.. one can complain about it and victimize ourselves, or we could buckle down to work on it, figure out what we need to do next.
I knew that part of my life is super easy, compare to others, I was a princess, having been taken care of, didn’t have to worry too much.
And yet I had the difficult parts of my life.
It is now what do I want to do with that aspect, so I can become the next version of myself.
Who I am not is not the same person 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 3 years ago, or even this past year.
So I’d like to ask you to dive deeper, and look into what is the not so easy part. And also celebrating the parts that we’d overcome. The parts that make us who we are.
On a side note, we went to watch Demon Slayer movie. It was amazing!
If you’d watched it or planning to watch it, let me know!
Sending you lots of love .
Some adult children are getting frustrated that their parents are giving them the cold shoulders and would not speak to them for weeks on end.
Here’s how to deal with it.
1 recognize that this is a manipulation tactic
That they want you to change to cater to them.
2 give your nervous system the safety it needs
You don’t need to change yourself to calm them down so you calm down.
To calm yourself: do the 4-7-8 breathing
Breathe in slowly through nose count of 4
Hold for 7 count
Breathe out through nose count of 8
Do this for 3-5 minutes.
Once you’re ready, you can confront them to say, “hey, I know you’re upset because you care about this. And whenever you’re ready, let’s have an adult chat about it.”
If they don’t want to, then at least you tried.
Their emotions is not yours to take care of.
Deal with your emotion, calm yourself down. This is how you take your power back.
Special guest: my son.
Whenever you are ready to do this work for you, book a time with me. And let’s do this together.
I know this can be scary, so if you need, I can be your shoulder to cry on, I can give you tools, and we can figure out what your next step is.
You’re not alone. Sending you lots of love.
These few days I had to complete a small project, I completed it on Wed (super proud of myself!), so on Thurs, I said to myself, “Hey! Let’s make another video!”
My brain started criticizing every idea that I came up with.
“What is this you’re trying to say anyway?”
“You haven’t ironed out the idea yet.”
I made a video, but didn’t end up posting it.
This morning, while I was brushing my teeth, I let some silent screaming, and kept asking my inner critic:
“Why can’t you just support me???!!!!”
As that breath of air rushed from my lungs, through my throat and out my mouth..
Images of my mom criticizing me flashed through my brain..
I knew where my inner critic came from.
And I had to be the one to reparent myself.
Sometimes we may feel disappointed that the people in our lives aren’t supportive of us.
Other times, we may be the ones minimizing ourselves and our efforts.
I just want you to know. Take a look back, and see how far you have come.
You’ve come very far already.
I want you to know that I’m very proud of you.
This is the comic I was talking about.
Sending you lots of love
As a Chinese girl who grew up in Canada, I grew up with “community”, caring a lot able what other people would say, saving face.
Many times, my mom would tell me not to be polish, flawless, I need to be put together, no airing out dirty laundry, making sure other people see me as competent. So I have a hard time sharing my struggles, asking for help.
But that is not the real me.
And growing up in the west means individualism. Having my point of view, sharing my opinions. I was deemed selfish, inappropriate, self-centered.
And every time I tried to stand up for me, it was like I was one of the crabs in the bucket, I get pulled back down.
But where it started off as a “strong” community, I needed to be stronger in my voice. So I have to swing from one side to the other.
And once I have my own voice, where it is strong enough, then I can come back to community.
Where the initial community circle is a “blended colour”. Now that my voice is stronger and coming back, the new community is a circle with individual coloured dots.
So we can care for each other, love each other’s differences, support each others’ struggles, celebrate each other’s successes.
And this is the community I want to create. Because I care for a community where it supports my son, accepts him for who he is, not change him into “someone else”.
And when I can stand up with my voice, then it gives other people permission to stand up with their voices.
What do you think about community vs individualism?
