Three Fast and Easy Ways to Increase Self-Love (By Esther R. Kane)

One of the most common questions I hear from clients is this:

EVERYONE KEEPS TELLING ME TO "LOVE MYSELF" BUT WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE AND HOW DO I DO IT?

I'll begin with my favourite quote on self-love, which comes from Lucille Ball:

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

I couldn't agree more with her on this one. However, her quote doesn't offer any clues about how to love oneself in the first place. I'm not going to pretend that there is some quick and easy answer to this daunting question, but I have put a lot of time, thought, and study into this particular quandry so I'll offer up some of what I've learned here...

Esther's 3 Practical Ways to Increase Self-Love

#1: Realise the Incredible Benefits of Self-Love

There are a multitude of excellent reasons to extend compassion and love towards ourselves as well as others. In a nutshell, I've learned that everything we are trying to achieve becomes a whole lot easier and less stressful when we are kind towards ourselves, rather than harsh and critical.

Here are some benefits of self-love outlined in a lovely article on one of my favourite websites, Mind Body Green:

We let go of blame, shame, and anger. We invite ownership, creation, and power into our lives.

The more we look at ourselves with love, the more we practice love and acceptance toward others.

We allow ourselves to be human. We accept mistakes and failures, and we invite vulnerability into our lives.

We let go of competition and comparing ourselves to others.

We find courage to accept failure because we know that it is one step closer to growth, and our significance isn't dependent on what we produce.

#2: Extend Compassion Towards Yourself

I've written before about practising self-compassion and how to go about it. There's also an amazing book written on the topic I highly recommend you read. I will share a story with you about how I helped a client learn to extend compassion towards herself which you may find useful.

I was sitting with a lovely client who has a terrible habit of beating herself up emotionally. I'm guessing you can relate to this... I sure can! It appeared that she was trying to convince me (or herself?) that she was basically a "hopeless case" and not worthy of living a rich, juicy and fulfilling life because she had an eating disorder which has plagued her for the last ten years.

She would probably make a great lawyer, as she is incredibly adept at making a case. The only problem in my opinion is that her case is against HERSELF. And if anything is going to interfere with one's capacity to experience self-love, freedom, and living a fantastic life, I'd say, hands-down, it's when you beat yourself up emotionally, regularly and consistently. And let me tell you, this beautiful young woman is not the only one guilty of this.

Unfortunately, I sit with countless women, either face-to-face, on the phone, or via video-conferencing who tell me exactly why they don't deserve a crack at happiness. The reasons given could be one or all of the following:

-Any one or more of these conditions: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addictions, ADHD, etc.

-Past history of abuse

-A history of bad choices

-Not being where they are "supposed to be" at this point in their life

And more...

So as I sat listening to this woman berate herself mercilessly, something came to me. As she finished each reason for hating herself and not deserving a great life, I finished her sentence with, "And yet, I still love myself". At first, she looked really annoyed that I was interrupting her, but as I continued playfully ending her sentences, a smile broke out on her lips and she started to laugh. We laughed and enjoyed the fun dance we were doing together.

After a while, she stopped talking and looked me squarely in the eyes and said, "That is really helpful. I suppose if I can have all these problems and still love myself despite them, I wouldn't be so upset at myself all the time PLUS have all of these problems".

Very wise words indeed. Isn't it bad enough that we have these problems to begin with? Why do we have to add insult to injury by beating ourselves up emotionally as well? When are we going to give ourselves a break by saying to ourselves when we falter, "And yet, I still love myself"... Give it a try and see what happens.

#3: Change Your Self-Talk

For the final suggestion on how to love yourself more, I can't stress enough the importance of how you talk to yourself. In a previous article, I mentioned that research has found that we practise self-talk for FOUR HOURS every day, so be mindful of how you use those four hours! I would hazard a guess that the majority of us are incredibly cruel to ourselves during this big chunk of the day, during which time the harsh inner critic comes out and berates us constantly for not being _____ enough. This blank space is often one of a long list. Here are the most common ones I hear from clients:

Smart

Thin

Sexy

Funny

Rich

Charming

Pretty

Kind

Young

You can probably add one or two of your own variations to the list. However, I think it would be far more productive to start switching the negatives to positives when you catch yourself being mean to yourself.

For example, if you found yourself thinking this after a coffee date with a new girlfriend:

I blew it... I was so boring during coffee. She even yawned! She won't ask to get together again because I'm not exciting enough. She's so interesting and exciting and a great storyteller. Why would someone like that want to be friends with me?

In this example, this woman is being hard on herself and calling herself berating things such as "boring" and "not exciting enough". Not only that, but she causes herself further misery by comparing herself to her girlfriend, who, in her mind, is the complete opposite (implying that being "interesting, exciting and a great storyteller" is the better way to be).

At this juncture, I feel the need to point out that in these types of negative self-talk scenarios (what I refer to as "stinking thinking"), we are almost always WRONG if we summon up the courage to actually check it out with the other person at a later date. I encourage you to try this for yourself just to see how inaccurate and mean you really are to yourself. The good news is this:

MOST PEOPLE ARE MUCH MORE FORGIVING AND KIND TOWARDS US THAN WE ARE TO OURSELVES.

This is especially true of our close friends and loved ones. And if it's not, I strongly urge you to reevaluate who you choose to spend time with on a regular basis. In all likelihood, the other woman in the example above was probably doing her own negative and self-critical analysis of the same coffee date. Here is what she might have thought after that meeting:

I blew it. I just talked about myself yet again and dominated the conversation and didn't give her space to talk about herself. I'm such a narcissist! Why can't I listen quietly like she does? She's so calming to be around. She must have thought I was a nutbar...

I have braved these 'check in' conversations with various friends and family members over the years to get a handle on how far off the mark I actually was in my interactions, and without getting into the embarrassing details, I will suffice it to say that I have a track record so far of being 100% wrong about my assumptions about how I came across as well as how others perceived me. In every single case, the other person was completely shocked at how I spoke to myself and the negative things I assumed they thought of me. Humbling indeed but great information which has helped me to practise being kinder to myself and more realistic in future interactions.

Here is an example of what the first woman could have said to herself when her harsh inner critic came out and blasted her for 'blowing it' with her new friend:

I really enjoyed spending time with her, even if I mostly listened. I love that she's an extrovert and I'm an introvert. We can teach each other so much. By listening closely, I learned about some exciting trips she has taken and it inspired me to take one or two myself.

The other woman could have helped herself feel better by saying this after she berated herself:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Three-Fast-and-Easy-Ways-to-Increase-Self-Love&id=9691914

Six Ways to Raise Your Vibration For a Better Life

It is very important to keep your vibration high; for one thing you will feel better within yourself. You will find that life will flow easily and be less stressful. When the vibration of your body is high you will feel in a happier place. When you feel down then that is when your vibration is low and very heavy and you do not feel in a good place. You do not need to stay in that place of denseness, you can choose to be happy and have a higher vibration.

You choose what your life is to be like, it does not just happen. Your thoughts manifest your life. You can stay in the heavy vibration of unhappiness or you can rise up and live in the lighter, higher vibration. It is you yourself that has to decide your path; it is not an outside person or object that can raise up your vibration but you yourself.

You can pick yourself up and become a less stressed person with just a bit of work. Please find as follows some ways of improving your vibration:-

1. Breathe 

Take a deep breath and on the out breath release all the stress and tension that you feel in the body. Let it go, you can maybe visualise it as a grey cloud leaving the body blowing out through your mouth. When you take the next breath make sure that it goes down deep into your stomach and swirl it around the body picking up any stress and tension that you have missed the first time round and release it on the out breath. Take another breath and swirl it around the body to pick up any other stress and release, let it go. You should now start to feel lighter and calmer. The body will start to feel lighter and you maybe can feel your body vibrating at a different level, at a new energy level.

2. Your Food 

Bless your food before you eat and ask for it to be nutritious and wholesome for your body. Ask for the food to be of the highest vibration that it can be. Dense foods such as sugar and coffee will give you an artificial high which will not last. You want to eat food that will maintain a high vibration naturally.

Certain foods, you know, are just not good for you but I know that it is hard to break the habit of having them and it can be extremely hard to give up. Sugar is one substance that can be extremely difficult to quit, it is amazing how a food substance can have such an effect on the body. Drinking water throughout the day instead of fizzy drinks will help start to cut back on the sugar and will help hydrate you at the same time.

3. Grounding 

Grounding helps you to feel more on the ground instead of feeling fuzzy and light headed. It helps you to feel more stable. One way to ground yourself is to imagine roots, like roots growing down from your feet and from the bottom of your spine down into the Earth, into the centre of the Earth. Now feel the energy, sense the energy coming back up through the same roots and flow up into your body. Up through your chakras: the root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye and crown and shoot it up into the outer realms above your head. (The body has seven primary energy centres called chakras.) Then imagine the energy, a white light come back down from above and pass through your body back down into the Earth. And so the cycle repeats enabling your body to feel a higher vibration.

4. Nature 

Nature can be a great vibration raiser. Go for a walk around your garden or even better to a park or go out into the countryside. As you walk feel the ground below your feet and the breeze blowing around you. Look at your surroundings, watch the birds and admire the way that they spend their time. Go up to a tree and touch it, sometimes you can feel a vibration coming from it, you can try to communicate with the tree and see if it replies. I know it sounds crazy but they do speak. Nothing is like it seems, or what you believe it to be.

5. Laughter 

They say that laughter is a great way to raise your vibration. So sit down and watch a comedy or a film that you can laugh at. There are plenty of places to go to nowadays to find a funny film. Or you can look at YouTube and find a short funny clip that will make you laugh. Otherwise you can watch your pets and have a laugh with them because they are always ready to make your heart melt and for you to smile. Allow that smile to expand your energy and help you feel fantastic.

6. Being Grateful 

Being grateful is another way to raise your vibration. As you start each day write down ten things that you are grateful for and as you write them down, feel the feeling that you have with it. Feel deep into the feeling and allow yourself to feel the love for it. As you write the items down, stop and feel into each one. The gratitude that you feel for it being in your life will help you to raise your vibration.

I hope that these tips will help you to better your life and make it more freeing and expansive and for you to start to love your life with a passion and in a high vibration.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Six-Ways-to-Raise-Your-Vibration-For-a-Better-Life&id=9744672

The Streamlined Mind - Organizing Your Social Life

Do ever feel like life would be a whole lot less stressful if it weren't for all the other people?

We all feel like this from time to time - and especially when life is getting on top of us and we don't have the time, energy or money to devote to our friends.

So how do you go about organizing your social life and staying on top of all those things you need to do?

Prioritize

The first thing you need to do is to prioritize.

If you have a busy social calendar, then it's often easy to feel overly stressed and put upon. You're constantly being asked out to events and if you say no, then you feel as though you're letting people down.

This gets harder and harder as we get older. People move away and meanwhile we have more and more responsibilities. We feel like we can't say no to a friend who invites us out because it was so long since we saw them last time.

Here's the thing though: there comes a time in life where you just can't do everything you want to do. As such, you need to prioritize and as sad as that sounds, that can sometimes mean pruning your social network.

Right at the top of your priorities if you're an adult, should be your partner, your children and your immediate family. If you're having a hard time turning down invitations, then simply remind yourself that you need to reserve the lion's share of your time and energy for your family. This doesn't make you a bad person, it makes you an adult with responsibilities!

This doesn't mean that you're going to cut off contact with your friends or tell them you don't want to see them anymore! All it means is that you might - for example - only accept one invitation to spend time with friends a week. Or more realistically, two a month as you start to get older.

That means that if you have two invitations from two sets of friends, you might simply to decide which friend is one of your 'priorities'.

'Dunbar's Number' is the number of friends that we can realistically maintain relationships with. He puts the number as somewhere between 100-250, with '150' being the most commonly quoted figure.

This number though is not exclusively referring to friends though but rather all the contacts we can maintain whether they be friends, colleagues, associated or acquaintances.

In reality, you can probably only maintain about 10 truly close relationships - so choose who those ten are going to be!

Forget Frenemies

One thing that makes this a lot easier is to think about all the friends you have that aren't really friends. These are the people who we count as friends but who really we don't actually enjoy spending time around all that much.

These are the friends who we constantly moan about to our other friends. And these are the friends who let us down.

As you get older and the stakes get higher, you unfortunately just don't have time for friends who aren't really friends. As such, it's time to put those people to one side and to focus on the ones who you really enjoy spending time with and who are there for you.

Just as removing some of the unnecessary items from your decorating can help to put more emphasis on your favorite belongings, you can likewise enjoy closer relationships with the people who really matter to you by spending less time with the people who don't deserve your time and energy.

Keep a Calendar

Another important tip is to keep a calendar. If you have lots of friends and a busy social life, then this is likely to result in a lot of different things planned. One of the biggest stresses that can come from this is being double booked for multiple activities which means letting people down or rushing to try and accomplish both.

Keeping a diary is a great way to avoid this from happening and especially if you can use an app that will let you easily update and edit events on the fly. This way you can also set up different reminders to ensure that you always know what's coming up and don't forget something big you have on your agenda.

What's even better about using an app like Google Calendar is that you can also let other people see your diary and contribute to it. This is a great way to arrange meetups and get-togethers because it lets people see when you're free.

Now comes one of the very biggest tips for organizing your life and getting things in order: make sure that you also add your other tasks and to do list to your diary.

Ask yourself what the things are that you absolutely can't miss. For instance, you might decide that at all costs you are going to go to the gym three times a week. Maybe you absolutely can't put off filling out your tax return any longer.

So make sure it's in the diary and treat it just as you would any other activity - as immutable. If someone suggests doing something on that day and you have 'fill out tax return' already on that date, then you explain that you can't meet up, or that you'll have to get there are couple of hours later.

It seems extreme but once you start taking your commitments seriously, you'll find you have much more time to actually do the things you want to do and that you don't feel stressed because those necessary tasks are constantly being pushed back.

Facebook

Ah Facebook.

Facebook is one of the biggest culprits for many of us when it comes to procrastination, stress and overwhelm. Not only does Facebook take up a huge amount of time by giving us something to randomly browse through, it can also lead to stress (and even depression) through something called 'social comparison theory' (we essentially compare our lives to the highlights that everyone else shows off).

Then there's the fact that Facebook keeps us in touch with all those people we no longer know, no longer care about and no longer need to be in touch with.

So what's the solution?

You might expect me to say 'delete Facebook' at this point, but that would really be rather rash - after all, Facebook is a very useful tool and can actually make organizing events and things a lot easier.

Instead then, simply take a look at your Facebook and streamline and prune it.

Firstly: you probably don't need the Facebook app on your phone! Not only does the Facebook app take up a lot of juice thereby draining your battery and slowing down your device but it can also constantly pester you with notifications and messages that really aren't all that pressing. They come through as emails anyway, so why not turn off the app?

More important is simply to delete those contacts on Facebook that aren't really friends. People from your infant school, people who you met at random parties and people who you don't like can all go.

And as for your news feed, why not just 'unfollow' some of the people you don't really want to see?

Doing all these things will allow you to make more use from Facebook without the stressful/distracting/time consuming elements.

Then just make sure to limit your own Facebook use. For example, how about limiting yourself to 10 minutes of Facebook a day?

http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Streamlined-Mind---Organizing-Your-Social-Life&id=9358461