Learning to Support Yourself – This is Freedom!
How can you know how to support yourself if you never felt supported growing up?
Think about this. If you rarely experienced feeling supported as a child, how can you know how to do it for yourself?
Well, you don’t know how. The challenge is that many of us expect ourselves to be able to know how to do something that we never learned or experienced.
Imagine if when you were a child, you were completely supported by being allowed to feel whatever you felt and not made to feel wrong for your feelings.
If you heard, “It’s okay baby. Whatever you’re feeling is okay. We’re always here for you. We’re sorry.”
Do you think you might be more skilled in being able to support yourself?
Now, you may have gotten this on occasion, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it wasn’t common for you to feel truly supported.
The Good News is you can learn how to support yourself.
The beauty of this is, the more you learn to support yourself the less you’ll find you need others to support you. When this happens you end up getting support from others anyway, because you’ve released the resistance that comes in the form of believing you need it from anyone other than yourself.
Imagine talking to yourself in a supportive way.
How do you talk to yourself when you make a mistake? Are you hard on yourself?
Can you imagine practicing telling yourself that it’s okay?
Can you imagine asking yourself “What’s the good in this mistake? What can I learn from this?”
I love this saying I heard years ago from Dr. Judi Hollis,
“If you have to have it, you can’t have it. If you can take it or leave it, you can have it all day long.
This speaks to detaching from needing a certain outcome.
In other words, needing someone to behave a certain way so that you’re okay. (This one has been a tough one for me to learn.)
Trying to control a circumstance for a specific outcome you want. (I’ve done my fair share of trying to exert control over it circumstance.)
There are many ways your need for things to be a certain way can show up.
When you learn how to support yourself, and make it a practice….this frees up your emotional and creative energy so that you can begin to create more of what you desire for yourself.
Here’s an simple technique you can use to help you learn to support yourself more fully.
Every night before you go to bed, write down 3 things about yourself that you feel good about for the day.
At first this can feel hard to do, but here’s some examples of how to make it easy. See if any of this feel true for you.
I like that I want to feel better about myself.
I like that I can learn to support myself.
I really like the idea that by learning to support myself I can feel better.
I like the idea that supporting myself is the thing I can to give my attention to.
I like that my power comes from seeing the best in myself.
I’m willing to learn how to support myself.
I like that I was kind to my co-worker today.
I like that I took a moment and pet my cat.
I like that I walked my dogs today.
I like that I drove my child to school.
I like that I gave my child attention.
I like that I made my kids lunches.
I like that I pay for their dance class.
I like that I went to their baseball game.
I like that I swept my kitchen floor.
I like that I want to be a good person.
I like that I opened the door for that stranger.
I like that I allowed someone to hold the elevator for me.
Get the idea? Think easy peasy.(This can still feel challenging but that’s why it takes practice.)
When you start to practice this and I say do it for the magical 21 days, just to help you get in the habit of looking for these things. This simple exercise is really powerful over time. You’re training your brain to start looking for what’s working. You start to find more and more things to feel good about.
I had the good fortune to witness support in action while in a grocery store of all places. It was really uplifting and was the impetus for this email.
The story is included in my video. It was a great reminder to me that you never know when and where inspiration comes.
When you start this simple practice of supporting yourself I think you’ll find that you bear witness to more and more acts of loving kindness between people and this is a really cool by-product of this exercise.
As always, try and see for yourself.
Here’s to You Supporting You!
Marti :)