My Words - My Truth

While living and speaking consciously in the past weeks, I have made a few realizations:

1. I use "we" often when speaking about my own life experiences and past because many of my memories and experiences are wrapped up with others. I feel sometimes using "we" can feel exclusionary instead of inviting in sharing my experience with others. 
2. I enjoy talking and learning about others but I can only do it so long and need to retreat to my own thoughts and feelings to get my energy back. 
3. When speaking with others whom I haven't know for very long, I realize that I tend to get short with people whose opinions do not match my own. I feel this is my own form of judgement. Instead I will choose to express that own options differ, positively reinforcing my own position on the subject and still maintaining a positive interest in continued dialogue with others. Alternatively I will listen deeper to the other person and ask more in depth questions as to better understand their opinion and thereby understand my own position on my opinion. 
4. I use the word SHOULD often to in my thoughts, writing and speech. Using SHOULD leaves me feeling like I haven't reached my own goals or potential. My own feeling of inadequacy drives me to behavior that is incongruent with my long term goals and it takes a few days to get back in touch with myself. I choose to use alternative words to change my behavior and reinforce my own values and goals.
5. I really miss writing and blogging about my inward journey. Its really important that I continue my journey and blogging helps me to do that.
6. When someone is desperate I retreat. When someone doesn't need me thats when I want to attach the most to someone, otherwise it falls back to the co-dependance I grew up with and I choose to not repeat that cycle again.

Are you living your life consciously? Do you speak to yourself and others consciously? If so, what things have you noticed about yourself in building relationships with others? 

Are you satisfied with how you are or would you like to consciously change things to better get in touch with your true self and open your heart to people around you?

Take sometime this holiday week to accept yourself and express your appreciation for others in your life.

Self Love starts with Friendship with yourself

Recently I've been doing alot of self reflection on what love means to me. Both love to & from others, and Self Love.

The Oxford Dictionary defines Love as: An intense feeling of deep affection (tender attachment). So it makes sense that Self Love is having a intense feeling of tender attachment for yourself. When I reread that statement it makes me think if I have ever had Self Love. I honestly can never say I have been very tender to myself, or had much of an attachment for myself more than a couple hours at a time. Which not that I think about it, thats pretty sad. I know myself better than anyone else, even the dear reader of this blog. :)

Can you say that you have Self Love? It reminds me of the quote I have heard many time recently.

“If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

-RuPaul

So maybe Self Love is too much to ask for right away. I mean unless you really know yourself well how could you possibly love someone you don't really know? When Nietzsche wrote:

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.” 

― Friedrich Nietzsche

maybe he had a point. If we can't be friends with ourselves then how can we truly want spend the rest of our lives with us? So I pose this challenge to myself and to you as well. For the next 2 weeks, treat yourself like you would your bestie. Be kind, gentle and more loving. Take yourself out to do things that you enjoy, or stay in and read a book together. Really embrace spending time with just you. Maybe try starting a journal to keep your thoughts about how this is going so you can look back on it sometime and read what you wrote and what your frame of mind what.

Remember Self Love starts with a friendship with yourself.