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Ep. 20 – Be Your Own Best Friend

Why are we so unkind to ourselves?

Where are you in your line of priorities?

I want you to reflect on this and let’s talk about self-love.

If we don’t take care of ourselves, we cannot take care of those around us.

Transcript

Hello, my beautiful friends. How are you? No, really? How are you today? I was on a walk this morning with my two fur babies, blue and Coda, and I was thinking about. How dogs just generally want to love, you know, they’re so happy to see us and they run up to us basically saying, Hey, you’re home. I love you.

Can I kiss you? And their love is so unconditional. It got me thinking about my topic with you today, which is self love, how to get to a place of truly loving yourself like puppies do unconditionally. So that is what we’re gonna talk about today. Being your own best friend and loving yourself. So let’s get started.

What if I told you that your divorce could end up being one of the best things that could happen to you? I’m Doreen, Yaa, marital, and family, lawyer, and certified life coach. I’ve been coaching and consulting women for over 26 years. I’ve seen it all. Now I’m sharing my expertise and my own personal experiences to help you turn a difficult time into your amazing divorce.

You know, when you’re going through a divorce and you have basically been beat up by the system and attacked maybe verbally by your ex, the other lawyer is mean spirited. It is really hard to stay in touch with loving yourself. Heck it’s hard enough when we are not going through horrible things like divorce.

For some of you, your divorce was full of all kinds of harsh negative statements and attacks on you. I’m sure. Leaving you feeling. Really beat up and just down, whether it was about how you were as a partner, a mom money or whatever in divorce, it is not uncommon for one side or both to do their best, to try to beat down the other side with lots of finger pointing and negative talk.

The question is how do we start to rebuild our self love and regain self confidence and move forward. Most of you have spent the majority of your days placing other people’s needs above your own, whether it is your children, your work, your friends, your partner. And you may think this is okay, based on maybe the way you were raised stereotypes, religious beliefs, and on that placing your needs.

Last is just a thing that is just the way it is. But I wanna encourage you to take a good long look at that. I mean, really sit down and think about where you have placed yourself in the line of your priorities. It is so easy in this busy world to not carve any time just for you into your. Especially during and after divorce, when your world has been focused on getting through the divorce and setting forth on what your new world and life will look like, maybe you had to move to a new home and that was taking up a lot of your time.

Or maybe you are looking for. Or at starting a new job or a new career, or going back to school, or maybe you were dealing with your children who may also have their own issues stemming from the divorce. I get it. I know that going through divorce is tough, unkind and time consuming, but you know what.

Even when life isn’t throwing us a curve ball, like divorce, illness getting fired or whatever else. I want you to question how you take care of your own needs. Even things are really good for you. Do you even know what it looks like or feels like to take care of yourself and to love yourself? My goal for you is to maybe have you start thinking about that, you know, when you are on a plane and they go through the safety speech and tell you.

In the event of an emergency, please place your own mask on first, before you help someone else. It’s because if you are not okay, first, you are unable to help someone else the way you need or want to, you know, self love has to become a priority in your life. Because eventually you’ll be out of air with no oxygen mask on.

And not only will you compromise yourself and your own wellbeing, but you will not be of any good to anyone else in your life. Loving yourself is one of the most important things you can do in order to achieve a satisfying, meaningful. And joy filled life. Yet, many of you, even those of you who appear successful to others on the outside are falling short in this regard.

So I want you to be honest, honest with your self and to dig deep. If this is you, why are you placing yourself last? What are your thoughts surrounding? Why are you having these thoughts? Could it be based on some back history from your childhood? Maybe it’s what you saw as an example of what a mom or a parent should be growing up in your household when you were a child, or maybe it stems from some societal expect.

Or could be based on your own thoughts about yourself, that you are not worthy of self love and self care. Getting to the reasons behind your thoughts about yourself are key, key to your ability to love yourself and to grow in this respect. You know, your thoughts, create feelings that create action or inaction that give us the results we have in our life.

It’s just the way it works. You see, let’s say that you have a negative body image as an example. You look in the mirror and you don’t like what you see, you have thoughts. Like I look fat, my body is flabby or just, I hate the way I look when you have these thoughts, they’re likely to lead to feelings of sadness, overwhelmed, dislike.

And when you feel these feelings, you’re likely not going to act in a way that will. Be loving towards yourself. In other words, you might say hell with it and just eat everything in sight or skip the workout that you had planned for the day, because you don’t see the point like, oh, my body is so far gone.

It will take me years to look good again. And then you end up not taking the action. You need to get the results you want. Well, we know what the results will be. If you don’t take the action, right? Your body stays the same or you gain more weight because one thing we know for sure, if you don’t make an effort, then nothing.

Will change that for sure is a given you see yourself bad talk and thoughts caused your result. That played right into the exact thing you dislike in your mind in the first place. Makes sense. You know, after divorce, there is a lot of self hate talk. I want you to be aware of this and to know when it’s happening, recognizing.

Is present and making a decision. If these thoughts are serving you and your best self, your future self is what I want you to think about and be aware of when I’m dealing with negative thoughts about myself. I take a few minutes to write down the thought and ask myself would my best friend. If they had the same thought and they told me the thought, for example, after looking in the mirror that she doesn’t look so good.

What would I say to her? To my best friend? Well, I certainly wouldn’t agree with her, right. I suppose if my best friend. Said she was unhappy with the way she looked. I would gently and with love and kindness, remind her of how amazing she is and not to be so hard on herself. So let me ask you a question.

If we wouldn’t speak to our best friend, so

many of us speak to ourself this way. It’s sad, right? We are all beautiful humans. And each one of you is amazing and wonderful in your own unique and beautiful and super, super special way. You have so much to offer to the world and it starts with loving yourself first and recognizing all the amazing and beautiful things that make you you and as wonderful and as special.

As you are. I mean, there is only one you, and it is time to learn, to love yourself and place yourself as a priority. Now I’m not suggesting a 24 7 all about you. But I am saying to take action for yourself each and every day, no matter what you deserve this. And I want you to know this and I want you to say this, you deserve it, own it and live it.

An exercise I like to do with my clients is have them start with writing down in their journal, at least 10 things they like about themselves. They don’t have to love it. Doesn’t have to be amazing, just like it’s okay to recognize the things you like about yourself. It’s not arrogant or conceded it’s healthy and it builds confidence.

We all have at least 10 things we can find for me. I like that. I have great hair and skin. Thanks mom. No, my mom has great hair and skin, and so I was lucky to inherit these traits. For you, it might be that you like the way you look when you get dressed up or that you have a great sense of humor or are educated or sensitive, or you like the way your hands look or your side profile.

I don’t know. There is so many things. So, I don’t know what it is for you, but if you scan yourself both internally, the inner things that you like about who you are and your outer beauty, you will recognize your greatness. I am sure we can find 10 beautiful and amazing things that make us special that we like, and that we are proud of celebrate these things by treating yourself with love and kindness.

Just like you would your best friend. I like to think of self love as like the foundation of a house. When the builder takes time to use quality materials to build the foundation, then the home is structurally sound and can weather the storm. But if instead, the home is built out of flimsy cheap materials, it will likely fall apart during the weakest.

Of storms. Life is a balance of good and bad meaning. We will weather bad times and circumstances in our life as that is just the way it is. People get sick, they divorce, they get fired. It’s a 50, 50 life. And it’s out of your control in many respects, you control what you can and you understand the things you cannot.

That means that there is an equal balance of greatness as well. And good times when your foundation is strong, because you have taken the time to care for yourself, you can weather the tough times a lot easier. It’ll still be unpleasant, but you can come out of it. Okay. And carry on loving yourself is the foundation for a flourishing future.

So I wanna regroup with you today and I wanna let you get on your Merry way to your greatness, but let me share some tips with you that I want you to consider, or should I say maybe triumph for size. there’s seven tips. One, make yourself a priority. As I said, many of us tend to put everyone else’s needs first.

Those. Needs of your children, your clients, your friends, but this is eventually not sustainable. You don’t have to wait until your kids go off to college or you retire to do nice things for yourself. That was what I was thinking. And so based on my own experience start now, don’t wait. I suggest that you absolutely calendar, literally calendar.

In your daily calendar time, just for you before anything else? It could be 20 minutes. It could be five minutes. It could be two hours. And don’t beat yourself up about how long, any time just for you is. Anytime is a step in the right direction and can start to make a huge difference. Maybe it’s just taking a walk meditating for a few minutes, reading a book, or taking a class or better yet.

Maybe it’s a combination of a few things and you know what. It’s okay. Schedule it right on your calendar. And you, you have to just let the people in your life know that you’re off the clock. Do that. I remember when my kids were still home, I used to from time to time, not often, but I would take a bath and I would tell them, listen, Mom’s going to take a bath.

She’s going into mom, time out. And so unless the house is burning down or someone is waiting, don’t come and knocking on the door. Remember in order to love others and be loved, you need to first love yourself. Number two, recognize your amazingness and stop putting yourself. You know, nobody is perfect and nobody comes from a perfect family.

Hey, if about 50% of all marriages end in divorce, stopping the self hate, talk about a failed marriage is important. And if other areas of your life, like if you’re telling yourself that you’re too fat, too dumb, too ugly, or other negative things, then keep in mind that your thoughts will become your reality.

As I say your results. And so look at the positive of who you are and the 10 things I ask you, journal out that you like about yourself. When you see the positive of yourself, you start living in the positive and that becomes your reality and the positive results. Just follow. I promise each one of. By virtual of being a human has some degree of insecurity.

Perfection is not a natural state stop pretending you have to be perfect and cut yourself some slack. Number three, give yourself a high five when you do something amazing or may suggest even just good recognizing when you do something good, great or amazing. It’s important. It can be anything. Maybe for example, you tried a new recipe and it turned out great.

Tell yourself, Hey, great job. Or you stayed on your food protocol that day, or you went to the gym or you helped a friend, whatever it is, no matter how big or how small stop and give yourself. A high five, acknowledging you did something good helps to build your self-esteem and nurtures feelings of self worth.

And if you can’t find anything to compliment, which I really find hard to believe, and you and I need to talk, then maybe start with accepting compliments from others graciously with a thank you. Instead of, of, instead of this, the usual like, oh no, it’s nothing. Just say, thank you. Number four take care of your body and your mind.

I’ve spoken to you before about buffering. An episode that I did on November 14th, 2021. And how turning to fake pleasures, false pleasures, such as alcohol drugs, smoking, overeating over surfing. In an effort to numb emotional pain can lead to all kinds of negative results. These false pleasures that are all around us, give our brain a quick dopamine hit.

That makes you feel really, really good for the moment, but are not serving you to get to your best life, healthiest body of mind that will sustain you to reaching your goals. And. Respect your body and mind by eating healthy exercising, taking care of your appearance, resting, sleeping, meditating, taking time for yourself to recharge your batteries.

When you take care of yourself, physically, the mind follows along for the ride and your mental outlook and health improves as well. Number five, put down the phone. Oh, my gosh, we are all running so fast. These days, text messages coming in emails to answer the news postings on social media. It is easy, super easy to get caught up in the hectic of it all.

And the technology that we carry in our hands, all you have to do is look around and see that people are always buried in their phones, heads down, missing the world and all of its amazing beauty. Take a moment to put the phone down and step away from it. Enjoy the world and its amazingness without the electronics in.

For many of you, I understand that this is hard to do. We feel this constant pull to look at our phone, respond immediately to a text or email and check out the most recent post and you’re missing out. I want to suggest that giving yourself even just a brief time out of 30 minutes a day from your phone and your electronics to take in the beauty.

Around us or even to engage truly focused in a conversation with your friend or your child can help your stress level, your relationships and your health. Number six. Be your own best friend. I touched on this already, but I want you to be your own best friend, be kind and loving to yourself, just like you would to your best friend.

The reality is that you go to bed with yourself and wake up with yourself every day. That’s a blessing in itself. You know yourself better than anyone else, you know, all your faults and you know, your strengths, you know, what makes you laugh and what makes you cry? So who better to be your best friend than you show yourself the same compassion and empathy you would show your best friend, learn to enjoy your own company.

And number seven, except that your life will throw you curve balls. Life is a balance of 50. 50, no matter how horrible your divorce is or was you have an opportunity today, right? This moment to retell your story and rewrite your future, you can learn and grow on levels. You never knew past possible acceptance of where you are and what you cannot change is your key to having.

The most amazing life you want and deserve dwelling on the negative of your circumstances is the same as a dog chasing its tail. It gets you nowhere, but going around in circles and dizzy, by the way, remember this two will pass. Life is a balance. Nothing is forever. And that includes whatever the results are that you are dealing with from your divorce.

Your divorce is not a reflection of you. But what you choose to do with it is on you and we’ll define your future and what that looks like. Look at this as an opportunity, right? The next chapter of your life to set goals for yourself that awaken your spirit and ignite the passion within you. Okay. My friends take care of yourself.

I’m watching you. I wish you much goodness today. And for the week, take time for yourself. Calendar your time. Treat yourself with compassion, love and be your own. Best friend. And until next time, have an amazing rest of the day. And remember, yes, you can buy everybody. Thanks so much for listening for tips, updates, and expert advice.

Be sure to visit your amazing divorce.com. And remember my friends. Yes, you can have an amazing life after. See you there views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of nor are they endorsed by YFA family law group or your divorce law center, their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, or representatives.

The content of your amazing divorce is for entertainment and educational purposes. Only none of the content on your amazing divorce should be considered legal advice, nor does anything here in create an attorney, client relationship as always consult a lawyer for your legal question.

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