This is the first in a series of posts on nurturing yourself forward into success.
In speaking with my younger friends, I remember that many of the
so-called millennial generation feel overwhelmingly alone,
are unsure of their larger identity, and lack some basic life skills for success.
Regardless of your age, if you identify with any part of this description,
you can nurture yourself forward into a more effective lifestyle.
You can apply self-nurturing to build a foundation for fulfilling your dreams.
Nurture your awakening awareness . . . .
Nurturing Yourself into Finding Yourself
Nurturing yourself is about applying the love and compassion you ordinarily give to others — friends, children, your spouse or partner — to yourself. It means being accepting, kind, caring and forgiving with yourself, even as you discover all aspects of yourself on the way to knowing your essence. Are you game?
Finding yourself is about discovering who you are in your core essence. Nurturing yourself makes room for the discovery. Along the way, you get acquainted with your multi-faceted, multi-dimensional personality. You may come to love and trust yourself profoundly. You may discover hidden gifts and talents that you can nurture for creative fulfillment. You might enjoy a spiritual awakening. (I see everyone as spiritual, regardless of religion or lack of any formal religion.) You may realize your purpose and move forward with greater clarity, understanding and appreciation of your life circumstances. As you get acquainted with your inner self, you will almost certainly experience more love, joy and inner peace.
Requirements for Finding Yourself
You have all the time in the world, right now.
To get acquainted with your inner self, you will need three things:
- A little time to spend with yourself alone.
- Willingness to look at yourself with compassion.
- Patience, as the process of self-discovery is an unpredictable evolution.
Time for You
You will probably need to build a little time into your routine for reflection, meditation or journal writing. This means carving out fifteen to thirty minutes a day unplugged from media, family and friends. You might have to get up earlier, or spend a few minutes with yourself before bedtime or on your lunch hour. You will come to relish this time of introspection or looking within. You will start to discover or remember your dreams, and any gifts and talents you have tucked away as you struggled for a foothold in our chaotic world. You will revisit the places in you that still need healing. You can apply loving and self-forgiveness and make new choices for your next steps.
In early stages of reflecting inwardly, I analyzed my dreams, wrote poetry, and engaged in wishful fantasies. Later, I read self-help and psychology books and applied what I was learning. I put the suggestions to work. I took an hour or two several times a week to explore and practice whatever tools I read about. Meditating helped me to go deeper and faster. Spiritual exercises, a specific form of meditation, helped me even more, and the wishful fantasies disappeared as I got busy doing instead of wishing. Now, I more or less flow from one activity to the next, following the prompts of my inner guidance.
Self-Compassion
Self-compassion grows from self-nurturing.
You will need to learn self-compassion, which means letting go of self-judgments. My book, Nurture Yourself First: Gentle Steps in Personal and Planetary Transformation, gives detailed instructions, and I will surely include some tips for self-forgiveness in later posts. For now, any way you can do it, forgive yourself! Take the attitude that whatever happened in the past, you were doing the best you knew how, given your knowledge and skills and what you had to deal with in that moment. That’s all anyone can do, the best they know how in the moment. So let go of the criticisms and self-judgments. Free yourself from that drag-you-down energy so you can move forward into fulfilling your heart’s desires.
I have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars learning to live in self-compassion. In addition to reading many books and attending numerous workshops, I spent three years studying graduate level spiritual psychology at the University of Santa Monica, and seven years culminating in my Doctor of Spiritual Science (DSS) at Peace Theological Seminar and College of Philosophy.
Patience
You discover who you are as the pieces gradually fit together.
I would love to tell you that with three weeks of work on finding yourself, you will be a new you and rolling into success. That would be a lie. Even after a lifetime focus on knowing myself, I still learn more every day about who I am in essence.
However, three weeks of reflecting and journal writing can give you enormous new awareness and some beginnings of new directions. You will start to observe repetitive issues in your life and get clues on how to think, feel or behave differently. You will, simply through the process of awareness, be able to make new choices for yourself. You might start to savor the ongoing adventure of learning and growing!