si dawson

This is an oldie but goodie. It's sim­plic­ity belies it's power.

Regard­less of how easy it is to lie to some­one else, it's much, much harder to lie to our­selves. At least, it's much harder when we're actively pay­ing attention.

Find a mir­ror & some per­sonal space. Look your­self in the eyes, & say "I love you."

That's it. Just say that. Over & over. Out loud. Try to mean it, feel it.

Now, don't be sur­prised if you find this dif­fi­cult. Say­ing it & really mean­ing it will often trig­ger things deep within us. Doubts, fears, neg­a­tive self-image, and so on.

pic by leenah

Deep down, every­one har­bours dark thoughts about themselves.

That's ok. The impor­tant thing is just to be sin­cere. If say­ing "I love you" is too dif­fi­cult, start small.

"You have nice hands"
"Your hair doesn't totally suck"
"Umm, nice socks"

It really doesn't mat­ter. In fact, it's bet­ter to say some­thing small & seem­ingly irrel­e­vant with deep con­vic­tion than some­thing stronger with no energy behind it.

Some tips:

• Com­pli­ment your­self sincerely.
• Be spe­cific, go into details.
• Keep eye con­tact, don't let your eyes gaze over.
• Use your name, like you're talk­ing to another person.
• Mix it up — try to think of every pos­i­tive thing you pos­si­bly can about yourself.
• Be per­sis­tent, don't be afraid to say the same thing over & over if you feel things shifting
• If any emo­tion or ten­sion arises, this is good. Just accept it, & let it go.

The impor­tant thing is just to give your­self approval, no mat­ter how small. Larger things will come eas­ier with time.

The other thing that will make a big dif­fer­ence? Do it for a while. More than just a minute or two. 5 min­utes, 10 min­utes, half an hour or longer if you can man­age it.

I know when I first started doing this — I couldn't even look myself in the eye. I'd catch myself look­ing away, or blink­ing. It was quite sur­real. When I finally man­aged to hold my own gaze, I felt I couldn't say "I love you" with­out feel­ing like a phoney. Another sur­prise. Then, I just felt waves of emo­tion cas­cad­ing out of me. Tears. Relief, then finally joy & peace­ful self-acceptance.

Any­time you want to feel good about your­self, this is a sure fire way to do it.

It's sur­pris­ing, but such a sim­ple lit­tle thing as giv­ing our­selves gen­uine approval is some of the most pow­er­ful self-healing we can do.