si dawson

I talked about the mir­ror exer­cise a while back. I've used this quite a lot, & dis­cov­ered a few extra tricks to really amp it up, which I thought I'd share.

I Love You
Pay­ing your­self com­pli­ments is a good way to start, par­tic­u­larly if you're feel­ing down on your­self, but the sin­gle most pow­er­ful thing to say is sim­ply "I love you."

This heals incred­i­bly deeply. Even if you don't believe it, say it any­way. Of course, the more feel­ing & energy you can put into it, the bet­ter. Shout it out loud if you like, it all helps.

pic by prozac74

Imag­ine It's Some­one Else
So how do you say "I love you" if you're strug­gling to actu­ally love your­self (like so many of us do)? Well, every­one has some­one they're com­fort­able say­ing (& mean­ing) I love you to.

So, look at your­self, but get your­self in a lov­ing state by imag­in­ing (ini­tially) that you're say­ing it to that per­son. This'll get you started with really feel­ing it. The more you say it to your­self, the eas­ier it'll get. The more strongly you can feel what you're say­ing, the more powerful.

Smile
Remem­ber how you act when you meet some­one you really like. You smile, right? If you gen­uinely love them, you'll smile even more. So def­i­nitely smile at yourself.

It sounds ridicu­lous, but there's a def­i­nite phys­i­o­log­i­cal feed­back loop. If you gen­uinely smile, you will cheer your­self up emo­tion­ally too (ie, the energy you're pour­ing into your­self will increase). Ie, phys­i­cal state affects emo­tional state. As nutty as it sounds, this is well recog­nised. See? Here's proof:

One thing to note with smiles. Humans are very good at assess­ing the truth­ful­ness of a smile. In other words, telling a fake smile from a real smile. What it comes down to is the very small mus­cles around the eyes (the orbic­u­laris oculi). So, try to smile so it looks gen­uine to you. Even if you're not feel­ing it inter­nally to start with, do it any­way. Yes, you will feel like a crazy per­son, but it's just you & the mir­ror, so who cares, right? If noth­ing else, laugh­ing at how nutty you look try­ing to fake a real smile might set you off into gen­uine smil­ing. If so, great!

Tap While You Do It
Using EFT while you say "I love you" will do a hell of a lot of good. Don't panic too much about the details, just tap on the var­i­ous points around the body, say­ing "I love you" on each point. If you feel like some­thing is shift­ing, feel free to stay on that one point, say­ing "I love you" over & over until it shifts. If not, no biggie.

I guar­an­tee you, a few loops around your body & you'll start to feel­ing sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter about yourself.

Use Your Name
This will help you con­nect with yourself.

Even bet­ter than this, use a name or nick­name you com­monly used when you were younger. An awful lot of pain in our lives starts very young. Con­nect­ing with & lov­ing our younger selves helps bring up, heal & remove this pain in the sim­plest, least painful way pos­si­ble. You'll feel it.

All these things help amp up the basic exer­cise. Sim­ply use any (or all!) of them that res­onate with you. I've been doing this every morn­ing recently (my shower has a mir­ror oppo­site, so I get to tap & wash at the same time), & it gets each day off to a bril­liant start.