Have you ever had a day when you blew it and you got upset with yourself… a lot? When you were upset with yourself, you were not the kindest, most loving person to others. You see, if I am angry with myself, self-critical and beat myself up emotionally and mentally, I’m going to do the same to you (I did this for a long time). If I have a deep love for myself, I am going have a deeper love for you. For this reason, before we examine our relationships with other people, we need to first look at the relationship we have with ourselves.
The most important relationship we have is our relationship with ourselves. (We can only get to know God in the context of knowing ourselves at some level).
One of the benefits of being in quarantine was that I got to spend a lot of time alone from all the noise of life. This enabled me to get to know, learn, accept, embrace and get excited about who I am (and start 5 businesses!). Now I thrive. You’ve had enough time to be alone with your own thoughts. That was a great benefit of the quarantine.
Knowing ourselves is one part. Another part is building up and encouraging ourselves. Let’s address this in turn.
Build Yourself Up
Building ourselves up and take many forms. One of which is increasing our value. We have a lot more discretionary time now. Unfortunately, many spend time watching the news and scrolling through social media feeds. This is adding zero value to our lives for the most part. Instead, why don’t we read books to improve our relationship with God, ourselves and improve our financial picture. Study how to build a business and create wealth (taboo to many Christians, unfortunately – I’ll address this in another post). We can study ways to make our lifestyle better. There’s really no limit to what we can do to improve ourselves during this time of quarantine — don’t waste it. Build yourself up.
Encourage Yourself
God has made us all unique. I delight in watching sunsets. I live near a lake, so I love to walk around and sit by the lake. Physical training gives me a rush! Reading books (not digital) is something I’ve always relished but never had time to do with the busyness before the quarantine. These things encourage me. What are things that encourage you? Make time for those things. Buy new clothes, fix yourself up – give yourself a makeover. The better you look, the better you feel. Whatever encourages you, simply do it.
Action Steps:
Write a list of your best traits. This will help you to get to know yourself better. Reflect on this list daily.
Build yourself up. Find some areas you want to improve. Create a self improvement plan. Execute it.
Encourage yourself. Write down a list of things that encourage you. Start doing those things on a regular basis.