Build a Relationship With Yourself

This is my first post in the new Self-Compassion theme, which means today marks four whole weeks since we’ve been doing this dang Coffee, Grit, and Inspiration thing! I shuffled around my planned posts a little bit so that I could talk about how the relationships we have with ourselves influences the relationships we’re able to build with others. If you can build a better relationship with yourself, it will enable you to interact differently, and more openly, with those around you.

First, a personal story.

My Internal Story of Doubt

Several years ago, I was asked to start leading a team of people. Up until that point, I had lots of experience being a leader within a team, but had never before been the actual person responsible for managing a team of people. This change was a significant one for me in a few ways. 

Firstly, I really enjoyed the job I was doing at the time, which was delivering software requirements documents, managing a software product, and helping to deliver changes to that product out to our internal customers. I found so much fulfillment in that work for a variety of reasons, but the short story is that I was struggling with giving that up in order to become a people manager. Secondly, I was filled with fear that I wouldn’t be able to do it right, and that I was not up to the task. I worried I wasn’t smart enough, or skilled enough. I worried about basically everything.

My internal story went like this:

1. But I really like what I’m doing now!
2. I don’t know if I’ll like this new thing.
3. I don’t even know if I’ll be good at it!
4. What if I give up this thing I love for this other thing and I don’t like it?
5. What if I mess something up and get fired?
6. Everyone will know if I’m not good at it!
7. What if everyone else is better than me?
8. What if I can’t do it?
9. More, and endless, “what if”s.

You get the picture.

The relationship I had with myself was seriously on the rocks. I had doubts about my capabilities, my fitness for the role, my knowledge, everything. I wasn’t happy with myself. Basically, I felt like I just sucked in all aspects.

Comparing Myself

At the same time, I was introduced to another teammate that had already been promoted to a similar position that I was being asked to fill. This person seemed to know everything that I didn’t. She was poised, collected, seriously fashionable, beautiful, smart…everything that I, in that frame of mind, felt that I was most decidedly not.

When I met her, I had thoughts like, “Why do they want me to do this when they have her? She’ll be so much better than me. She will see immediately I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ll always feel inferior. I’ll always be trying to prove myself. This is terrible! I am terrible! I can’t do this!”

When we first started trying to bond, I let these thoughts color my relationship with her. I let how I felt towards myself influence how I felt about her. I tried not to get too close, I kept her at arm’s length, and all the while I was trying to learn what I could from her so that I could be as good as her.

The Turning Point

Then we went to dinner.

Six hours, two steaks, several shared cigarettes (shhhh) and uncounted martinis later, I discovered several critical things:

1. She, like me, has had bad relationships in the past. 
2. She’s a parent, just like me.
3. Just like me, she worried about being “good enough”.
4. Possibly most astounding to me, she felt intimidated by me.

The relationship I had with myself, the bad things I was thinking about myself, colored how I thought about her, and almost made me miss out on being able to (now) count a truly amazing person as one of my closest, dearest, and treasured friends.

My Relationship With Me = My Relationship With You

When we hold ourselves in low esteem, we don’t realize (or at least, I didn’t) how those negative thoughts about ourselves are affecting how we relate to other people. Building up our relationships with ourselves helps us be better able to build relationships with others.

Think about how negative thoughts you have about yourself may be informing the thoughts you have about other people. Do you wonder what your significant other sees in you? Are you living in fear that your friends will discover the “real you” and not like you anymore? Do you fear showing your real self to your coworkers because you think they will reject you?

Now consider, how much of your fears are based on how you think about yourself rather than something others are likely to think about you?

Something I learned from Noom is that we have a tendency to assume we know the future. When we do or don’t do something because we think we will know what will happen, we are predicting the future. We are basing our current behaviors on what we think is going to happen. And when we don’t think good things about ourselves, we are making decisions and changing our behaviors based on what we think others will think or do…because that’s what we think about ourselves.

Starting the Change: An Exercise

If you’re ready to build a better relationship with yourself, it starts with how you talk to yourself, what you say, and how you treat yourself.

Take a second and write down everything you said to yourself today. At least, as much as you can remember. I say this because I don’t know about you, but I have approximately one million and one thoughts go through my head in a day, and I’m not sure I could write them all down.

So write down all the things you can remember, the things that stood out, that you said to yourself, about yourself, in the privacy of your own head (or even out loud) today. Good, bad, and ugly.

I’ll wait.

Got your list?

Now, classify those things into positive, neutral, and negative buckets.

How many do you have in each bucket? Were your thoughts more positive or were they more negative? Somewhere in between?

Where’s the Real Evidence?

Think about the evidence you have to support those negative things. In many cases, we won’t have much real, tangible, valid evidence for those negative thoughts. Sometimes asking yourself to “prove” that the negative thing is true can help you realize that it’s actually not. Not really. 

Change the Negative to Positive

Now, think about how you might be able to change those things into something more positive. When I did this exercise, I found a ton of really, truly, mean things I was saying to myself in off-the-cuff kinds of ways.

Something I found interesting is that many times when I talk to myself, it’s almost like I’m talking to someone else. In other words, I say “you” instead of “I”. I’m not sure if that’s significant, but maybe it’s a good blog post for later on in the theme!

Anyway, here’s what I came up with to change some of my internal story to something more positive.

If you’re struggling with this part, try thinking about what you’d say to a friend or a loved one who had said something like that about themselves. What would you tell your best friend if they told you they couldn’t do something? Or if they felt like they looked terrible today? You probably wouldn’t agree with them, right? You’d probably say something encouraging. So why not try saying encouraging things to yourself?

Be Affirmatively Awesome

Simple, positive things that you can repeat to yourself every day, like those listed above, are called affirmations, which you may have heard of before. 

While affirmation statements can sound weird, and it may feel awkward saying them (especially out loud!), they do work. When you catch yourself in that negative thought cycle, try out an affirmation to snap yourself out of it. Put your affirmations on post it notes and stick them to your computer monitor or mirror. Write them in your journal. Put them in a note on your phone. Whatever works to help you remember the positive things when you’re feeling negative. 

By repeating your affirmations to yourself, all the time, every day, you will start to treat yourself more kindly. You will start to build a better relationship with yourself. Who knows? You might even start to like yourself!

More Affirmation Inspiration

Need more affirmative inspiration? Here you go!

• Examples of Positive Affirmations | Essential Life Skills: Several examples of positive affirmations that might work for you.
• Affirmation | The Yogic Encyclopedia | Ananda.org: A definition of affirmations and how to practice them
• 19 Positive Affirmations That’ll Change The Way You Think | Daily Burn: More examples of affirmations

Over the next several weeks, we’ll talk more about self-compassion, and give more strategies and tips for changing your relationship with yourself. 

In the meantime, happy affirming!

What’s something you say to yourself sometimes that you think you can change with an affirmation? Is there something positive you already say to yourself when you are feeling negative? Share in comments. See you next time!

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