“Hello and Welcome to Episode 26 of ‘Tuesday Choose Day’, my inspirational weekly post.
My aim here is to inspire you to feel more positive and more confident within yourself to create the change you want to happen in your life.” I’m offering you here empowering strategies to help you to take control, feel better and feel good! every Tuesday straight to your inbox.
Today’s Inspiration To Brighten Your Day…
With low self-esteem, you will probably make a habit of placing other’s needs above your own. When you do this, it’s easy to lose yourself and in doing so, to allow others needs to take priority. Not tending to your needs is a risky business because it inevitably leaves you feeling isolated, deflated and needing validation from others. This further erodes self-esteem and feeds anxiety.
So often my clients tell me when discussing anxiety related to their relationship dilemmas… “I need to be with him – the truth is I don’t know how to be on my own anymore.”
When I hear this it tells me that they have simply abandoned their home of self-love and self-appreciation. They have lost their sense of self and their self-esteem is in tatters. Let me explain what I mean…
When you are single, you live for you – you do what you want to do, you spend and invest time and money in yourself, your entire focus is on you solely. When you’re not in a relationship, you don’t really have to consider anyone else too closely – it’s all about you! Someone, many years ago, shared an idea about how we are all like an island and how we each inhabit our own island – the island of our self, taking care of our own needs. Even when we are tiny, we develop a sense of egocentricity – babies firmly believe their needs are above anyone else’s and they scream until they get them met.
So to think of yourself as that island means that when you are single, you tend to your island every day, and you make it beautiful. It is nice place to relax, and people on other islands might even admire its beauty and how well it is kept. One day perhaps someone is so attracted to your island that they come over and visit sometimes.
They perhaps don’t have the know-how to create and care for such a beautiful island and they might invite you to visit their island. You like this person, so you go. You are nurturing by nature, so instinctively you want to improve this island and make it as welcoming and habitable as your own island, so you decide to stay and set to work together creating another beautiful island. You are so happy and so busy creating and tending to this new island in need that over time, you begin to forget about your own island over there.
After a good many years of tending to this new island, perhaps your efforts are no longer so well noticed or appreciated. Maybe you’ve just got bored. And you begin to remember your island – the one you used to love so much. So you decide to go visit.
When you get there (if you can remember the way), it has been years since you visited and it is now overgrown and feels forgotten. You feel sad and perhaps you have regrets that you didn’t visit sooner.
The key learning here is not to forget about your island when you are tempted to take an island hopping adventure. By all means, take the pleasure of helping someone else to make their island special, even perhaps, to create a home together on that island – but never forget to visit your island regularly, to nourish and nurture all that is special to you.
I wonder how you would choose for your island to look? You might like to create a vision board to remind you to pay attention to your island. How would you want an island that represents you to look and feel? Find pictures online or in magazines and cut and paste them onto a large piece of card. Tend to yourself as you would tend to your island – allow beauty and tranquility to flourish there.
Enjoy…
Until next time
With love and light x
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