The not so graceful art of befriending yourself

Fertilizing the soil of our souls before we plant new beliefs

This year of authoring beauty is about nurturing core beliefs that circle us back to curiosity, joy and wonder as our default, in place of the ones that loop us into negativity and suffering.

Those loops of suffering are rooted in our core beliefs, which were formed when we were quite small, while we were mostly operating out of our lizard brain. Fear, and our resulting tactics, got etched into our psyches as an unconscious set of concrete if/then rules for survival.

This foundational stonework makes it hard to change, because even our attempts to evolve are filtered through these beliefs.

Maybe I notice that I sabotage my relationships by running away when I feel vulnerable. That’s a big first step to bring the rule into consciousness. At that point, most of us go into problem solving mode. Now that we know, we can simply stop running, right?

Oh, if only.

That gorgeous higher level part of the brain that sees the pattern and wishes to trust that we are safe in vulnerable relationships is not actually the one writing the story once we feel unsafe. The survival brain takes over and we’re off to the races, running once again.

This is where things get dicey. We feel even worse than before we became aware of our self-sabotaging pattern. We now know we run for no good reason. We shame ourselves for the harm we’ve caused, to ourselves and others. That shame is like etching the problematic beliefs even deeper into the stone.

This is why this is a year of authoring a more beautiful story. This work takes time, practice and some serious groundwork.

We are going to take some time upfront on the groundwork, on fertilizing the soil to create a welcoming environment for the new beliefs we are going to plant, the ones we want to operate from when we feel vulnerable.

I invite you to practice the art of befriending yourself.

Just like taking up any new art, it’s awkward at first, with hit and miss results. We feel like frauds!

Who are we to love this battered being and her broken mind, guarded heart, inner and outer scars, and all of the crazy that escapes when she is pushed too far?

Even as I write those words, I love each of you from afar, because we all know how tall an order it is to love the parts of ourselves that are so clearly liabilities in the lovability game that our culture espouses.

This work of befriending yourself is not fluff. It’s got to stand up to those deeply etched beliefs of inadequacy, abandonment, rejection, and failure.

What would an unconditional love letter to yourself sound like? What are the words of adoration that might come forth while gazing at your naked body while envisioning your heart and soul within?

If you wish to bring these words deeper, you might speak them aloud as truth in the comments, which will also embolden all of us in our own tentative words of compassion and presence for ourselves. Community alchemizes the work.

Befriend yourself in whatever way that resonates, and then repeat as a ritual every day for at least the next week. Pay attention. Notice without judgment or pressure what arises from there.

“Beauty must be defined as who we are, else the idea itself becomes a violence against us.”

- Collective Authors, Expect Resistance: A Field Guide

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