Written by: Tess Leigh-Phillips, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
As a coach and therapist, my main areas of focus are heartbreak and relationship issues. Yet, I spend less time talking about the relationship issues as I do about the individual.
Once we understand ourselves, everything around us becomes easier to deal with. Once we accept and forgive ourselves, the same applies.
This last year has been strange and difficult — the sadness, frustrations, and losses that the pandemic has brought. Divorces are soaring. Grief, panic, heartbreak, and struggle. The demands and anxieties of the holiday season, followed by the looming New Year, and the pressure to do better, be better, meet our goals. Even the most zen-like of us can be dragged in.
Yet, while you may not be able to control what’s going on around you, you can go within and find a place from which to begin your transformation. By really learning how to love yourself, you will find your external world-changing as your internal one does.
My clients come to me in the most broken states. They are frightened. Their world has been torn apart suddenly - or it is in the very process of crumbling. Seeing the light in the midst of this pain can seem impossible.
So, I tell them:
Start with yourself – not with the why’s where’s or who’s.
Let’s start where we are, right now in this moment. Let’s take a pause and go inward — this is the best place from which to reset. There is often pain associated with taking a pause, with doing nothing. Emotions come up.
We are forced to acknowledge where we are right now instead of focusing on the past or the future. If you find it painful to stop and acknowledge yourself, if you feel the need to be busy all the time, your soul is probably in need of some TLC.
And at a guess, I bet you have high expectations of yourself too. Right?
Listen, please don’t put yourself through the wringer with resolutions and plans that you then beat yourself up for not doing. Don’t avoid what hurts by filling up your schedule or acting out in destructive ways. (Another glass of wine or online purchase, anyone?!)
Instead, show yourself time, patience, and care.
Loving yourself is a term often thrown about. Many of us don’t even know quite what it looks like or how it feels - or if it’s something we even need to think about!
Yet, in my work with women, I often find that a lack of self-love, of self-esteem, is at the very core of things.
It comes disguised in many ways, of course, hiding in many different behaviors, in patterns of toxic relationships, an inability or unwillingness to set boundaries, a habit of isolation, or a need for attention. It lurks within the guise of perfectionism, and it skulks within the fear of abandonment and rejection.
Where to start? First, stop putting pressure on yourself to meet your self-imposed expectations. Get out of your head and back into your body. How are you really feeling? Can you be accepting of this moment, right now?
Because you are okay just as you are, I promise you.
Trust me - you don’t want to wait for a crisis, to realize you have nothing in the tank. You don’t want to give and give emotionally and physically without building yourself up as well.
This ‘loving yourself’ lark is more than baths and chocolate. It is consciously deciding to forgive yourself for your mistakes. It is being patient with yourself. It is being aware of the chatter in your head and not attaching to your thoughts. It is setting and sticking to boundaries. It is searching fiercely to find what makes your soul sing in life - and then doing it! It is facing reality - because even though things may not be ”perfect,” you know deep in your core that you are enough.
And you know that you can handle anything. This is loving yourself.
Easy? — not always.
But worthwhile? Absolutely.
Tess Leigh Phillips, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Tess Leigh Phillips is an expert in the field of overcoming personal trials and accessing your inner power. As founder and CEO of Your Happy Heart Coach, she reaches thousands of broken women and passionately seeks to help them rebuild. After a turbulent past, lifelong anxiety, and a battle with addiction, Tess turned her situation around, with astonishing results. Her warm, loving approach has captivated an audience searching for true change, and deeper connection. Teaching women how to access their inner resources, break toxic patterns of behavior, and turn pain into strength, Tess says her mission is clear. “I’m here to remind you that you are so much bigger than your current circumstances. You can rise up from anything.” With a powerful message of possibility, Your Happy Heart Coach continues to impact women across the world on a daily basis.
