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Lessons in self-love are so abundant, aren’t they. We might not realize it at first though, as they are often visits from our inner critic…but moments in which we hear our inner critic but decide to make a different choice!
I wanted to share another moment with you where my inner critic got nasty with me but I decided not to listen. I shared this story with the Be Your Own Beloved class soon after I came back from this moment but I thought here a bit later that I might share it with you too. There I was, on another bike ride…when my inner critic aka my gremlins rose up again.
Why do they keep attacking me on bike rides is my question! Here’s what happened the last time!
This time they put their claws into a different story though.
The one about why I’ve been single for a long while. These days I’m more clear than ever that this solo time has been with big healing and much purpose but at that moment my gremlins grabbed on when I forget that for even just a moment.
There I was, happily biking home from reading by the ocean and they jumped me.
Started telling me all the reasons I am presently single. Ranting blame on my personality, my physicality, telling me all the reasons I wasn’t presently loved by another.
That day happened to be ‘Being Our Own Friend’ day in Be Your Own Beloved and I remembered in the nick of time before the gremlins got to the point of no return and as I biked along I thought about what I would say to a friend if I heard her speaking about herself in such a disrespectful way and started speaking in a whisper aloud (to overpower the gremlins in my mind) positive things about myself. Things that even felt uncomfortable to say but that I know I wanted to say if I were truly going to be my own friend.
As the words came out I even got teary. Thinking about how far I’ve come in self-love and how at the same time it never ends and moments arise that we get to put it into practice.
About how even though I do these activities in Be Your Own Beloved a lot (each time I run the class and often in between) it never ceases to amaze me that there are more layers of healing, more chances to show up and be my own beloved.
Soon after my inner critic and I came to a cease fire (or rather I put it in its place and claimed a different story) I came to a stoplight and i knew this heart was there and hopped off my bike to take this photo. To remember this moment where I got the chance to be my own friend.
I wanted to do something special today and offer a giveaway for a spot in the upcoming session of Be Your Own Beloved! Usually with giveaways I like to just make it an ‘enter your name’ kind of opportunity as I really want these giveaways to be accessible to folks who might have never taken a self-portrait before (so don’t worry, you don’t have to take a self-portrait to enter).
But while Be Your Own Beloved is about self-portraiture, it is just as much about showing up for ourselves in the moments when our inner critic might try to stop us from taking that self-portrait (and I’ve got some playful tools in the class to deal with that critic)!
So to enter this draw for the spot in the class I would love for you to leave a comment and share a short story of a moment when you came up against your inner critic and made a different choice than your usual one.
I also wanted to keep this draw open for a longer time than I usually would so that perhaps this might be a chance to invite in a #beyourownbeloved moment in the coming week and do just that…listen to your inner critic and then say NOPE, I choose a different story today (and if facing your inner critic feels like a really really hard task, please enter anyways even if you don’t have a moment to share). This could be as simple as smiling at yourself in the mirror rather than looking away. Or it could be stopping a cycle of negative self-talk in your head and just saying ‘I need a break from this today’.
So all you need to do is leave a comment and I’ll be doing a random draw for the spot!
The Giveaway is now closed but you can still join in on the August session of Be Your Own Beloved!