Written by: Rita Farruggia, 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.
Stop being at war with yourself, life is too short. Learn how to fall in love with yourself and your life to create the life you want.
As humans, it is so easy to get caught up in fear-based thinking. Dwelling on thoughts of what you don’t have. Afraid of ending toxic relationships because you fear you might be alone. Not liking the feeling of being alone so we distract ourselves from ourselves. Dwelling on the past: past mistakes, deception or unfair circumstances. This type of thinking affects how we feel about ourselves, our energy levels, how productive we are, the choices we make, our confidence and our clarity to see opportunities in life.
A lot of people create a self-image of what they think they need to be in order to be accepted by everybody. We create an image of perfection and we always don't fit this image and this creates an inner struggle within us. If you don’t self-reflect, you can’t see your way out of stopping repetitive human behavior patterns that causes self-sabotage because behind every behavioral pattern are subconscious beliefs and values from our past experiences. If you don’t self-reflect in order to identify your programming so you can reprogram yourself, you will continue to have self-sabotaging behavior without even recognizing it.
Unknowingly you can stop yourself from achieving your goals because you don’t want to experience failure if you actually tried so you say to yourself, “I didn't really fail because I never really tried”.
We can create change and we deserve a change in terms of upgrading our life through our self-awareness and mental reprogramming. Certain things are put in place to keep us where we are if we don't recognize what those are, it will be very hard to transition. This is why we need to study ourselves; self-awareness is key to everything. Self-awareness allows you to build self-confidence, clarity, creativity, making good decisions that are right for you, success, choosing the right life mate and the list goes on.
If you're trying to get from where you are right now to a different place in life, you can start the process of changing. One of the things I did to help me is romanticizing my life. There are so many things you can do to romanticize your life. Romanticizing your life is falling truly in love with yourself. Get to know who you are, knowing who you are is powerful. Knowing your strength is truly powerful and knowing your abilities is life-changing. How could you change your life, if you don't even know ways to get to know yourself. The journey I took to get to know myself is one I'm most grateful for because now I know who I am. I just don't let things happen to me anymore. I don’t find myself in a situation that could have been avoided because I let my own insecurities allow me to ignore red flags. This allows you to know if a situation is not for you before it even happens. You can cultivate getting to know yourself by spending time alone. I'm not saying drop everybody in your life. If you need to cut off toxic people because they are not good for you then do it and just spend more time by yourself. Figure out things that make you truly happy, get to know yourself on a deeper level. Learn about your desires. Put yourself into an uncomfortable situation alone, for example, if you are an introvert, start saying hi to strangers when going for walks or at the coffee shop. Do something to put you out of your comfort zone. Go to yoga classes alone, go to work out classes alone, go on hikes alone, go on walks alone, go to the movie alone. Go to the park and read a book under a tree by yourself.
Do two things that you would normally bring people with you and do it alone. Just spend time with yourself so you're able just to have you, and your thoughts. During that process really appreciate that alone time and whatever comes up during that alone time, allow it. You can also go on a solo trip, driving two hours out of town to stay at a local resort or bed and breakfast. Just getting out of what you're used to and putting yourself in an uncomfortable environment by yourself, you will learn so much about yourself in that time and make that time intentional. Test yourself, get to know yourself. Make sure it's a time of peace and is enjoyable. Just go enjoy yourself and find peace. Be grateful for the moment.
I try to give myself the best to myself first before I give it to anybody else. Writing in my journal, meditating, doing a morning stretch, yoga, skincare routine, taking a long hot bath, working out, going on a long walk in the morning or just sitting on the couch reading articles or listening to podcasts. Take the time for yourself to just relax to give energy back to yourself. So, you are not just giving energy to everybody else all the time. This prevents feeling completely drained at the end of the day or week. This is really important with the process of loving yourself and every part of your cell not just the good parts of ourselves. Apart of loving ourselves is facing the not-so-great parts of ourselves/our life. Doing Shadow work, shadow work is facing that side of you that holds on to trauma. A space you react out of when you're insecure, things that you are holding on to that may cause you to self-sabotage. It’s a darker side of yourself that can really consume all of you if you let it. A part of loving yourself and going on that self-love journey is facing our traumas and working on releasing our traumas. If you have any past trauma, letting it go or forgive somebody for will give you inner peace, do it. Accept this part of yourself, work on it, learn what limiting beliefs you formed as a result of the trauma and why you reacted out of this place in certain situations and how you can correct it. You can download a free e-book on how to Overcome Limiting Beliefs: 7 Action Steps You Can Take to Stop Your Inner Voice from Holding You Back from Happy Being Well. This influences how your life will turn out, if they're not dealt with that alone can hold you back from so much of your gifts and your blessings and you don't even know it's happening.
A good way to start your self-discovery process is with journaling. You can start journaling with this journal prompt, write about who are you and what are you most excited about yourself? What are things you love about yourself? What are things that make you feel good about yourself? What are qualities you admire about yourself? Just make it a love letter to yourself. Schedule an hour out of your day to write a love letter to yourself. Happy Being Well offers a free self-care journal with 50 journal prompts designed to reveal your true desires, fears, passions and gifts.
Giving yourself time to get to know yourself and show yourself love on a daily basis makes us happy and allows us to be the best version of ourself. If you're consistently not feeling good mentally or physically. You feel like you can't accomplish much, you think you feel like you can't think clearly, you don't have any energy to actually accomplish things you want to accomplish in your life. You have to look at what is blocking you, mentally and emotionally, which involves recognizing our traumas (small or big) and releasing them. Once we release our insecurities related to our traumas then we can further build self-confidence and self-trust. Holding onto traumas holds us back. If you are used to living with traumas, building self-confidence can be a challenge and you miss out on so much of your life and opportunities because you don’t know what your true abilities are because you haven’t taken the time to get to know yourself.
This helped me start building self-confidence. I just really gave myself everything I stated above. I spent time alone in my house to meditate, journal, take long hot baths to meditate in, talking walks in nature, traveled solo at retreats or in different cities. I gave myself what I needed at every level of my life whether it be big or small. I was self-confidence-building by getting to know myself.
My weight loss journey made me realize how you can create an awesome space for yourself because I was taking care of myself and giving myself a healthy lifestyle. I saw something not only physically change but mentally change as well. I saw it start to flow in other areas of my life because I just slowly started building new habits like positive self-talk. The self-trust that I can do things because I was showing myself. This builds self-confidence over time. If you don't believe you can do something, you have to really dive deep and figure out where that is coming from and what can you do right now that you have the confidence to do that can show you, you're capable. Overtime you build trust with yourself and self-confidence. I like to call this, romanticizing yourself and your life like you do when you are first dating someone, date yourself.
Things I do to romanticize my life is pushing myself to experience the things I want to experience. Living the life that I want, travelling to different places, and doing things that truly excites me. What excites you? What brings you the most Joy when you picture yourself truly being the person you know you're meant to be?
When you live in state of anxiety, you are living in the past and worrying about the future this causes you to self-sabotage over and over again. It’s hard to be happy living in this state. Living in the future of what could go wrong is something you have to learn to let go of.
Once you realized the lost opportunities you lost because you reacted to certain situations in a certain way and once you realize where it’s coming from. It is a lot easier to let that way of living go when you realize it’s preventing you from fulfilling your potential. When you are acting from a place of being so desperate to get out of the place that you are in, you miss out on what’s in front of you and it makes you wish you could go back and really take some moments to heal from your past. You can’t see clearly when you have a trauma brain. When you are at peace, you see things in a better light and no longer contribute to negative self-talk or living out of fear.
When you are working on yourself, you truly love yourself. Start enjoying even small things in life right now and not everything has to be big and flashy. Appreciating everything that comes your way and realizing that big and flashy thing that you want to have comes from these little things is what is making that big and flashy thing into fruition. Be grateful for even those little things because you know it’s on its way. Making time for yourself to romanticize your life to make yourself feel loved and safe. Do whatever it is that you want to do, believe in yourself, know yourself and show love to yourself to love yourself.
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Rita Farruggia, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Rita Farruggia is the CEO and Founder of HappyBeingWell.com, with the mission of being the 1 Self-Care Community in the world. Her mission is to awaken a billion people globally to their love while teaching them how to love themselves, reprogram their subconscious, align with truth, universal laws, and create a daily spiritual practice that involves self-care practices. HappyBeingWell.com offers the tools/products, education, and inspiration to use in our daily spiritual & self-care practice. Rita believes a daily spiritual practice is not limited to yoga and/or meditation. The truth is when we are manually cleaning our dishes, we often go into a trance. This is also a form of meditation. Rita believes our personal hygiene (self-care) and home cleaning sessions can also be our spiritual practices. Self-care and spiritual practices changed Rita's life, increased her ability to love herself.
