Becki

7 Powerful & Tangible Ways To Practice Self-Love

January 13, 2021 By Becki Leave a Comment

Self-love is a major buzzword nowadays.

…But how do we actually put it into practice?

To me, it’s about turning towards ourselves – offering ourselves a lil’ kindness and compassion.

I won’t lie, this is hard.

Especially in a world which (let’s face it) profits from our insecurities.

The powers-that-be want us to not feel good enough… so that we’ll keep buying stuff to ‘fix’ what’s ‘wrong’ with us.

The way to fight back?

Practice self-love!

So if you’re feelin’ rebellious (like me, always), here are my top 7 most powerful – and tangible – ways to cultivate deep self-love.

1. Self-love ritual

My favourite ritual is one I offer in almost every group course or workshop, and I practice it every single day.

You can perform this ritual by journalling (my personal preference) but you can also do it through meditation.

Here’s the simple 3-step process:

Clear – let go of anything which no longer serves you
Celebrate – consciously turn your awareness to how awesome you are
Call in – tap into your desires and decide what you’re ready to bring into fruition

Yes it’s simple, but it’s powerful. Feel free to make this your own in whatever way feels magical or beautiful to you.

2. Mirror work

When you catch sight of yourself in a mirror, what happens? Do you tend to focus on the flaws or what doesn’t look ‘right’? If so, you’re sure as hell not alone.

A beautiful way to practice self-love is to tell yourself (in your head or out loud) that you love yourself, every time you look in the mirror.

Especially if you’re naked.

This can feel super challenging at first; so stay kind to yourself.

Over time, it’ll become a habit – you’ll start sending love to yourself before launching into self-criticism.

3. Self-love meditation

Meditation – particularly yoga nidra (yogic sleep) – is a super powerful way to interact with your highest self. Who loves you, btw.

My favourite practice involves focusing on each area of the body and sending love to each part.

This is particularly healing when working with parts of the body we might have rejected (e.g. our belly, thighs, or stretch marks).

We make the whole of ourselves welcome by showering our body with love.

Just as it is.

If you prefer listening to guided meditations, check out my self-love yoga nidra meditation below!

4. Hype file

I have a ‘hype file’ I keep for business; a list of testimonials, reviews, and kind words I’ve received from students and clients.

One day I was reading through it and feelin’ soooo good about myself that I thought, ‘I need to make a hype file for my life!’.

To do this, create a list of:
Things you like about yourself
What you’ve accomplished
Anything you’re proud of
Your unique gifts and abilities
How awesome you are

Add to it whenever you’re feeling great – and review it whenever self-doubt creeps in.

5. Bye file

Equally as important as the ‘hype file’ is the ‘bye file’.

This is a list of what’s not working for you in your life, and what you’re committing to letting go of.

This is a radical act of self-love because you’re recognising that your happiness and well-being is a priority.

To do this, create a list of things which drain your energy.

Commit to systematically releasing them from your life (and take 1 small action towards making this happen!)

6. Self-love date

Take yourself on a date.

I’m serious. Why should date night treats be reserved for couples?

Whether you’re single or in a relationship, take yourself out or treat yourself to a night in, and do whatever you want to do.

I do this for myself at least once per week – for example this week I:

Ordered my fave vegan sushi, kombucha, and dessert
Took a long-ass bath with my fave bath salts
Watched a movie I’d been dying to watch for ages BY MYSELF

(My options are limited, given that we’re currently in a global pandemic).

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy – it just has to be for you.

7. Practice pleasure

Practicing pleasure tells your brain that you deserve to feel good.

Which you do!

This could be as simple as listening to your favourite music while you work, buying yourself flowers because you like the smell, or maybe even just taking a big, long, deep breath once every hour.

There’s no ‘right’ way to do pleasure.

All that’s required is to tune in to what would make you feel even 1% better, and giving yourself that gift.

How To Forgive (When You Really Can’t Forget)

January 6, 2021 By Becki

You find out your partner’s been cheating on you.

Or your closest friend has been gossiping about you behind your back.

Or a family member has totally flaked and let you down. Again.

What do you do?

Scream at them until the anger fizzles out? Pretend everything’s fine, but secretly harbour resentment? Cut them out of your life?

Personally, I’ve done all of these. And none of them resolved the way I felt, or made the situation any better.

The true secret to healing, in my experience, is forgiveness.

Practicing forgiveness has freed me from heavy, stagnant emotions that weighed me down for years. And this is the key message here – it freed me. It had little to no impact (as far as I know) on the people who hurt me.

Forgetting isn’t the answer

The real difficulty with forgiveness is that we can’t just simply forget what someone did… but the more we relive it in our mind, the more we reinforce our pain. GAH!

There’s no doubt about it; forgiving someone takes practice, patience, and enormous willpower.

And as with any new practice, it’s important to start small.

This means practicing forgiveness for small stuff (like that guy grabbing the last vegan doughnut in the coffee shop when you’re frickin’ starving… damn him to hell), and eventually working up to processing events or actions that we hold more blame, anger or resentment about (such as your boyfriend having sex with another person in your bed… you know who you are, motherfucker).

They might still be in your life

I’m currently practicing forgiveness towards a person who’s still in my life (for their sake, I won’t share the details).

Sometimes, all I want to do – and had been doing, until recently – is be angry at them for what they did.

Needless to say, they hurt me deeply. Their actions caused me so much emotional and psychological pain, I wasn’t sure our relationship would ever recover.

And, frankly, it didn’t matter:

How much they apologised
Whether they took responsibility for their actions
If they promised it would never happen again

…I still wanted them to suffer for what they did to me. I was so angry, so full of rage, so shocked and distraught.

And yet, I also still wanted this person to be part of my life. I knew deep down that this one action didn’t represent who they were as a human. I knew that they were acting out of fear, and had done so (selfishly) because that’s all they knew how to do.

Still, you can’t find wholeness in the same place you got broken.

This person wasn’t the key to my healing; I was.

Nobody can make us feel anything

Let’s say you’re stuck in traffic. You’re already late for work, feeling anxious about an upcoming meeting, and you just want to get moving. As soon as the traffic starts to move, a guy cuts in front of you – and the lights go back to red.

How do you feel?

Probably pretty pissed off, right? Maybe you’d express a choice expletive or two.

But what if I told you that the driver didn’t make you feel that way? That, in fact, nobody can make you feel anything at all, whether it’s positive or negative?

We feel the way we do because of the meaning we give to certain events.

We may be triggered by a stimulus (in this case, the driver), but the cause of our emotion is the meaning we give to the event (i.e., that the driver is an inconsiderate ballsack).

Since the cause of our emotional pain is the meaning we give to any particular event, action, or situation, we can therefore take back control of our emotional experience by changing that meaning.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. – Rumi

How to practice forgiveness

1. Forgive for your own benefit

Start by recognising that your forgiveness practice is for your benefit, not anybody else’s.

You’re healing your own emotional wounds, rather than attempting to repair your relationship with the person who’s hurt you (but this may be a natural next step, depending on the situation).

2. Allow yourself to feel the pain

Sit with whatever emotion arises when you think about what the person has done.

What story are you telling yourself about how they behaved? What did it say about them, or about you? How does it feel in your body, and your heart?

Try freewriting or meditating, and give yourself permission to really feel it.

3. Identify the benefits of not forgiving

Yep, you read that right. Take a moment to identify what you’ve been gaining by not forgiving this person.

Have you been able to avoid taking responsibility for your part in it? Have you been able to make them feel guilty, and wield emotional power over them? Have you managed to avoid facing up to the reality of it?

4. Decide what it’ll cost you if you don’t forgive

Take a moment to identify what it’ll cost you emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, or otherwise if you don’t forgive this person.

What is it already costing you? How is it affecting your mental or physical well-being? How will it affect your future relationship(s) with yourself and others?

5. Empathise with them

Now that you (hopefully) have a couple of compelling reasons to practice forgiveness, take a moment to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

What might they have been feeling, and needing, for them to act the way they did?
What stories might they have been telling themselves, in order to justify their actions?
What experiences taught them that this behaviour is acceptable?

Finally, set the intention to forgive this person. Repeat to yourself, “I see and feel the pain you’ve caused me, and it’s my intention to forgive you”.

With practice, this process empowers us to shift our perspective, cultivate compassion (for ourselves and others), and assign a different meaning to our experience.

We can begin to forgive, even if we can’t forget.

8 Subtle Signs You’re Putting Too Much Pressure On Yourself (& How To Stop)

September 16, 2020 By Becki

Experience less stress in an instant – learn how to recognise these 8 sneaky signs you’re putting too much pressure on yourself (and how to stop the sabotage!).

If we want less stress, it’s time to free ourselves from the trap of “I have to”.

So often, we get stressed because we tell ourselves we have to do stuff that we don’t really want to do:

I have to go to work every day at the job I hate, because I have to pay my bills
I have to look ‘perfect’ all the time, because I have to get others to like me
And I have to stay busy 24/7, because I have to get everything done

I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted just reading that list.

When we dig deeper, however, we often discover that our “have to”s are just excuses we use to keep ourselves stuck, small, and (frankly) miserable.

We create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do it. You have to. I don’t feel that anymore.
– Oprah winfrey

It’s super sneaky self-sabotage.

We don’t really want to venture too far outside of our little bubble of safety and comfort… because even if it’s not ideal, at least it’s familiar.

Anything we do to push ourselves outside of that zone – even if it’s to go after what we say we want – can be seriously scary.

Of course, external pressure does also exist.

Our partners, bosses, parents, and peers can massively pile it on, and overwhelm us with their expectations of who they want us to be.

But the most common (and most insidious) type of pressure is the kind we put on ourselves.

And the key to less stress? Learning how to let this go.

8 sneaky signs of self-imposed pressure

1.Telling yourself you’re not good enough

If we don’t feel like we’re enough as we are, we’ll constantly keep tweaking ourselves (and our business), hoping to finally get there one day. But what’s ‘good enough’ is completely subjective.

We end up on an endless and exhausting quest for perfection – unless we decide that, actually, we’re fabulous just the way we are.

2. Comparing yourself to others

It’s so easy to look at other people and wish we were more like them; especially when we’re presented with their drool-worthy ‘highlight reel’ on Instagram.

Most people don’t publicly broadcast their failures, but remember that since they’re human, they’ve definitely experienced them. Instead of comparing, stay in your own lane and make your past self your only competition.

3. Setting super high expectations

While it’s great to strive for excellence, it can go way too far – meaning we become extremely critical, judgmental, and demanding towards ourselves and others.

There’s a fine balance between wanting to create amazing work, and never wanting to accept a project as being “done”. It’s also vital that we learn to recognise when we’re aiming for ‘perfection’, or we’re unwilling to accept ourselves the way we are.

4. Being afraid to say no

If we worry excessively about what might happen if we say no, we’ll be inclined to take on far too much (and others will exploit our poor boundaries to take full advantage).

Saying no is vital to protect our precious time and energy.

5. Trying to please everyone

First of all, this is impossible. Second of all, attempting it is exhausting; it’s great to want to make people happy (in theory) but if sole our motivation is to please others, rather than to live as our authentic self, we’ll soon run into trouble.

6. Giving up before you really try

If we think that we’ll fail before we even start, we’re never going to allow ourselves to go for what we really want.

Instead of quitting at the first hurdle, we can practice ‘embracing the mess’, taking the risk to go after what we want, and see where it gets us.

7. Trying to control for all possibilities

We never have control in this life, not really. We co-create with the universe – and let’s face it, we never know for certain that we’ll make it to the end of the day alive, without any kind of tragic accident occurring.

There’s always something that could go wrong. We gotta relax into this uncertainty.

8. Never being satisfied

This can only ever lead to an absolutely miserable existence. If we never allow ourselves to feel satisfied, we’ll always be unfulfilled, constantly chasing happiness.

Instead, we can train ourselves to be grateful for what we do have, and for the progress we’ve made so far.

Experience less stress & take the pressure off

To unburden ourselves of self-imposed pressure, we simply have to remember one simple truth:

We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it (including how much pressure we put on ourselves).

We can quit forcing ourselves to do activities that drain us of our life force energy. And – if we can’t simply quit – we can empower ourselves by turning our “have to” into a “choose to”.

For example, “I have to go to this job I hate so much because I have to pay my bills” becomes “I’m choosing to go to this job so I can afford to support myself while I look for something more aligned with my purpose”.

If you’re reading this (meaning you have access to the internet and a digital device), you’re likely privileged enough that there isn’t much you truly have to do in this life.

So I invite you to see life as a glorious game.

See how much fun you can have while navigating the murky waters of life.

See how much joy and pleasure you can inject into each day, despite the challenges that come with it.

And see if, ever so slowly, that self-imposed pressure starts to lift, and you can breathe deeply again.

7 Simple Practices To Build Killer Self Confidence

September 2, 2020 By Becki

I tap my feet, looking nervously around the hotel reception.

It’s my first day in Bangkok, at the beginning of a lengthy solo trip through Asia and Australia. There are a couple of travellers milling around, but I’m feeling way too self-conscious to chat to them.

Just as I’m gathering up the courage to go over and introduce myself, they walk out of the reception and into the balmy Thai air.

Phew.

I feel a wave of relief, swiftly followed by mental self-flagellation.

Gaaaah, why am I such a complete and total wuss? I don’t want to spend my whole trip alone. What if I never find anyone else to talk to? I’m such an idiot…

What I needed at that moment (and in many, many other moments like it) was a serious dose of self-confidence.

Where does confidence come from?

As someone who’s suffered from crippling low self-esteem, I can tell you where self-confidence definitely doesn’t come from.

We won’t find it by:

Not speaking up
Doing things to make people like you
Trying to look (or be) “perfect”
People-pleasing
Dismissing compliments and accomplishments
Living your life for other people

I lived the first 25 years of my life trying to be someone other people would like.

But I didn’t like myself very much.

I’ve since spent years transforming my mindset – pushing my boundaries, working to understand who I am, valuing my worth, and simply being myself.

This is where authentic self-confidence comes from.

The keys to killer self confidence

Ultimately, self-confidence comes down to our beliefs.

This includes self-efficacy (our sense of independence, reliability, and adaptability) and self-esteem (our overall opinion of ourselves).

As Jay Shetty says, it’s about ‘how we feel about ourselves when we’re alone’; not what others believe about us, or how society might label us.

For example, I struggle with the belief that “I don’t fit in”.

Because of this, I often feel like I don’t really belong anywhere. I tell myself that nobody truly understands me. And I sometimes feel totally alone in the world.

This is because the external world mirrors our internal experience.

If we believe that the world is a friendly place, it will be; we’ll actively seek out kindness, and brush off negativity.

Equally, if we believe it’s a dangerous place, our experiences will likely reflect and reinforce this belief.

7 secrets to self-confidence

Luckily, our beliefs can be rewired – and these 7 practices can help us feel way more self-confident.

1. Say what you mean

Throughout the day, practice pausing to notice what feelings are alive in you, and give yourself permission to be really honest when you speak. This is hard… but so, so worth it.

The result? Total congruency between what’s going on in your head and what’s coming out of your mouth. Plus, no more feeling icky after saying something that’s totally inauthentic (or a complete lie!).

2. Tell yourself nice things

Practice looking in the mirror and telling yourself you’re awesome, you love yourself, you accept yourself, your body looks rockin’, and so on.

This might feel silly at first – and I felt like a total fool the first few times – but the more I did it, I noticed my negative self-talk (e.g. focusing what’s ‘wrong’ with me every time I look in the mirror) melt away, and transform into deep self-love.

3. Live by your values

Figure out what’s important to you, what glorious vision of your life you’re working to create, and what kind of person you want to be. Then ask yourself how you could live in alignment with this right now.

Let go of the need for the stars to align and everything to be perfect before you allow yourself to live a life which feels true to you.

4. Nourish your mind, body, and soul

Treat yourself like royalty. Remember that you deserve to receive; especially if you’re someone who always wants to give to others (uh, guilty). You deserve the same treatment – don’t leave yourself out.

Nourish your body with healthy foods, nourish your mind with new ideas, and nourish your soul with plenty of self-care. If you don’t know how, commit to learning how.

5. Remember the good stuff

Keep a working list of accomplishments, testimonials, and/or compliments (even the small ones). I call this my ‘hype file’ – it’s packed full of client testimonials, student reviews, compliments from strangers, and a list of my achievements.

Review it regularly to remind yourself how awesome you are. Keeping a record of these also trains our brain to look out for more of them, which combats our natural negativity bias.

6. Let go of what others think

People will ALWAYS judge us, no matter what we do. In order to build solid self confidence (and stay sane), we have to let go of the unhelpful opinions of people who aren’t important or relevant to us.

My current rule is that if a person isn’t living the kind of life I want to live, their ‘advice’ doesn’t really matter – especially if I haven’t asked for it.

7. Honour your truth

Take time out every day to look inwards and ask, “what’s true for me right now?” (hint: meditation and journaling are great tools for this).

It’s difficult to peel away the layers of other people’s expectations, but once we do, we start to tap into what we really want – allowing ourselves to be guided by our inner GPS system.

Bottom line here?

Building deep, lasting, and authentic-self confidence is a daily practice.

If we remind ourselves to live in alignment with who we really are, our natural awesomeness will eventually shine through with total ease.

free womb wellness kit