52. Self-Love Journey: Advice For Life
Explore the power of mindfulness and self-love to create a positive growth mindset to stop feeling stuck in our life in order to move forward.The advice I’d give my younger self is to follow your heart, not your timeline. Forget about the timeline society has taught us to follow in order to be “successful”. Success is a moving target. It’s different for everyone.
What have you learned over time that you want to focus on? This episode is going to give you a chance to explore and dive deep into your growth so you can give advice to your younger self, current self, and future self.
MINDFUL ACTION: What advice would you give your younger self?
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
I’m just going to jump right into my question for you today. What would you like to say to your younger self? I’m thinking, maybe, when you were in your late teens or early twenties. What fabulous words of wisdom would you give to your young adult self, now that you’ve experienced more of life? Go ahead and pause and think about it for a few moments and I’ll be right back.
What would you like to say to your younger self? One of my mindfulness friends on Instagram posted that question awhile back and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. In particular, I realized that although we’re asked that question a lot through life as a personal development prompt, I haven’t asked myself that since I’ve started my mindfulness transformation. And I think mindfulness brings a whole new perspective to this question.
Once you start this mindfulness journey, you begin to see the world differently. You begin to see yourself differently. You’re more aware of how you either fit into the world, or even how you don’t fit into the world. You begin to ask yourself tough questions and unveil realizations about what has happened in your life.
My old answer to this question was the typical “everything will turn out ok, don’t worry about it” answer. Which is fine, it’s a comforting thought. but now that I’m becoming more of who I am, I don’t want to settle for typical responses and typical answers. I want more. I want more out of life and I want to dig deep and expect more out of my true self. And I encourage you to do the same.
So before I tell you what my advice would be to my younger self, go ahead and settle on your own advice. This is your mindful action for this week, I’m giving it to you early on in the segment. I want you to reflect on what you would tell your younger self. And make it meaningful to you and your life, don’t just make it a generic answer. The only way you’ll stop trying to fit in with the norms and be more like yourself is if you start thinking for yourself. So create an answer that is for you. Again, go ahead an pause if you need a little bit more time to settle on the advice to yourself.
So here is what I would love to tell my younger self: follow your heart, not your timeline. Follow your heart, not your timeline.
When we are young, we have so many life goals, and we think we need to get certain things done by a specific point in our life. And we’re even asked this question a lot through our young adult life. These questions are supposed to motivate us to see more clearly, but in reality, they’re often setting us up for more stress and anxiety because it makes us think that we have to fit in in a certain way.
In college admissions essays, we’re asked what our ambitions for life are, and in job interviews right out of college we’re asked where we see ourselves in 5 years. And you think you need to be married and have kids by a certain age. You want to buy your first car. And your first house. And the list goes on and on.
And then, usually, things don’t work out that way, so we’re disappointed. We’re disappointed by ourselves and we’re disappointed by life. We think we’ve failed. And to that I say, what an awful way to live! Society has taught us to create these ambitious timelines for our lives, but then throws a ton of barriers at us along the way. So then we live believing we’ve failed. Gee, thanks for that.
So I say, follow your heart and not your timeline. But what exactly does it mean to follow your heart? Well, in a way, I think this goes right along with following your intuition. When you’re pushing yourself to meet a big life event deadline, how does it make you feel? Does it feel right and like it’s meant to be? Are you working hard and it’s meaningful to you? If so, great!
Or, I’m going to play devils advocate here, are you pushing yourself forward for all the wrong reasons? Are you staying at that job too long because it’s what you thought you should be doing by now? Are you pushing a new relationship to move forward too quickly because you thought you’d be settled down by now? Are you holding on to some things in life that used to give you comfort, but they don’t anymore and you’re just afraid to move on?
All of these things cause stress and anxiety when you’re trying to fit them into your life in the wrong way. You know, we hear the saying all the time “trust the timing of your life”. Well, when you’re living out of alignment, or when bad things are happening, or when things just don’t feel right, that quote is impossible to buy into. When you’re dealing with the loss of someone or something, that quote is like an absolute punch to the gut.
So what if trusting the timing of our lives was what was holding us back, and instead we needed to focus on changing our mindset and taking action over the things that we could control? What if we learned to trust ourselves instead? So I say screw the timing! Time is just a construct. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Trust your intuition.
If you trust that you have what it takes, and you trust yourself to make good decisions, and you trust that you’re doing the right thing for you, THAT is what will get you what you want out of life. You can’t just expect things to happen when they’re supposed to happen. I’m telling you, the timeline SUCKS. That’s not what leads you through life. You and your thoughts and your actions are what lead you through life.
I have an example of this in my life where I was steered more by societal timelines than my heart. I was in my senior year in college, when I realized what I was getting my degree in was not actually what I wanted to do with my life, but I felt like I was already committed too much and I needed to just finish school. Even though I had a pit in my stomach every day going to class, I kept telling myself that I just needed to get my degree, get that 1st job, and it would all be ok, because that’s what was supposed to happen on my timeline. I didn’t want to be one of those people that took longer than 4 years to graduate. My old judgmental brain thought it knew better. I just had to pretend I had my life together like us mature 21 year old adults are expected to do, right? Ha!
So how do you think that worked out for me? Two years into my 1st job, I threw in the towel and left to go do what I actually wanted to do. I wouldn’t say those 2 years were wasted, because I learned a lot about myself during that time, in fact, one of my most prominent moments of self discovery happened during those years, I remember it like it was yesterday, but I would say that if I had just followed my heart, things would have been a lot different. I had the option to take control over the situation by hearing what my gut was telling me, but I chose to ignore it. That’s on me. I chose the timeline over my heart. Sorry, 21 year old Beth. My bad.
So, yeah, trust your heart, not your timeline. That’s what I would say to my younger self. Or rather, should it be to not follow THEIR timeline. Meaning, older adults and society who lead us to believe there’s a certain path that we are supposed follow.
So, actually, I think this message can be delivered to both our younger selves AND our future selves: Do not set yourself up for disappointment with a specific timeline in life, Screw the timeline. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Trust your intuition. Those things will get you a lot farther than the timeline will.
It’s your turn now. Focus on you and your life. And send yourself those messages. And if you’re feeling stuck and need a little bit of help with it, you know I’m always here to help. Go sign up for a Mindset Restoration Session, or my Mindfulness Success Studio and together we will find that link that is missing in your life. Head to bethbackes.com/studio.
And with that, let’s take a deep breath, and head into our meditation.
MEDITATION SCRIPT FOR SELF ACCEPTANCE AND SELF-LOVE
Take a few moments to relax and center your mind and body. Close your eyes and begin to take deep, slow breaths. Deep slow breaths. Feel your inhales and exhales as they move through your body. Your breath and your body is one with the universe. You are an important part of this world, which is why you must find your voice and speak your truth.
Breath in, breath out.
Now, imagine a giant whiteboard in front of you. On the board write down your values, the things that are important to you and that make you who you are.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Begin to think about how you can live your life in a way that is true to those values. Think of ways that you can express yourself in a way that will honor who you are and what you believe in.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Now, focus on listening to your intuition. Imagine that you have a voice inside of you that is always guiding you in the right direction and speaking truth to you. Listen to what it has to say and allow it to lead you.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Today we’re not going to try and quiet our mind. Today we’re going to listen to it. Take a few moments to listen to the voice inside of you that guides you.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
When you are ready, slowly open your eyes and come back to the present moment. Take a few moments to reflect on what you have learned and how you can use this exercise to live your life instead of trying to fit in to the status quo.
