2 Simple Ways to Befriend Yourself

When I ponder the one thing we each need to be daringly alive, I always come back to befriending ourselves. It’s the foundation for everything – relationships, creative expression, bringing our gifts to the world, everything.

You can still accomplish huge feats and make piles of money and inspire millions without befriending yourself but you won’t enjoy much of it. You’ll be like a dog with her nose pressed against the glass. On the other side is peace and fulfillment and lots of good Frisbee throws. You can see it, you can hear it, but you can’t quite feel it.

At the core of you resides a natural warmth, a capacity to love, and a wellspring of succulent tenderness. Nothing can change that. When you make it your commitment to touch that goodness and experience it – rather than believe in it as some kind of abstract – your ability to be in this life and to be of service—expands beyond belief.

You do that by unconditionally, unflinchingly (okay, go ahead and flinch but then come back) acceptance of your experience. It’s a clear-eyed powerful love of you and what life brings you. It might include things like meditation, setting good boundaries, getting enough rest, retreats, time in nature (because it’s pretty darn difficult to befriend yourself when you’re in tatters), but you can’t stop there. If you do, you don’t end up gaining in inner strength, you only end up protecting your own comfort.

Here are two favorite befriending practices:

Resourcing
Take a few moments to imagine you are can be nourished by something larger than yourself. Nature, god, love, anything that is not you, breathe that force in, imagine it filling you up, like the most delish meal or warm golden sunshine. If your logical mind says, “Bull,” ask it, “Did I make gravity that is holding me to the earth? The oxygen I am breathing? I am part of the larger whole, I am always supported and I can consciously draw on that support to befriend myself.” Relax into life.

Embrace your Experience
Each time you deny what you are feeling or thinking or judge it as “bad,” you reinforce the idea you can’t be trusted, that you aren’t somehow good.

For example, I made a stupid business mistake recently, a mistake I have made many times before. I can grit my teeth, chastise myself and eat a bag of cookies or I can pause and be with what I am experiencing. Do it with me right now. Stop making anything about this moment, or you, wrong. Breathe in your feelings, any sensations in your body, your thoughts acknowledge them. Then exhale and create some spaciousness for your experience. Ahh….

Inspiration will flow from you like champagne at a wedding when you meet yourself as beloved. Let us befriend ourselves so we can befriend the world—and have a blast doing it.