I am my OWN BFF (Best Friend Forever)

Hey beautiful Ladies! Happy full last week of September! I swear, we just celebrated Labor Day and now we’re at the end of the last full week of September; and best of all? It’s officially FALL!!!  You’ve all heard me griping about how I was so ready to have the summer weather over with and I’m happy that I now get to wear my cardigans! I love a good cardigan; although I am a sandal and open toe shoes type of a girl so it will be hard for me to put them away once it starts to get cold. 

I know that September has been a busy month for a lot of us and it’s definitely been a month of transitions, transformations, and pivoting for me. This includes my personal and professional life. So far, September has been one of the most challenging months of my life as I had to really start owning things by being honest with myself. This included asking what I wanted but also the willingness to make pivots, and letting go of things that no longer had meaning in my life. 

In talking with people both personally and professionally, it seems that we are all going through some metamorphosis and with this transition comes either losing or gaining something. Several people have mentioned to me that they’ve either dreamed of themselves dying or someone close to them has dreamt that they died. 

Honestly, when I had these dreams, I used to be scared and would think that something bad was going to happen to me or someone close to me. However, as I’ve accepted my spiritual journey, these dreams no longer scare me; instead it signifies to me that an old part of me may have died and that something new will be transpiring. 

Speaking of losing and gaining, this is the part of the journey that no one ever prepares you for when you decide to forge your own path. We always anticipate the gains but we never anticipate the losses because we assume that everyone will be supportive and cheer us on through these metamorphosis but the sad reality is that this is not the case. 

When forging your own path, one of the things that you’re going to have to come to terms with is that people will come and go. This can include your friends, family members, co-workers, and romantic partners. Growing up, we’ve been taught that having a support system is everything and that to survive in this world, we need the support of others. 

Last week, when I was driving with my teenage niece, she was going on about friends and how she’s not made for high school (this is her first year in high school). We talked about the dynamics of friends and she talked about her friendships as she entered high school. She then questioned me about my current friendships and asked me who was currently my best friend. My mind went blank. I had to really think about this before answering her and then I realized that I don’t have a best friend. To be honest, have I ever had a best friend? I’ve had great friends but were they really my best friend? I pondered this and then answered her honestly about my current BFF status. 

I realized that within the last few years, as I’ve moved from my small city in Wisconsin to the Minneapolis area, I’ve grown, changed, and finding people who could relate to me was getting harder and harder. It got even harder once I opened my business, allowed myself to dream bigger, and decided to only surround myself with uplifting people. 

As cringey as it sounds, I realized that through all of this, I’ve learned to become my own best friend and to clarify, this doesn’t mean that I don’t have friends or don’t need anyone else in my life. It means that I’ve finally learned to love myself, trust my feelings, emotions, and be supportive to myself. This is an ongoing journey that will never stop as I continue to learn more about myself. 

We’re always so good about helping others, giving support, having compassion, and telling other people to be kind to themselves; and yet we can’t provide ourselves with the same love, kind words, that we give to others. 

Many of the clients that I have worked with have had a long history of being unkind to themselves, lack compassion, and sadly are darn right cruel to themselves. Unfortunately, we’ve been taught and told that the crueler and meaner we are to ourselves, this will be the motivating factor for us to change and be better. If only that were true! Instead, it creates a cycle of low self-esteem, lack of boundaries, unkindness, and other emotions, behaviors, reactions, and interactions that keep us stuck. 

That’s why it's so important to learn to be kind, have compassion, nourish, and most importantly, learn to FORGIVE yourself. Having friends, family, and a support system is wonderful but it’s essential to be your own friend, family, and support person. 

In this week’s blog, it’s all about learning to be your own best friend. Being your own best friend means nurturing a healthy, loving, and supportive relationship within yourself. So without further ado, here are a few things to consider to cultivate that inner friendship:

• Speak kindly to yourself: It sounds so simple and yet so hard. This is one of the hardest things that people struggle with. Be aware of your internal dialogue.  Learn to start speaking kindly to yourself by challenging critical thoughts and replace them with supportive and encouraging ones. Talk to yourself like how you would talk to a friend. 

• Affirm your worth: Some people like them; some people don’t but using daily affirmations is a great starting point. Look in the mirror and tell yourself the affirmations. If that’s not your thing, write it down in a journal. Each morning, I review my journal and read out loud what I wrote down, manifest, I claim and OWN IT. 

• Comfort yourself: When things go wrong, instead of criticizing  yourself, offer the same words of encouragement, kindness, and compassion that you would to others.  Remind yourself that this is all part of your growth in forging your own path. 

• Celebrate your resilience: Acknowledge your abilities, your strength, your consistently, in facing challenges and difficulties; even if things don't always turn out as you had anticipated. 

• Do things you love alone: I want to emphasize that there is a difference between being ALONE versus being LONELY. Too many people have a misunderstanding of the two and believe that by being alone you are lonely. That is so far from the truth. Learning to be alone and doing the activities that you love will help you learn more about yourself. In turn, you will cherish the time spent in solitude.

• Be comfortable with your thoughts: Are you the type of person who always needs to be “distracted” or to stay “busy?” Does the prospect of sitting in silence and being in your thoughts disturb you? If so, I would ask why that is the case. Learning to use quiet moments for reflection and introspection is not only part of your growth but will allow you to be honest with yourself, your thoughts, and help you develop a deeper understanding of yourself.

• Follow your intuition: You’ve heard it time and time again: Go with your gut. Learning to trust your instincts and go with your intuition about your path, doing what is right for you, the inner voice, even if it goes against what others say. Remember: you know yourself better than anyone else even though there are people out there who will try to make you think you don’t. You do know yourself babe! 

There are a lot of social media memes out there about people not liking themselves, how they can barely tolerate who they are, and many more but most of them are satire. Even if it's satire, the reality is many people don’t know how to be their own friend because we’ve never been taught to love ourselves. We’ve been taught to love others, to keep giving, and put ourselves, our feelings, and our love last for ourselves. 

Ladies, when you forge your own path, learning to love and be your own best friend will take you so much further.  When you own your path, that journey is not going to be straight and narrow. It’s going to have lots of curves, steep hills, jagged rocks that will cause you to trip and fall. But you ALWAYS pick yourself back up. On this path, some people will start this journey with you but as you keep going, they will slowly drop off. 

Some people feel that there is an end to a journey; however, I don’t believe that a journey truly ends. As I mentioned previously in my last blog, some books close and you start a new book of your life that will include new people but you will always be the main character in each of the books. You did this by having SELF-LOVE, ACCEPTANCE, AND BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND. Darlings, remember: NO ONE else is going to LOVE YOU LIKE YOU LOVE YOU! So be your OWN BESTIE BABE.