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Bournemouth Girl

Planning the life you want

in Personal Growth ·

7 Simple Ways You Can Show Up For Yourself

You are your biggest advocate and you have the ability to show up for yourself. By doing so, you can live a happier, healthier and fulfilled life.

By promising to show up for yourself, you are prioritising your mental health, physical, emotional and spiritual needs. Practising this allows you to feel motivated and renew your energy in order to achieve all of your goals. We all need to focus more on self-love and eliminate the self-doubt.

When you start to show up for yourself and honour your feelings, you will see important growth in your life.

Here are 7 small ways you can show up for yourself:

A desk with a laptop and lamp on. Standing on the desk is a print in a frame that says ‘Get Shit Done’.Photo by Minh Pham on Unsplash

1. Set goals

Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. You are then able to organise your time, so that you can be successful in achieving your goals. When you set goals, this can also give you purpose and control of our future.

The more specific your goal, the more likely you are to achieve it. It can be so easy to procrastinate over a vague or unclear goal than it is with a specific goal with a deadline. You want your goals to give you sufficient direction. Making your goals simple to get where you want to be by defining precisely where you want to end up is key to success.

Using the S.M.A.R.T goal technique is a great tool to ensure that your goals are both realistic and attainable. Learn how you can set achievable goals.

2. Acknowledge your feelings and honour them

You need to be able to listen to yourself before you will be able to show up for yourself. So, be open to tune into your emotions and make your choices using them. If your intuition or your body is telling you that you need rest, then you need to rest.

After my work accident, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and it meant that I literally had no choice but to listen to my body. You should honour your emotions and do what will make you always feel good! Powering through and ignoring your feelings and emotions can lead to burn out, you being stressed and overwhelmed. This could impact all areas of your life and without your physical and mental health, you cannot be present and achieve your goals. Check out my post about tips on how you can reduce your stress levels.

3. Not letting yourself become burned out

‘Burned out’ is something that is talked about a lot, but what does it mean? Burned out is when a person is in a state of physical or mental health collapse caused by overwork or stress. This can negatively impact your whole life. So, like I said previously, it is important that you don’t get to that point.

By practising self-care and prioritising your overall health and wellbeing, you can learn to relax and be mindful. You cannot run on empty fumes.

4. Saying no when you want to

We have all been in a situation where we want to say no to something, but end up saying yes. I used to do this because I felt guilty if I said no. However, if we said yes to every opportunity or invite, we wouldn’t have any time for anything else. Saying yes to everyone is a sure-fire way to cause burn out or to become overwhelmed.

There is no shame in picking and choosing what you want to say yes to. It allows you to allocate your time to fit in all your responsibilities. Your time is precious and life is too short to waste your time on something you don’t enjoy.

A dark haired woman in a bubble bath with one of her leg’s are in the air.Photo by Matheus Frade on Unsplash

5. Practise self-care consistently

You only have one body and one mind, and they need looking after and that is why self-care is vital in your health and well-being. Whether you want to carry out a daily routine or a weekly activity consistently, it will enable you to focus on yourself and get some quality ‘you’ time. If you are looking for new and different self-care activities check out this list.

6. Set boundaries

Setting boundaries is an important part if self-care and it means taking care of yourself by prioritising your needs.

As with saying no, setting boundaries can make you feel guilty, but it is important to do so. You are not only dong it to make sure your needs are met as well as keeping yourself happy and healthy. Furthermore, it will set a positive example for other people in your life.

When you say no to something that does not serve you, or prioritise yourself, it can enable others to see what they must do to have meaningful and fulfilling relationships with you. This makes the people more likely to respect you when it comes time to set further boundaries in the future.

7. Challenge negative thoughts and self-talk

We are all our own worst critics, always challenging our decisions and thinking about what we could or should have done better. Do you find that you talk about yourself negatively? Even if you make a joke of it, this is something you need to challenge consistently. This can be a really big challenge and not something that can be a quick fix. You need to be able to fully understand the depths of your thoughts in order to unpick the negative thoughts and self-talk.

Every time you feel a negative thought, you need to acknowledge it and let it go. You could do this by journaling or physically release it through a workout. This will help to improve your mental health. Just check in with yourself and hold yourself accountable. If you don’t talk nicely about yourself, it can send the wrong message to others and can lead people to also treat you negatively. Working on yourself can help you to elevate your self-talk.

Do you show up for yourself?

These are just a few ways of how you can show up for yourself, show self-love and hold yourself accountable. You are in charge of your success. Be your biggest supporter and unlock all of your potential. Practising even a few of these suggestions will allow you to make positive changes to your life.

Which of these ways do you already use? Which ones will you try? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Coralle says

    This is a great post. As someone who also struggles with fibro, I understand the importance of listening to your body and what it’s telling you.

    Reply

  3. Brenda says

    This is some great advice Lauren. I’m getting better, but its still easy for the attention to be redirected. Its a constant battle to take care of ourselves. Thanks for putting this out there 😁

    Reply

  6. Ranjana says

    Some very important points mentioned in this post. Saying No is a big challenge for me and I am still working on it.

    Reply

  10. Fadima Mooneira says

    These are good ways to show up for yourself. And I’m glad I’m practicing all these now. For no.2, I created a letter journal for myself. I write all feelings and express my gratitude in it.

    Reply

  12. Toby Raymon says

    Really helpful points, though sometimes it gets tough to follow them, but I am sure if someone religiously follows even few of them, they would definitely see an impact in their life.

    Reply

  13. aimsysantics says

    So many good points in this post. If you don’t lok after yourself, you can’t be helpful to other people. Totally agree on the point of having a positive mindset too.
    Thanks for sharing 🙂
    Aimsy xoxo

    Reply

  20. Miriam says

    Yes to all of this. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself, and more people should make these things a priority! Helpful post to those who need a reminder <3

    Miriam | A Hygge Escape

    Reply

  23. E.T. Breathes - Personal Blog says

    It may appear simple, but as you get older, showing up for yourself becomes more difficult to navigate. But you will discover and learn your ways as you go through your own journey. And recognize that you are the only one who knows what is best for you.

    Reply

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