How do you show up for your best self?
Let’s face it: the past 20 months have not been easy. Remaining open, yet vigilant; positive, yet cautious; and resilient, yet flexible has been no easy task. For many, taking care of our loved ones has taken precedence over care for our self. Yet, if we don’t show up for our best self, how do we fully recover and care for others? How do we live our best life?
Demonstrating care (and affection) for ourselves begins with self-compassion. To some degree, everyone suffers. It is part of being human. Unfortunately, denying our suffering may make us more prone to self-sabotage.
Practicing self-compassion means acknowledging that we may be self-handicapping: we anticipate a real or imagined obstacle to living our best life and use it as an excuse for inaction. We practice self-compassion when we recognize this as an ineffective mechanism against suffering, and begin to notice this behavior.
As clinical psychologist and author Alice Boyes, PhD, writes for Harvard Business Review, practicing self-compassion has four components:
- Practicing a kind tone (and language) that appeals to you.
- Accepting pain and suffering are part of being human.
- Allowing and recognizing all feelings (without attachment).
- Anticipating that you can and will do the best you can at any point in time.
Unfortunately, our self-handicapping can be very subtle. It’s also one of the ways we get and stay stuck, trapped in the familiar, or worse, bad habit loop. Fortunately, researchers find strategies and techniques that can help us counter self-sabotage and show up for our best self.
In Summary
This article and Article Nuggets explore how even highly intelligent and successful people self-handicap and new research on techniques to counter self-sabotage to show up for your best self.
This is a brief synopsis of a 1,100-word article and 3-Article Nuggets*, suitable for consultants’ newsletters for executives and leaders in organizations. It is available for purchase with full reprint rights, which means you may put your name on it and use it in your newsletters, blogs or other marketing materials. You may also modify it and add your personal experiences and perspectives.
The complete article includes these important concepts:
- Recognize self-sabotage
- Understand why we self-sabotage
- The Research
- Self-sabotage alternatives
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