This blog post is the last in the series of who's sitting in the seat of your Wise Inner Council. These are the Inner Allies, Guides and Mentors who are our guardians in life's journey. In this post, the spotlight goes to the AWARE YOU and it’s also known as The Adult Self. The Aware Self is part of your conscious mind and I see this Self as the Ultimate Manager who has to manage every facet of your mental landscape. If your life was a theatrical production, the Aware Self is the Executive Producer.
So just imagine, the AWARE YOU has to deal with your temperamental Inner Critics and distract them and manage them so they don’t disturb your peace. The AWARE YOU has to recognise when the Inner Child is acting out and hijacking the situation; and resolve that conflict within, deciding if the Inner Child needs sleep, food, or soothing. The AWARE YOU has to know how to distinguish between advice from your Wise Inner Self or “advice” from your Mean Critic, because taking the wrong advice can derail you from thinking big. So the AWARE YOU really walks this fine line, ensuring that all is well in your Mental Neighborhood and managing the peace among the sub-personalities.
The more you are aware of your AWARENESS, the more chances and opportunities you have to operate from a higher level of consciousness. An example is when you are angry and emotions are coursing right through you, you don’t attempt to stop or hinder or block your feelings, and you could be yelling even, but at the same time you know that it’s coming from somewhere else, you know when you are calmer you will sift through the emotions and look at that wounding. You understand that what's bubbling up is an opportunity for you to heal yourself. You just are not hard on yourself for losing the plot. You are aware!
IT’S FUNTASTIC TO LOVE YOURSELF
Working with the AWARE YOU is the best way forward for your own self healing. It’s through the AWARE YOU that you now have the chance to re-right the wrongs from the past. Finally you have the opportunity to love yourself like you really want to be loved. You get to treat yourself the way you want to be treated. You get to really understand yourself by identifying your love language and your love symbols and then do it for yourself.
So for example, if you love flowers and that’s part of your love language. Now you get to put a big smile on your face with flowers that you send you. As the Wise Adult Self, you get to take naps, buy great bed sheets, go on courses, soothe yourself with ice cream and most importantly simply be gentle, kind and nurturing to yourself. Whatever it takes to show you, how much you love and cherish you.
EXERCISE:
Put together a list of love symbols or gestures that say “LOVE” to you.
Love Symbols or Gestures are particular only to you and sometimes we don’t even know what makes us feel loved. It’s a great exercise so you are Aware of what says Love to you.
The fun part is you now get to shower yourself with all the love symbols you want.
SELF PARENTING
The AWARE YOU also gets to be a parent to your Inner Child, the way you wished you were supported and treated. You can be the opposite of what your parents were, freeing your parents from blame, and taking charge of your own emotional support. So if you have very critical parents, you can create a safe and supportive space for your Inner Child to make mistakes and to be ok with it. If you had no boundaries growing up, well, as a good parent, you can now set boundaries and teach discipline, knowing that it leads to freedom.
EXERCISE:
Visual or write down the kind of dream parent you wished you had. Is it someone nurturing, adventurous or fun?
You can adopt this Parent Persona towards yourself.
I know it might sound strange to put on a persona like a Kind Parent to parent yourself. But it totally works. I gather it’s because we sometimes have real problems treating ourselves with grace, love and kindness. We can bend over backwards to do favours for others, but when it comes to ourselves we really do fall short. Taking on a role allows you to focus on new behaviours and move away from old harsh patterns.
FINAL INSIGHTS:
Really taking the time to care and nurture ourselves from the space of the AWARE YOU will show you all the times and moments that you normally don’t do it for yourself. Just like I had to realise how I wasn’t giving my body fuel by eating right, or leaving too little time to complete a project. I started making sure I had healthy snacks as a thoughtful parent would. And I was way kinder, compassionate and supportive to myself during the moments I failed at Adulting like letting the laundry pile, not paying a bill on time, procrastinating on my list of things to do. Instead I just simply told myself to learn from it or that it wasn’t a big deal. I started to berate myself less and worked on not calling myself lazy, clumsy or stupid. Instead of self-flagellation and trickery, the focus would be on learning from my mistakes. Happy Parenting everyone!
