How to Live Your Best Life: Find a Self-Friend
As we are social beings, friends are a very important feature in our lives. Someone to talk to, to listen to, someone to follow your crazy ideas or to say that you did something wrong. Friends are important to make you feel connected to other humans, get to know new ideas and even understand yourself a bit better.
Since friendships are essential in our lives and our society became more complex, we created categories to separate them from other people we know: close friends, long-distance friends, best friends, just friends or even girl or boyfriends. These are important categories since talking about “just a friend” is completely different when compared to a best friend. So, among all these categories and segmentations, I asked myself a question: what about a self friend? Why don’t we have a name for our own friendship, the one with ourselves, with our own minds? That being said, the purpose of this text is to discuss ideas about this new type of friendship — a self friend — and to claim the major importance of having yourself as your own (best) friend as well.
WHAT IS A SELF-FRIEND?
As you’ve probably have heard before, there are quotes like “be your best friend” and “take care of yourself”, for example, that are quite common. A self-friend is exactly that: a person that inspires themselves to be more aware of the way they treat them and through that, be able to live their lives in a way they are going to feel good about, without relying on other people to make their lives better. This is a really good and important issue because the more I experience life, I understand how difficult it can be, sometimes, to be alone with my insecurities, my fears and doubts. Not having someone to blame can be a very strange feeling because, after all, you need to face all these disturbing realities inside you.
But I have good news for you: there are (great) ways to cope with these moments and to create a better relationship with your self-friend!
Here are some ways to face those moments and be a better friend to yourself!
Obs: all those tips are based on HABIT and CONSISTENCY. None of these things are enough or could be done once every lifetime. The more you keep on doing these tips, the more you can establish a strong relationship with yourself (as in any relationship)
- Write down your thoughts
Since I started journaling, I understood how much of a powerful tool it is! If you have these moments of feeling down and odd, writing seems the most ridiculous thing you can choose to do when, actually, what you need is someone to talk to. But, consistency is a gift and, the more we create the habit of writing things down, the more we can untangle some thoughts and feelings we are experiencing when facing or dealing with a certain event. So, my tip is: start journaling now so, that when you actually face a struggle, you already have a great way to help yourself out when you need it!
2. Stay 10 minutes in silence/meditate
When you start meditating, a lot of internal conversations appear to you or even future scenarios or past events. The more you meditate, the more you can be aware that those are issues that you are keeping to yourself and, because of that, somehow, they are important to you. You never keep what it has no use for you (if it is not a pleasant issue, it probably has some usage in relation to a traumatic experience). So, being able to be more in contact with these deep and unheard parts of yourself are important for you to start questioning things in a more careful and thoughtful way.
3. Go on self dates
I love this one! Have you been in a situation when you wanted someone to go to the cinema with you? Or to go to that new restaurant? Or, even, to relax by the beach/park/natural space? You can do all that by yourself! Find comfort in going on a trip alone, preparing a new recipe for yourself, walking around or simply, just staying in watching that film you love!! Treat yourself with love, kindness and joy because you deserve it!
4. Pay attention to the way you talk to yourself
Every time we make a decision, we talk to ourselves. Paying attention to the way we do it makes us feel more empowered or threatened depending on the way of communicating. Talk to you like you’d talk to someone other friend and, you’ll see that things will change dramatically.
Following these simple ideas and creating a habit of doing them will make sure that your own relationship with yourself will improve! After all, we are the ones who will be by our side till the end of our own lives so, better than living a life with a lot of other people that you don’t receive much value from is to create a life that we can be our best partners, our own cheerleaders. Make sure you have a good relationship with your self-friend first before trying to find this security in someone else and your perspective about life will be a lot different and, I guess, more pleasant!
