Do you have a five-star relationship with yourself? Do you want to? From thanking yourself, to apologizing to yourself, to planning great experiences for yourself — the five-star approach can help you do it. Listen to learn how...
#29: Building a 5-Star Relationship With Yourself
with Tyler Small
Wow. I did it. I got out of bed this morning. I took a shower. I got dressed. I made it to work. I was able to finish this project. Wonderful. The better we get at recognizing those small things, the happier we are.
On a five-star scale, how would you rate your relationship with your self? We talk about relationships a lot on this show. And in the last episode I talked about how to build a five-star relationship with your higher power. Super amazing. In this one, I want to talk about how to build a five-star relationship with yourself.
A family relation of mine - I will not mention the name - has struggled greatly with this and has been a really inspiring example of working through one's relationship with themselves.
This family member has come from a place where they thought that their body should be this beautiful, perfectly proportioned, highly functional thing and realized it was just not happening. So there was that; there were some other things, a lot of struggles -- and this relationship of am I worthy to be alive.
I just want to talk about this relationship with self. It can go to such a dark place. And I want to talk a little bit about how we can use the five-star approach to build a five-star relationship with ourself.
Now, disclaimer: I'm not a therapist. I'm not able to help you overcome all manner of mental illness. That is not my specialty. My specialty is specific to relationships. And so today I just want to talk about how you can apply the five-star approach to your relationship with yourself.
The first question, as always, is the ultimate relationship question: on a five-star scale, how would you rate your relationship with yourself?
And I think that deserves some thought. I wouldn't say that my relationship with myself is my strength. I would say that my relationship with myself is at a solid four, not a five right now, and it's something that I'm working on. For some reason I've worked on my relationships outside of myself first and I considered myself last, which is something I don't necessarily recommend.
The second question is the sidekick question: how can I make it better? And I think that with ourselves, we have a lot of constraints. We have time limitations. We have boundaries of other people that we navigate. And at the same time, we can make some space for ourselves. We can prioritize ourselves.
And we can apologize to ourselves for being mean or unkind or using negative self-talk. We can say, I'm sorry, self, I didn't feel good about the way that I treated you, and my plan is to not be so down on you. My plan is to think more positively when I'm talking to you, and to stop if I'm ever down on myself.
Then moving into the five-star thank yous. This can be a celebration of sorts, a celebration of: Wow. I did it. I got out of bed this morning. I took a shower. I got dressed. Wow. I did it. I made it to work. I was able to finish this project. I took a walk around the building that I work in. Wonderful.
All these can be celebrations even from the smallest starting point. Wow. I did it. I put my shoes on. Starting small like that, starting with baby steps, can help us in a way to thank ourselves and be grateful that we have hands. We have feet. We have a brain. We have a body. It may not be the perfect body that we think that people should have, like bodies we see on TV and social media. But we have a body. And it may not work exactly like we want it to, but there are certain things that we can do and we can be grateful for those things.
I think it's important to think deeply about the five-star experiences that are most valuable to ourselves, and to create five-star experiences for ourselves. Perhaps not in such an abundance that it blocks out the needs of others; but definitely to the extent that we're able to feed our souls. A five-star experience can be, I'm going to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'm going to have a bowl of cereal. That can be a five-star experience. I'm going from hungry to satisfied. I'm going to drink a glass of cold ice water. That can be a very satisfying five-star experience.
I think the better we get at recognizing those small things, those things that normally, maybe we would skip over in a day, the happier we are. And the better our relationship can be with ourselves.
Now, to my audience, I'm going to make a commitment that over the next month, I am going to move my score from a four to a five. That means five-star experiences. five-star apologies, five-star thank-you's for myself, which is not something that I think about often, but I'm going to make it a priority. Wish me luck.
I encourage you to make it a priority, too. Find out where you're at with yourself and do those things that you need. Do some of the things that you want. And I'll see you on the other side.
I'm Tyler Small, and this is hacking emotional intelligence.