If you struggle with liking who you are...

Not liking who you are can feel like one of the loneliest places.

That is why I want to approach this topic with a lot of love and sensitivity, but also honesty, encouragement, and optimism.

Here are my thoughts:

If you don’t like who you are, it’s either because you haven’t really met yourself yet, OR because you are not allowing who you really are out into the open.

Those are the primary –possibly even the ONLY– two reason.

If you have met yourself in this season of your life…

If you feel connected to your real, authentic, expansive self…

If you feel embodied in your expression…

… there’s simply no way that you wouldn’t like who you are.

I promise!

I promise, because I deeply believe that all human beings are love-worthy, that we are all whole, complete, and beautiful.

But, I also know that things get in the way…

Here are a few reasons that I commonly see that prevent people from meeting themselves fully:

• Never having attended to your inner child and therefore walking through life with open wounds that leave you forever vulnerable to the judgement of others.
  

• Being taught that being a people-pleaser is the way to get approval and that that approval is necessary in order for you to be loved.
  

• Not having the tools or taking the time to tune into yourself and getting to know your desires, impulses, intuition, values, hopes, dreams, life goals etc.
  

• Surrounding yourself with people who keep you small and stuck in a version of yourself that isn’t really you or only a small fraction of you.
  

• Associating emotional pain as a disaster that should never happen and so you have learned how to avoid it or distract yourself from it, but in reality you’ve been avoiding meeting your WHOLE self, even the wonderful parts.
  

• Keeping yourself so busy that you never have the time to just be with yourself in quiet (you likely do this because being with yourself doesn’t feel so great or you feel guilty for wasting time when you are not outwardly productive).
  

• Being codependent in relationships which led you to over-identify with another person and their needs, and thereby never getting to know your own.
  

• Waiting for the “outsides of your life” (i.e. how you look, how much money you make, where you live, who you date, how your kids behave…) to be perfect so you can feel great on the inside. In other words, you’ve been misled by society to organize your life from the outside-in versus the inside-out.
  

There are, of course, many more reasons, nuances, and complexities to the above bullet points, but these are some of the most common ones I have seen in the women I work with.

The reason I am sharing this today is because I deeply believe that you deserve a life in which you really –and I mean, REALLY– like yourself and who you are.

And I know that this is possible for anyone no matter how hard you have struggled with yourself.

Before we move on, let me be clear with something:

-> Genuinely liking who you are doesn’t mean that you will never have a crappy day.

-> It doesn’t mean that you will never feel guilty or ashamed or shitty about something (you will still have a conscience;)).

-> It doesn’t mean that you will be free of self-doubt, indecision, or occasional conflicts in relationships.

BUT, what genuinely liking who you are DOES mean is that you will be able to navigate through those challenges effectively, that self-doubt won’t rip to the bottom of who you are and paralyze you, that guilt or shame or fear of judgement won’t dictate every decision for you.

So, here is what I want to ask you if you want to learn how to like yourself more/ again/ for the first time:

Are you ready to really MEET yourself? Are you willing to really take a look at who you are on the inside and make some changes in your life that let you be YOU?

If the answer is “yes,” I want to offer you three simple journal questions to get started:

1. What do you like? (And I don’t mean just what do you like to do, but what brings you joy, what makes you smile, what atmospheres make you feel the best, what colors do you feel drawn to, what makes your soul sing, which kind of people really resonate with you etc.)
   

2. Where, in what area of your life, are you currently playing small either so you don’t ruffle feathers or because you’re afraid of judgement? In other words, where are you giving your power away?
   

3. What does your self-talk sound like these days and what would you really like to believe and tell yourself about who you are?
   

I hope that these questions are helpful as a start.

And please remember: Wherever you are in this journey right now, is ok. It is simply your starting point and there is no rush.

You have full permission to take your time.

Be gentle.

(Note: Sometimes we have to grief the time that we spent being disconnected from and not liking ourselves and that is 100% alright. Spend some time grieving and feeling the sadness and then turn a page and begin –very gently– exploring who you are.)

If you want to dive deeper into the exploration of YOU and make changes in your life so that you can flourish and step into deeper alignment with yourself, you can also check out how private coaching with me works and apply for a free 20-minute coaching consultation here to see if we are fit (Availability is limited, so serious inquiries only, please!).

Sending you love.

You got this!

Caroline