Learning to Self-Parent
While I don’t have little ones of my own running around, I find myself flexing my parenting muscles pretty regularly these days. . . far more frequently than you’d think someone without children would, that’s for sure. It’s hard to believe I’ve been out from under my parents’ roofs for nearly ten years now. While I speak with my parents on almost a daily basis and pepper them with advice-seeking questions often, at 27 I feel I still need a little more parenting than society says is socially acceptable, certainly more than what my parents should have to provide at this point in my life.
Societally acceptable or not, I think we all need a lot more parenting, for a lot longer in our lives than we’d like to admit. Truthfully, I’ll likely need some parenting even when I am an actual parent myself. Shoot, I’ll be 90 years old and still be in need of parenting from time to time. By parenting, I certainly don’t mean I will need my actual mother and father guiding me through every step of the way, through every challenge I face or every decision I make. Instead, I mean, I will always need a guiding voice who encourages me and motivates me, pushes me when I need to be pushed and tells me to take it easy when my mind or body needs to rest.
So how do we ensure we have that guiding voice by our side at all times? We embrace being parents without the babies. :) We embrace listening to that voice inside our head or that gut feeling we have deep down inside. We learn. . . to self-parent.
Learning to self-parent also means learning to love yourself as you would love others. It means learning to care for yourself with the same gentle approach or at times, tough love that you would give to a child. When we self-parent we agree to take ownership for our own care taking and willingly and graciously offer ourselves the guidance we deserve and need.
Before we go any further, I want you to think about the following questions.
Internally, what do you say to yourself when you are needing support, love, encouragement or motivation?
Do you lovingly give yourself that support and encouragement or do you internally complain about the fact that you feel you need those things?
Internally, what do you say to yourself when you are feeling defeated and in need of motivation or inspiration to keep going and persevering through a difficult time?
Do you step into the role of hype man/woman? Do you coach yourself through that challenge with motivating, inspirational conversations?
Learning to self-parent can be a difficult task. Finding the balance between compassion and empathy and going easy on yourself when you need it, but on the flip side pushing yourself to achieve and overcome challenges certainly isn’t very easy. When we self-parent we can more easily hurdle the obstacles that arise in our lives and are able to reach our highest potential. Without self-parenting we get lost in our own fear and are unable to build a strong foundation in our lives.
If you’re new to self-parenting, check out these tips for how to cultivate a habit of guiding yourself through life.
Check your feelings. Many of us burry our emotions, avoid making decisions base on those emotions, and rely more heavily on logic or “facts” when addressing a situation or facing a challenge. Reason has it’s place, but so do the feelings of our heart. When we pay close attention to the way we’re feeling we become more attuned to what makes us uncomfortable or upset and we can nurture those feelings or address them before they cause some sort of outburst or emotional breakdown. When we tune into our feelings we can uncover whether we’re truly too exhausted to go to they gym or if we’re just feeling a little lazy and need a little more self-motivation than normal. Check your feelings early and often.
Speak Up. Truthfully, this is something I struggle with. At times we don’t say what’s on our mind or our hearts because we’re fearful of how others will respond. Deciding to speak up is a way of taking responsibility for yourself and your thoughts, wants and needs in a very public way. I often try to play it off as though I’m just super flexible and easy goin, when in reality I am just too nervous to have my voice heard. When we have our voices heard, we are performing the ultimate act of self-love and self-parenting. We are publicly sticking up for ourselves and making a stand.
Use supportive language. No matter the situation, we can all stand to be more supportive of ourselves. Whether you’re pumping gas, taking out the trash, climbing Mount Everest or preparing to give an important brief at work. . . in all those circumstances we can be more supportive of ourselves. I can’t tell you how many times I’m carrying something and drop it or trip up the stairs and my response to myself in my head (and sometimes out loud) is “Jeeze Alannah!” or “Gosh, get it together!” In those non-significant, inconsequential moments, when I do something that is meaningless in the grand scheme of life, I give myself a hard time. Why not be more supportive of myself in those moments as well as in the big ones too?
Give up the self-deprecating humor. I don’t consider myself to be a very funny person, but I try to up my comedy game, often by making myself the butt of my own jokes. We all too often pick at ourselves or poke fun at ourselves in order to get a laugh out of someone else. If you wouldn’t substitute your besite’s name for yours in those self-deprecating jokes, it’s time to cut them out. Bottom line here, it’s not funny and we can and should do better for ourselves.
Stop comparing. Comparison is most certainly the thief of joy and a great deal of our negative self-talk arises when we compare ourselves to others. Unfortunately, there will always be people who out excel us. There will always be someone who may have done it better or figured it our faster or juggled more craziness in their lives for longer than we do. When we spend time comparing ourselves to others, we inadvertently come up with all the things that we fell short on. This clouds our ability to see all the great things we’ve done. Know that you are whole and worthy as you are now!
Give yourself what you need. Identify the aspects of your life that need nurturing and don’t be ashamed of giving yourself exactly what you need when you need it. Sometimes as adults we think we have the power to squash out our inner needs both mentally, emotionally and physically. It’s similar to when the toddler fights and fights and fights against taking a nap, when in reality, what that sweet babe needs most is a few precious moments of rest. Find the aspects of yourself and your life that need attention and a little extra love and care and willingly give it to them.
Be it 27, 47, 57 or 107 years old, we can all benefit from guidance, mentorship, motivation and inspiration. While there are times in which we absolutely need to get those things from others, more times than not we will need to turn within in order to get what we need in trying situations. Learning to self-parent and flexing those muscles are a means for strengthening the reliance we have in ourselves and even our own self-confidence. Give self-parenting a try and let me know what tactics work best for you!
Light, Love & the highest vibrations,
Lon
