Becoming Your Own Best Friend

The relationship we have with ourselves is the most important relationship in our lives. It is one that is with us from birth until death, from 24/7, 365 days a year. Literally no one else on the planet can be there in the same way that we can be there for ourselves.

This topic is near and dear to my heart, especially because as a teenager, I was my own worst critic to the point of having a tremendous amount of self-hatred and rejection. Now, I didn't start out this way; none of us do, but our environment certainly has an impact on this, right? So, whether we're bullied by our peers, whether we're rejected by our families or society at large, it really has an impact, especially when our brains haven't developed enough to really understand what's going on.

Many of us grow up in environments where we don't get just the basic support for our natural way of being, our personalities, our way interacting with the world, and instead, sometimes we get messages that we're expected to be perfect, never make mistakes, and even some demeaning attitudes and ridicule of just our basic core essential self. So much of the time, we just aren't valued for our natural gifts and abilities and characteristics, so we learn kind of ingeniously how to adapt, how to only show certain parts of ourselves that get better results, that we're either loved or accepted or maybe we just don't have to defend ourselves quite in the same way against harmful messages from the outside.

It's a brilliant defense. It's effective in a lot of different ways, and so it's important not to dis our defenses, to appreciate where they came from and how they helped us to survive, but if we use these approaches into adulthood, into our relationships, into our careers, it can really inhibit our full potential.

How do we befriend ourselves? How do we become our own best friends, especially if we already have a pretty conflictual or toxic relationship with who we are? If we want to better our relationships, our friendships, if we want to embrace our life more fully, if we want to change society in the world to be much more empathic and caring and compassionate, it's a great place to start with our own relationship with ourselves.

What does it mean to become your own best friend? What does this look like? It's not just in moments when we're struggling that it's important to befriend ourselves and care and attend to whatever pain is there in the moment. It also means enjoying life, right? Allowing ourselves to play, to experience pleasure and joy. It's showing up for ourselves, not just when we're down and out, but also when we're enjoying and celebrating life. So, it's multifaceted.

Developing a friendship with ourselves, a better friendship, really requires us to go back to the basics. Again, if we're meeting someone for the first time, we're going to be asking questions and approaching things hopefully from a place of curiosity, non-judgment. Sort of like what's their history? What makes them tick? What are their core values, thoughts, feelings, needs? What makes them who they are? We can apply that same principle to ourselves, especially if we've neglected or just stepped over or we have a toxic relationship with ourselves.

In order to do this, especially if we've neglected ourselves or we're just on autopilot where we take things for granted, it's important to reconnect to our five senses because that can deliver messages. That can be a way for us to get to know ourselves. If our heart starts racing, maybe it's about some level of excitement or fear, and we can follow that path and be curious about what in our present moment environment is bringing up certain thoughts and feelings and physical sensations. If we're recognizing that we're hearing or seeing something in a particular way that's pleasurable or upsetting, it's one of the ways that we register and get to know ourselves.

This is also about showing up or when we're having a bad day, we're struggling with something instead of kicking ourselves when we're down. Sometimes it can be useful to imagine our younger self that needs some love, validation, attention, support. It doesn't have to be immediately. Sometimes it needs to be, but we can also build a relationship with ourselves where we recognize, "Oh, I'm at work, or I need to attend to something, and I will spend some time with you later addressing the hurt feelings or whatever else is going on."

This is about building trust in ourselves, too, if it's something that's diminished over time, and that can be, again, about consistent action, not being too rigid, having some level of flexibility, but also making sure that we're taking steps to do the things that we want to do in life, to treat ourselves well, whether that's having good nutrition and adequate, consistent sleep and exercise and just showing up for ourselves, not from a punitive, judgy sort of place, but from an expansive, caring, I deserve this sort of place.

When we're struggling, when we're experiencing some pain, oftentimes what we need the most is to just sit and be with ourselves, right? Sometimes we don't need the advice giving. Sometimes we just need the recognition of the feeling itself, the feeling state, and caring for it in whatever ways are appropriate in the given moment.

Like a friend who is coming to us and sharing some experience that they've had a where they're struggling or they feel challenged or they feel hurt or upset. Oftentimes just saying, "Hey, I care. I get it. I've been through that. I'm here. I recognize. It matters to me how you're feeling." That in and of itself can just be perfect medicine in so many different ways, and we also need to be able to do that for ourselves in moments when nobody's around, when we need to be there for ourselves some of the time and not just have other people do that for us. To develop that level of relationship with ourselves can be tremendously rewarding and just help us deal with the natural ups and downs of life.

Lastly, I just want to acknowledge in this discussion this concept of unconditional positive regard, that we are of value, of worth, regardless of what we say or do or don't say or don't do, that there's nothing to be proven, that we can't achieve it. It exists inherently as part of our humanity. When we begin to operate from this space, from this belief, so much is possible in our life.