The relationship to yourself is the foundation of everything. While it might sound obvious, there’s psychology behind feeling connected to ourselves and vitality, a key determinant of health, happiness, positive relationships and overall satisfaction with life. Yet tending to your inner world—through loving words, behaviors, and rituals—is easier said than done.
Experiencing Disconnection in Our Modern Lifestyles
How frequently do you feel overextended at work or at home, unable to slow down and catch a breath? How frequently do you feel disconnected from the parts of yourself that make you feel whole? Our modern lifestyles are constantly asking us to extend energy in situations that do not support us feeling like our best selves. Far too often, we become “caught up” in the motions of daily life and “forget” to pause and tune into the messages our bodies and hearts are sending to us.
Some people can live for months or years in a place of disconnectedness and discontent without revealing any outward symptoms. The result impacts more areas of our lives than meets the eye; studies suggest a range of physical and emotional consequences, such as anxiety, a weakened immune system, fatigue, chronic pain or chronic sadness.
The Importance of Tending to Ourselves
How we speak to ourselves, listening to our intuition, tuning into our hearts—all of these ways of tending to ourselves shape how we show up in the world. When we treat ourselves with respect and nourish from the inside, the energy flows more abundantly, we make decisions easier, and we even sleep better. The benefits extend into the quality of external relationships; bosses, partners, and friends can feel when we are connected to ourselves on a deep level. The converse is true: when we are tired and overworked, we don’t communicate effectively with others or ourselves.
As a rule of thumb: always aim to keep your basic needs met, whether that’s getting enough sleep, brightening your mood with essential oils or scents, or carving out time for creative practices. These are vital things that your mind and body need to function at its highest capacity and ensures that your brain isn’t tempered by unmet needs.
Tending to You: Mentally, Emotionally, Spiritually
Strengthening the relationship to yourself and your inner world takes practice, like any ritual you seek to build or muscle you seek to strengthen. Tune inward with some of our favorite intentional practices that support wellbeing on all levels – mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical.
- Tend to Your Heart: Prioritize time and space for the practices that fill you up, bring more beauty into your life-through scents, flavor, flowers or choose thoughts and behaviors that make you feel grounded.
- Soothe Your Mental Energy: Practice patience within yourself-rush less, let go of outcomes you can’t control, and prioritize rest.
- Expand Your Creativity and Intellect: Write for 15 minutes every day, cultivate high-quality hobbies such as reading, painting, or learning a language.
- Cultivate Spiritual Well-Being and Introspection: Give yourself time for stillness, slow down in order to hear yourself more clearly, listen deeply, or sit in the sun without your phone.
- Romanticize your Life: Light palo santo first thing in the morning, fill your home with fresh flowers, or buy a new scent for yourself or your home.
Give yourself grace as you move through each day; everything fluctuates and once you make peace that life is a constant wave of highs and lows, it makes it much easier to show yourself compassion through all the arcs. As Billy Chapata writes:
“Showing up for yourself consistently is a brave thing, a powerful thing, a vulnerable thing. But you are allowed days to recluse, days to be vulnerable, days to feel weak. You are allowed to let things fall apart temporarily so you can rise beautifully tomorrow.”
Billy Chapata
