Use the time given to you to go within and fall in love with the most important person in your life!
You cannot be lonely if you like the person you are alone with.
– Wayne Dyer
We are in beautiful times; the universe has given us the opportunity to spend some time with the most important people and to do the most important things
Besides the awareness that our family is most important to us, do you know who should be of greater importance than all?
You! You are the most important person to yourself.
There can’t be a better time to discuss the topic I am going to shed some light on. How are you feeling in these times, are you enjoying the journey of being with yourself? How much do we know ourselves, and how much are we in love with ourselves?
Are you living and alive? Are you soaring and free?
There may be a great disparity between who we think we are and who we actually are so let’s start with why is it important to know yourself? And then we will talk about how to know ourselves?
Can you imagine living with someone you don’t know? Imagine being with a companion you don’t know and have no inclination to know, how would that feel. Walking life with a stranger with no idea what’s inside his/her mind, heart and soul.
That’s exactly how I felt for 36 years of my life.
Being in the fashion business was actually in conflict with my soul. Though I love to dress well and love fashion, the business of fashion is dependent on two elements—business and marketing. Though all businesses have the marketing element in it, fashion heavily depends on marketing which includes extensive socialising, wining and dining and partying. Neither I nor my partners enjoyed this part of the business and hence though our quality, designs and every other element was perfect the brand perception in the market lagged behind.
While we were doing our best to be fashion personalities our soul and personality was not aligned. It’s only when the personality comes fully to serve the energy of the soul that its authentic power emerges. And this took me 15 years to understand because I didn’t know me. I struggled to be the person I was not.
We build relationships with people by starting to know them and spending time with them, the more time we spend with them the stronger are relationships get and we also build friendships for life. This brings us to the question of how strong our relationship with ourselves is. What are we doing to spend time with ourselves and to get to know ourselves?
Similar to the way we spend time with people to know them and connect to them, we also need to go through the same process to know ourselves. When we are attracted to someone, we love to know about them—their likes, preferences, values, what brings them joy and happiness, what are their hobbies, how do they spend time, what movies they watch. We discuss everything with them in order to integrate and enjoy life with them. In many cases we accept them fully and wish to be accepted fully before committing to be with them for a lifetime.
How do we know ourselves in relation to this? I knew everything about my husband a few years into our marriage, I knew more about him than I knew about me. How often we do that, almost always. It has been only three years since I have known myself. And it has been 15 years since I have known my husband. I started knowing him and had the intention, will and patience to know him since we met. The same holds true for my twins, nothing is more important to me than them.
I met myself 38 years ago, but never thought of knowing myself as deep as I wanted to know my husband. Because I was taught by my parents that my husband and my children are the most important in my life and to take care of him through love and appreciation is my utmost responsibility.
What about myself? No one teaches us to know ourselves—our soul self, nurture ourselves, appreciate ourselves and to be in love with ourselves.
So how do we know ourselves?
Exactly the same process as your courtship with another, only difference it’s with yourself and has to be forever.
In the words of Louise Hay, “Loving yourself is a wonderful adventure; it’s like learning to fly. Imagine if we all had the power to fly at will?” It’s a process.
I invite you to start this process of knowing yourself. There should be no reason for you not to have the time to do so.
I follow the below to spend time with myself every single day even at home in quarantine!
1. Meditation
Meditation means to move beyond your analytic mind, so you can access your subconscious mind as that’s where the magic begins. When we sit in meditation we reason out our thoughts, feelings, dig deep to release them. Most of the time it happens on its own. It empowers you to become more you.
2. Journalling and gratitude
Gratitude is the highest form of receivership, when in gratitude our energy changes and that’s the energy we need to attract the more of what we are in gratitude for.
3. Reading and learning
When we commit ourselves to learn new information every single day we biologically wire that information to our cerebral architecture. And this new information helps us view life, circumstances and feelings from a new perspective. When we have new perspectives, we make informed choices of our thoughts and actions. Learning is for the mind what air is for your body.
4. Exercise
Our body is the only place we have to live in, it is the home for the soul. Taking care of our body and being healthy gives us the power we need to focus on all areas of our life.
It’s not only about making that connection with yourself, it’s also about maintaining it. Your definition of love depends on you, however for me love is meeting the person I love the most every single day hence I schedule the first meeting with myself where I practise my morning ritual.
Like you take a shower everyday, similarly you need to shower your mind with your values and your affirmations and your meditations and your love. The more time you spend time with yourself—knowing yourself and working on yourself to be the best version every single day—the more in love you are with yourself.
To be in love with yourself, the first step is to know yourself, you can’t be in love with someone you don’t know. Also, you have to maintain the connection and relationship with yourself—the one most important to you, hence you have to meet yourself every single day to shower yourself with all the love and understanding.
I would like you to spend a little extra time with yourself this week and notice the difference. A 60 minute-a-day doing different things with yourself will add immense value to you and your life and your relationships.
When we align our soul with our personality is when we discover our true self and to be able to discover our self, we need to embrace the process to go within and spend time with ourselves. There can be no greater time in history to do this than now.
This article was originally written by Meher Mirchandani for Thrive Global. It was first published on 28 April 2020.
