Day 1: Finding & Encouraging Self-love
VISUALIZE workshops are 3 hour virtual retreat workshops where I teach people to use visualization exercises, stream of consciousness writing and drawing to get clarity, build the life that they want and step into it.
To share how visualization has helped me become the person that I am today, I did a 6 day countdown to my VISUALIZE workshop, where each day I shared a story of how and what I visualized and how it came to fruition. The first story is about how I spent the last year visualizing a space where I was fiercely in love with myself and attracted people who loved and respected me in that way.
I used to wake up feeling kind of lonely and not that happy with where I was. I felt like I was not doing enough in my business and not achieving the goals that I wanted to achieve. I’d be going to gym and working on my body but something didn’t feel quite right. In essence, I felt like I was not enough. When I started doing visualization every morning, I would imagine what my life would look like in the future. I would imagine what enough and even more would be like! I would feel the feelings of being so grateful for the fact that I am so in love with myself: I love the way my heart and soul tell me how to be authentic, I love my body, I love that I am creative, I love that I have these ambitions and these dreams and I really love that I only attract people who really love and respect me and view me as equal. If I happened to wake up feeling down or feeling suppressed, I would counteract that feeling with a positive affirmation like, ‘I feel so expansive and feel so in charge of my life and I am so in love with the fact that I love this’. What happened over time, is that every morning when I did this, I would actually start to feel excited about being expansive and being in love with myself.
Getting to a point of loving myself has been a process of re-programming my brain, switching from ‘I am not enough’ to ‘I am way more than enough’. I literally started to change my automatic thought patterns towards cultivating a truer, deeper feeling of self-love. I shifted from thoughts like: ‘I don’t make enough money from my business so I’m a failure’ or ‘I’m single again so there must be something wrong with me’ to more true thoughts and facts like: ‘Look at all the things that I am doing for myself. I love that I own my own business and I love that I am surrounded by all these amazing people’.
My visualization space became a commitment to myself where I encouraged and pumped myself up for finding the self-love that I could only find from within, remembering that love was not an external thing. Over time, visualization reminded me that ‘You are what you love and not what loves you’. So I learned and encouraged myself to make my glass over flow because if your glass is not overflowing, you cannot pour that liquid into someone else’s cup. You also can’t ask for liquid from someone else’s empty cup. My growing sense of self-love has had a domino effect. I love myself because I go to yoga, so I keep going to yoga. I love myself because I am very dedicated to sharing my story. I love myself for my dedication to connection, which is why I connect here and on Facebook live.
Part of the Domino effect was realizing that, as I fell in love with myself I was weeding out people who actually didn’t love me in the way that I wanted to be loved. As I realized more of my value, I realized that my biggest asset is being expansive, open and vulnerable. A year ago, I remember feeling like I had to be apologetic for things that are typically masculine – like owning my own business. Imagine being apologetic for that!? I felt like I was constantly moulding to what everyone else wanted. I would mould, then be unhappy and then wonder why I was unhappy. Visualization helped me to realize that I don’t need to mold, I can be the puzzle piece where all the people in my life who don’t fit the puzzle, don’t have to be in my life. Through this process, I have made more genuine connections and friends. I have even made friends across the country and have attracted friendships where we can hold each other in an authentic way and help each other up.
Overall, visualization helped me to let go of the idea that I have to be lesser than or repress myself, because I don’t and neither do you. Keep your eye out for my next 5 stories where I’ll go in-depth into stories around health, relationships and what’s been going on in my life.
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