219 Treat Yourself Like a Beautiful Toddler

Hey, this is Anne with your Coaching on the Go.

This week we’re talking about celebrating, taking the time to celebrate. 

The first thing I want to mention to you, outside of yesterday’s coaching, is about self-compassion, and also a tool to help you create that internal, beautiful messaging that will support you in continuing to move forward in life and enjoying it.

Years ago, a friend of mine was speaking to me about my self-compassion, and what he said was, “Anne, if you could just treat yourself as beautifully as any one of your students, anyone who walks into your classroom…”

And then he also said, “Imagine holding a little newborn baby in your arms, how would you treat that newborn baby?”

And what I would say to you is, how would you treat a little toddler that you came across, or a little three or four year old that’s learning to do something new?

How would you treat them? 

How would you celebrate their success? 

How would you encourage them forward? 

What would it look like if you treated yourself in that way, like a beautiful toddler? 

Often we find that we are constantly in that state of criticism and looking for improvement, and looking for the next thing. 

You can be looking for the improvement and incremental changes and also be cheering on the forward motion that you’ve already experienced.

That’s the great one two punch. 

So the tool that I like to use is a gratitude mindset. 

I feel like, and I’ve talked about this before with you, that appreciation is the greatest medicine. 

It is a cure for so many things, gratitude and appreciation, and it’s also said that gratitude has an energy from the past, it’s looking back, and appreciation is an active energy. 

I don’t know if that’s true, but if you think about being grateful or being appreciative, you test it out for yourself and see which one has the best feeling associated with it. 

So when my friend said that to me, that was in a time when I was really just grinding on myself.

I was having an internal voice of, “Why can’t you do this faster? Why are you still where you are here?” 

It was a constant diatribe of pushing myself towards something more, driving myself towards something bigger, and a voice of frustration that I wasn’t further along. 

When I think about it, it could be the voice of someone from my past.

It could be the voice of my dad when I’m growing up, who was really diligently trying to get us to be great beings, and I’m seeing it as constant criticism and suggestions for improvement. 

So you could have a voice from the past speaking into you there, and you get to start making a shift on that.

Transformation, it takes a while because these are behaviors we’ve been doing and practicing the well-worn path of for decades.

So the tool I like to use is that appreciation. 

So I like to look at myself, and I needed to schedule times, I actually needed to do that. 

I started doing it in the morning. 

I would make a list of 15 things about myself I was appreciative of, and celebrate that.

I would end it with a jump in the air.

I had to practice this because it wasn’t second nature for me. 

Then I started doing what I coached you to do for a while, is at the end of the day, when my mind was swimming in some level of criticism for things that had gone on, things I didn’t get to complete, etc., I would instead shift into 100 things I appreciate, and that really starts to shift your energy. 

So today’s coaching is around locking into self-compassion and shifting that into being a cheerleader for yourself, treating yourself like that impressionable being who’s learning to walk and talk and do different things, that toddler within you, and you wouldn’t be harsh and critical to a beautiful small being like that, and then being appreciative for who you are.

You’re a great being of the universe. 

Don’t forget who you are. 

You are amazing, you are magnificent, and I’m not just saying those words. 

When you really look at yourself, you have to see how magnificent you really are, and if you don’t see it, you get to start practicing the gratitude for what you have, and the appreciation.

Sending you big love today.

Get busy on your work. 

Get busy on your transformation. 

It’s going to pay dividends for you.