By Meredith C. Nealis
Our muscles are the “engines” that our body uses to propel itself. Our muscles turn our energy into motion. We strengthen these muscles by exercising, eating right and taking care of our bodies. But what about our “other” muscles? What about the muscles we work on every day that keep us stuck in our own fears.? What about the muscles we work to strengthen like our “ego” muscles?
I recently had a conversation with a friend, who had a new man in her life. this new man was satisfying her ego muscles through sex. Sex (ego) muscles are the muscles (or the high) you get when someone wants to have sex with you. They give you the confidence to go out and accomplish anything you put your mind to. Sex muscles are similar to “beer” muscles. Beer muscles are the powers one imagines they have after consuming a few beers. We have all met guys that have their beer muscles working for them. Shy and quite by day, Don Juan by night.
These “ego” muscles or temporary highs can become addictive. These ego muscles trick us into feeling powerful and make us believe that we need to keep repeating the same behavior over and over to remain powerful. However, we end up feeling worse and worse about ourselves as each high wears off.
Building our ego is working the wrong muscles. It is not the “sex” muscles, it is not the “beer” muscles, the “love” muscles, or the “beauty” muscles that we need to work on. The muscles that we need to strengthen are our inner guide – or inner core – muscles.
Our biggest challenge is to chose the short term pain for the long term gain. As humans, every day we are evolving, changing, learning, and growing. Each day is a baby step towards what we desire most, but in order to attain what we most desire, we need to make sure we have built a strong foundation by loving ourselves.
Our ego will always try to get in our way and push us off course, but it is important to stay focused, to work on ourselves to love ourselves everyday despite if we make a mistake.
Here are 4 things you can consciously do today to begin this journey:
1. Forgive yourself
2. Love yourself
3. Be kind to yourself
4. Listen to yourself (most important)
There is a constant battle between our ego and our inner guide. Our fears (ego) and our love for ourselves (inner guide) are always at odds. When we chose to feed or strengthen our ego, we are actually giving into our underlying fears. In my friend’s case, her fear is that she will be alone, and that she will never find that special someone. So rather than be alone, she choses to have someone in her life even if it’s only temporary. She gives into the fear of being alone, continues to feed her ego and strengthen the fear instead of overcoming it.
I am guilty of this same behavior at times. The ego plays on our fears, makes us believe that what we desire for ourselves is unattainable. But I believe that each one of us has the power to overcome our fears.
I believe that if we begin to strengthen our self love muscles (strengthening the connection with our inner guide), this would allow us to choose the right direction for ourselves. If we make the conscious decision to give up the addictive fear-based behaviors, we can begin a journey of loving ourselves unconditionally. And this includes strengthening our connection to our inner guide. When we do, then what we desire will come directly to us.
Today, I challenge each of you to find one thing you can do to love yourself. There are many articles and books out there that give us great ideas, and we all have great intentions to try everything we read. My challenge for you is to not try and find several things to do, but to just find one thing and do it consistently.
I am a single mom, and every day I have great intentions. But the day starts and ends, and then I find that I got nothing I wanted to do for me accomplished. So I now take 5-6 minutes every morning as soon as I get up and every night when I crawl into bed to do a mediation. I downloaded a morning and evening meditation on my phone and I listen to it in the morning and again at night. This simple morning meditation allows me to set my intentions with the Universe for the day, and then at night to thank the Universe for my wonderful day.
Consistency is the key. Find just one thing you can do for you…..love yourself enough to give back to yourself. We are all guilty of doing for others, but every day we need to take the time to do for ourselves. We need to love ourselves. The more love we give to ourselves, the more love we will have to give others.
