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5 Intention-setting Ideas For Remembering You Are Good Enough

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Most of us experience self-doubt at times, which is normal especially when we are trying something new.  However, if self-doubt feels all consuming, it will hold us back from experiencing life fully.  When we become aware that self-doubt is starting to stifle our passion for life, we may need more tools to overcome it.

Self-doubt can grow from different life experiences, such as past negative experiences or from adverse childhood experiences that challenged our innate self-worth.  If we grew up in a critical environment that informed us no matter what we do it will never be good enough, we will more likely experience self-doubt.  And a culture that has a laser focus on achievement, that implies conditional love, can actually do more harm than the intention to motivate us, setting us up for failure and the development of that nasty core negative belief that we will never be enough.

Therefore, to challenge that sense of self-doubt within, below are some ideas to try for remembering you are innately good enough, with unique individual inherent gifts to bring to the world:

  1. Strengths.   Consider sitting down to write out a list of your strengths.  Consider what you are good at.  If you need help to get started, ask several people you are close to for their perspective.  Keep in mind too those things you enjoy, even if you wouldn’t considering yourself “a pro” or “perfect” at it.  Once you create the list, keep it out and available to review, because you will most likely continue to identify other strengths that need to be added!
  2. Values.  Identifying our core values might be a little trickier.  Consider trying out one of the lists online, like Brené Brown’s list or Marshall Rosenberg’s needs list.  When you are able to connect with what you value most, the fear of criticism from others is challenged.  When you start to let those same core values guide you in your life decisions, the criticism of others doesn’t sting as deeply and, when you make mistakes, there is more room for self compassion.  Again, perhaps keeping a list of your core values out where you can see them on a daily basis and consider revisiting them to refine the list as those values become clearer to you.
  3. Talk to Yourself.   When that inner critic rears its ugly head and tries to tell you that you are not good enough, talk to yourself as though you were talking to a young child.  What would you say to them?  Consider reminding them (yourself) of their (your) strengths and core values.  Might you also tell them (you) that it is okay to fail, because that is where life lessons come alive?  Try giving yourself the same support and encouragement you would give someone you care about when they are experiencing self-doubt.
  4. Comparisons.  Everyone has different strengths, distinct definitions of success, and divergent journeys.  We also all have different quirks and imperfections as we are all human beings.  Therefore, when we compare ourselves to others, we are comparing apples to oranges, which creates fertile soil for that negative belief that we are not good enough to grow.  Now, comparing things in and of itself is natural and normal.  It is how we decide if we prefer apples over oranges.  So, to feed the human inclination to compare ourselves, perhaps consider comparing yourself to yourself.  Reflect on where you were a month ago, 6 months ago, a year ago or 10 years ago.  What challenges did you lean into, what did you learn, and how have you grown?  Did you discover new strengths and values?
  5. Be Grateful.  Consider expressing gratitude for yourself each day that you get up and show up.  Perhaps showing up for you means participating in an act of self care or using one of your strengths to support yourself.  Perhaps it includes aligning your actions with your values, not someone else’s.  See if you might be able to simply be grateful for existing, honoring your innate value as a human being.  Remember we are imperfect human beings not perfect human doings!

5 Intention-setting Ideas to Embrace Your Values

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Our culture informs us that our needs are not important and instead suggests that it is better to focus on the needs of others.  However, what if I were to say that our needs are our personal values.  Would that make a difference in how you think about and embrace your needs?

As humans, we all have needs.  It might be the need for beauty in our lives or the need to be treated respectfully.  Having needs or values does NOT mean you are needy or selfish!

Why is any of this important?  Why am I focusing on this topic?  Well, because embracing our personal values is a huge step forward in finding and maintaining inner peace.  Being unaware of our values can be compared to driving our car without a destination in mind, where it might appear to others that we are moving ahead, yet we actually feel lost or overwhelmed.

So, below for each benefit of embracing your values, I have also included an exercise to help you identify yours for yourself.  If you have done this in the past, it might be fun to try it again, as your values do evolve as you change and grow.  I hope you will consider trying one!

  1. Become More Self-Aware.  If you have not spent some time in reflection on what is important to you – and are unable to name your top 5 values – then you might feel confused when your reaction to something seems disproportionate to the stimulus.  Everyone holds a core set of personal values that influence – conscious or not – our priorities and reactions.  One way to identify your core values is to consider choices or decisions you have made in the past.  Perhaps consider journaling about several major and minor decisions you have made recently in your life and write down what factors you used to make these decisions.  As you do so, you may discover a pattern in the factors that played into those decisions.  Maybe you redecorated a room in your home where you decided to create a separate area for yourself that included your favorite picture of a sunset and a place to put fresh flowers with the intention to allow yourself to find yourself there when you need some peace and quiet.  And when deciding where you wanted to take your next vacation, you decided to go by yourself to a remote location “to get away from it all”.  From these decisions, you might draw a conclusion that space and beauty are important values of yours, that when those values are not honored, begin to create a sense of uneasiness inside that is hard to define.
  2. Set Healthy Boundaries.  Healthy boundaries that you set for yourself are basically a reflection of your core values.  Therefore, if you have difficulty in setting such healthy boundaries, it starts with identifying your core values.  Again, perhaps find yourself with your journal and write down your responses to the following:  1) What you can and cannot tolerate; 2) What are the rules you try to live by; 3) What values have been instilled in you from your family environment; 4)  What do you admire in others; 5) What might be a deal-breaker in a relationship (e.g. what would cause you to leave a relationship if it was not respected) and 6) What are the things that were hurtful in your family environment that you would not want repeated in your life as an adult.  What emerges from your journaling are your core values and, from this point, you are able to formulate your healthy boundaries in preparation to communicate those boundaries to others.
  3. Guide Decisions. If you are clear on your values, decision-making becomes much easier.  When presented with a difficult decision, by asking yourself the question of “What would someone who values X do in this situation?” can help guide you to make the choice that aligns best with your core values.  Perhaps sit with someone and create a long list of values (or use Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication Needs Inventory as a starting point). See how many you can come up with!  Then, individually go back and read each one, circling the ones that stand out or really resonate with you.  You can circle as many as you want the first read-through.  Go back a second time and begin to cross off some that don’t seem as important as the others, until you narrow the list down to perhaps around a dozen.  From that point, see if you can put them in the order of importance to you.  Once you have the list, consider sharing your top 5 with the other person, offering examples of how these values guided you in a recent decision you made.
  4. Discover Your Purpose.  Many of us search for a life time to figure out what our purpose is in this incarnation.  I believe we search for such a purpose because purpose and meaning is a universal human need.  However, not all of us had the appropriate guidance to uncover our natural gifts or core values.  Discovering our values can help us to identify our purpose with more clarity.  It is hard to know what you want from life or what you want to offer to the world if you are not clear on what is important to you in life.  Knowing your personal values helps you align what you do with who you are, supporting you in offering your gifts to the world with more confidence and ease.  To assist you in discovering your top 5 values, consider the previous exercise and now imagine you are in a boat with the dozen or so values that resonated with you.  Your boat springs a leak!   As the water starts to rise, the only way to stay afloat is to throw a value overboard.  The water continues to rise – another value must go overboard or you will sink.  The only way to save yourself is to continue to throw your values overboard until you are left with your top 5.  And, if you are feeling really brave, throw all values overboard until you have your top one!
  5. Gain Greater Peace.  As you begin to bring your values with you as guides into all of your relationships, including the one with yourself, you will begin to feel more at peace with the boundaries you set, the decisions you make and the work that you do.  I compare identifying your core values to building the foundation of your home.  If you know a solid foundation has at least four footings, what footings are you building your house upon?  Mine is built upon compassion, gratitude, integrity and thoughtfulness.  I’d love you hear yours!

As always, if you try any of these intention-setting ideas for holistic health, I would love to hear about the impact they might have had for you.  Please send me an email at linda@sanctuary4compassion.com to share!

5 Intention-setting Ideas for Creating Healthy Boundaries

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What I have experienced since learning about and setting healthy boundaries is much more freedom and less stress in my life!

However, before a healthy boundary can be created, we need to understand what a boundary is and is not.  Boundaries are anything that limits something.  For example, time is a boundary, because there are only 24 hours in a day.  No matter how much we might want to negotiate for more, Mother Nature is not going to budge!

On the other hand, boundaries are not selfish.  In fact, boundaries can be quite empowering.  I was once offered a way of looking at setting boundaries as a gift that I can give another person, to help them reconnect with their own autonomy and competence, building their self-confidence.  This way of looking at boundaries does not mean that we stop helping others out when they are in need; however, it does ask us to deploy our skills in discerning what the best choice is in each moment.

When we can embrace the idea that setting boundaries is self-care (not selfish), then we can begin to take steps toward identifying the boundaries we want to create that will benefit both ourselves and others.  A mantra I was offered to assist me in shifting from the belief that it is selfish to prioritize my needs over the needs of others is “Say no, so others can grow”.  Take a moment right now and write this mantra down on a piece of paper or index card and place it somewhere that is accessible to you on a daily basis.  Now, think about it for a moment longer.

If you are still not buying it, here is an example that I think most people will be able to connect to.  Imagine a child is ready to learn how to tie their shoes.  You begin to teach the child how to do it.  Each day you teach the child, you watch them trying it on their own, showing progress and excitement as their fingers start to cooperate.  Now comes the hard part – the day you have to tell them “No, I’m not going to do it for you anymore, because I know you can do it by yourself”.  It hurts you to hear their protests and see their tears, but you stand your ground.  Now envision their face when they come back into the room and want to show you how they were able to tie their shoes by themselves.  Can you feel their joy!

Think of this example when you begin to explore setting healthy boundaries, remembering that when you say no, you are creating space for another person to figure something out for themselves because you BELIEVE in them, that they are capable of doing it without you doing it for them.  I know first hand that this sounds easier said than done, so below are some intention setting ideas to support your efforts in establishing, clarifying, expressing and reinforcing healthy boundaries:

  1. Identify Boundaries.  Many of us may have grown up in families that did not explain or demonstrate healthy boundaries, so we might need to take a moment and think about any boundaries we might have established or are aware of in our lives.  For example, the walls, windows, and doors of our houses create a boundary that we call home.  Our bodily reactions might have not allowed pets or certain foods in the house due to allergies.  Our spiritual roots might have offered rules of conduct that limit our behaviors, such as no public display of affection.  Creating time to identify some boundaries that exist in your life, starts to grease the wheels of the healthy boundary making machine because the growing awareness invites in choice.  For example, just because you might be allergic to cats, doesn’t preclude you from having a dog!
  2. Explore Emotions.  When you sense you are having an emotional response – whether positive or negative – stop and explore!  Emotions are the part of our intelligence that informs us about what is working and what is not working in our lives.  Emotions are the best guide to knowing when a healthy boundary is needed.  When an emotion arises, ask yourself ‘What is this emotion I am experiencing in this moment?’, ‘What is it telling me?’, and ‘Do I want more or less of it in my life?’.  When the powerful emotions such as anger (and all of its variations), pain and fear arise, the universal message is that your needs are not being satisfied.  Consider taking a moment to identify some recent situations where you felt one or more of these powerful emotions arise and write them down in the context of what brought them up.
  3. Clarify Your Needs/Values.   Now comes the hard part.  When we realize our emotions arise in response to our needs, whether they are being satisfied or not, it means we now need to own the fact that we have needs (AND WE ALL DO) and we have a responsibility to identify exactly what those needs are if we want to deepen the connections we have with ourselves and others.  Another way to view our needs is to consider them our core life values – what is it that we value enough to fight for in our lives.  To help you get started in this area, there are some universal human needs:  autonomy, connection, physical well-being including safety, honesty, peace, play and purpose.  If you would like to take a look at a longer list of such needs/values, Marshall Rosenberg has a Needs Inventory that I would recommend.  Reflect on this list along side of your emotional responses to help you narrow down the list to your top 4 values that will help guide your healthy boundary creations.
  4. Communicate a Healthy Boundary.  Now that you are armed with the knowledge of your needs/values and what happens when those needs are not being met or worse, being ignored or disrespected by another, the next step is to plan for an appropriate confrontation in order to express your healthy boundary.  Keep in mind that confrontation does not equal conflict and that you have a right and responsibility to ask for what it is you need.  Also keep in mind the other person might not be able to give you what it is you need; however, that must not stop you from at least asking and trying to negotiate a healthier space.  To help you craft your healthy boundary, consider using the 4-step process developed by Marshall Rosenberg which was designed to diffuse emotionally-charged situations by reducing blame and shame.
  5. Make a request.  It is not enough to tell someone that your needs are not being met and expect them to know how to respond to such a communication.  It is important to clearly ask for what it is you would like from them in order to have your need be met.  For example, if you determine that you value beauty as reflected by a neat and clean home and become distressed when when your need for beauty in your home is not being honored, the request might be “Will you help me clean our home or keep our home clean?”.  Such a request might lead you into a negotiation about the specifics (e.g., frequency, specific tasks, etc.), so consider making requests as concrete as possible (inviting a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response) such as “Will you help me keep our home clean by washing your dishes in the sink?”.  One last thought – when you start to clarify and express your healthy boundaries, it may seem awkward for both you and the other person because it might be a new way of interacting.  Some suggestions to support success include:  start with setting a healthy boundary around something that feels relatively minor on your emotional scale, write out the process (including your feelings, needs/values and request) and have it in front of you when speaking to the person, and know in advance that you will most likely have to communicate your boundary more than once (often several and sometimes many times) before the person fully integrates and consistently implements the request agreed to initially!

As always, if you try any of these intention-setting ideas for holistic health, I would love to hear about the impact they might have had for you.  Please send me an email at linda@sanctuary4compassion.com to share!