10 Ways to Be the Best Version of Yourself! (Part 1)
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My goal as a coach is to help as many moms as I can to become their best self.
I’m chosing to call this best self “A Joyful You”.
The word Joyful to me doesn’t just mean happy, it means flourishing and thriving with an overall sense of well-being and true inner peace.
A Joyful You is someone who is committed to being alive and to using their strengths in service to something bigger than themselves.
My overall objective is to help you reach your Optimal self.
The world Optimal comes from the Latin world Optimus which means THE BEST.
There is a theory in psychology that is called Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, which represents the needs of every single human being on the planet.
It’s depicted using a triangle broken up into 5 sections. At the bottom it lists our basic physiological needs, things like food, water, warmth, rest, safety and security.
In the middle are our psychological needs : belonging, contribution, relationships, etc.
And then at the very tippy top is self-actualization, or in other words, our ability to be our best self, our Optimus.
This is something that someone can’t wrap up and gift us with.
It has to come from inside us.
It’s also not something that you can do once -bam! You’re reached your best version of you and now you’re done. NO! It’s a never-ending constant process.
10 PRINCIPLES OF BECOMING A JOYFUL YOU
Principle #1 -Optimism
Optimism is hopefulness and confidence about the future or the successful outcome of something. I think we could also include gratitude in with this.
The opposite of optimism is pessimism. Have you ever been around a pessimistic person? It’s like being around a dark cloud. I always think of Eyore from Winnie the Pooh. He’s gloomy, ungrateful, sarcastic, negative, and in his mind, nothing ever goes right.
Pessimistic people are not striving to become the best version of themselves.
They’re spending all their time complaining, gossiping, criticizing, and feeling sorry for themselves.
Years ago, I was feeling very Eyore-ish and I remember wanting to be more optimistic, to have more optimism in my life, but I had no idea how. Were people just born optimistic? Was it a character trait I wasn’t granted?
I remember the first thing I did was post quotes about being positive and happy all around my kitchen. I taped them onto every cabinet, above the stove, on the fridge, on the walls, everywhere!
I thought if I could read them and be reminded often, they would change me. Unfortunately they did not.
Next I tried positive affirmations. I am happy. I am positive. I am living the best life. I am wealthy. The problem with positive affirmations is that if you don’t believe them on a small level, the brain will totally reject them and no amount of repeating them will coax your brain into believing otherwise. Every time you repeat them, there’s a part of your mind, conscious or not that says “Yeah right! Not true!”
So if peppy signs and affirmations don’t work, what does?
First of all, you have to be aware of what you’re thinking.
What are your day in and day out thoughts?
Many of you are familiar with the Self-Coaching Model I teach that shows us how our thoughts are what create our feelings.
Optimism is a feeling.
So if we want to feel optimistic, we have to think thoughts that create that feeling for us.
The easiest way to know what your thoughts are is to write them down.
THOUGHT DOWNLOAD EXERCISE
Here’s a quick exercise you can do. (This is something that my clients do every day.)
Get out a piece of paper and a pen, set a timer for 3-5 minutes and write down all the thoughts that come to your mind. This is not a Dear Diary style. It’s more random and all over the place. You might even have thoughts like “I don’t know what to write”, if you do, write it down!
This exercise helps you be the Watcher or the Observer of your thoughts. A Joyful You pays attention to what she’s thinking, and she thinks on purpose.
She puts her mind where she wants it.
She doesn’t allow her mind to run wild and to rule her, she rules her mind and she intentionally chooses what she thinks about.
There’s a lot more to this and we’ll have to get into it another time, but for now, your takeaway is to have more optimism in your life. And the way you do that is by paying attention to your thinking and what’s going through your mind.
Principle #2 –REMEMBER YOUR TRUE IDENTITY AND Purpose
In a talk by Michelle Craig, she said, “Perhaps the most important things for us to see clearly are who God is and who we really are-sons and daughters of heavenly parents, with a diving nature and eternal destiny. Ask God to reveal these truths to you, along with how He feels about you. The more you understand your true identity and purpose, soul deep, the more it will influence everything in your life.”
Knowing who you are, and your purpose is so exciting! It can influence everything in your life!
It’s also a great motivator to help you keep spiral up into the best version of yourself.
Along with knowing your true identity, I’d also encourage you to spend some time figuring out what your greatest gifts and talents are and how you can share them with the world.
100 THINGS LIST
One of my favorite exercises I give my clients to do is to make a list of 100 things they love about themselves.
The purpose of this activity is not to pat yourself on the back and to see yourself as better than everyone else.
The purpose of this activity is to direct your mind into focusing on the TRUE YOU.
I see Satan trying really hard to confuse us or to distract us on this. He’ll have us believe that we don’t have any talents to share or that our talents aren’t good enough, that someone else could do it better than us so why bother?
I love this quote from Sheri Dew.
She said, “Clearly, Satan wants us to see ourselves as the world sees us, not as the Lord sees us, because the world’s mirror, like a circus mirror in which a 5’10” woman (that’s me) appears two feet tall, distorts and minimizes us. Satan tells us we’re not good enough. Not smart enough. Not thin enough. Not cute enough. Not clever enough. Not anything enough. And that is a big, fat, devilish lie.”
Don’t buy into the lie!
If you want to become the best version of yourself, if you want to become A Joyful You, you have to remember and live in your true identity and purpose daily.
Principle #3 – Self-Awareness
What are you habits? What are the things that are working for you and the things that aren’t?
Remember how I said Becoming A Joyful You is a never-ending project? You have to constantly be demolishing the old you – the habits that aren’t working for you, and building habits that do.
In the same talk I just mentioned Michelle Craig tells us to ask ourselves two questions and then pay attention to the answers and impressions that come.
These 2 questions are:
- What am I doing that I should stop doing? And . . .
- What am I not doing that I should start doing?
For some of us this might seem overwhelming.
We might have a list a mile long, so I’d like to encourage you to start with just ONE THING at a time.
So instead you might ask yourself:
- What is the ONE thing I could start doing on a daily basis that will have the biggest impact?
2. What is the ONE thing I could stop doing that will have the biggest impact?
And then work on these things until you’ve mastered them, then come back frequently and reassess.
Principle #4 – Goals
In his book, Happier, author Tel Ben-Shahar tells us that “Happy people have projects”.
Happy people are always working towards some kind of a goal.
So pick one, what my mentor would call a “WILDLY IMPORTANT GOAL” or WIN for short, and go crush it!
The purpose of a goal is not to get something or to achieve something. That’s what we think it is- right?
But actually, the purpose of a goal is to show up! To focus on the process and grow into your best self through the task.
Working towards a goal takes us out of our comfort zone and that’s exactly where we want to be because that’s where growth and progress happen.
Still need convincing?
If you did an inventory of the things you were most proud of or that were most significant in your life, you will see that you probably had to work for them.
You achieved them just on the other side of fear.
Maybe you almost didn’t do them because you were too scared or uncomfortable.
Fear is not a sign that you’re headed in the wrong direction, fear is a sign that you’re on the right path.
Choose a big scary goal and go after it!
When you step out of your comfort zone and step into fear and discomfort, you step into a bigger sense of your potential. You grow into that best version of ourselves and you become A Joyful You.
Principle #5 -TAKE CONSISTENT ACTION
Or in the words of Nike, JUST DO IT!
Don’t sit around and wait for the right moment or the right timing. There is no such thing. Just jump on in and learn as you go.
A lot of us think we need to learn more before we can take action. In fact, sometimes we feel like we are taking action by consuming – watching a YouTube video, taking an online course, or reading a book about the goal we’re wanting to work on. That’s not the kind of action I’m referring to.
That kind of action does not move the needle. You cannot lose weight just by reading a book about it.
I can remember in the early days of my marriage; I had no idea how to keep house. I knew I wanted to have a clean and organized home I just had no idea how. So, I spent a lot of time searching the then somewhat brand-new world wide web.
These were the days before Google and YouTube.
I read all the articles I could on keeping house, but my house wasn’t any more organized or clean because I wasn’t taking action. I wasn’t applying what I was learning.
Compare that with another time in my life where I wanted to learn how to quilt. My mom at the time didn’t quilt, so I decided to just jump in and figure it out myself.
I bought some fabric, cut myself a square out of cardboard for my pattern, and I hand cut with scissors, tons of little squares and then I sewed them together in rows and columns to make a quilt top.
I didn’t sit around waiting for the right moment, for a quilting class to come along, or for money to purchase the right cutting tools, or for someone to teach me how, I took action.
Yes, I made a lot of mistakes along the way and my quilts were definitely not Martha Stewart worthy, but I grew and learned a new skill and that’s what it’s all about!
If we’re not taking action, we’re stagnant. There is no growth. We’re not growing into our best selves and becoming A Joyful You.
Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today.
The Principles for becoming A Joyful You are:
- Optimism – look at life with a hopeful confident lens. The way we do this is by managing our mind. Getting really good at seeing what we’re thinking and then thinking on purpose.
- Remember your True Self and Purpose – This is a great motivator to spiraling up and becoming A Joyful You.
- Self-Awareness – What habit do you need to start and what habit do you need to stop?
- Goals – The purpose of a goal is to show up! To focus on the process and grow into your best self through the task.
- Take Action – Do it now! Don’t wait for the stars to align just right, start now. Also make sure you’re really taking action and not just consuming information.
Alright those are the first 5 principles. Learn the next 5 in Part 2 coming soon!
