The first friend you’ll ever make is yourself.
Let’s do a quick exercise to put things into perspective. Find a full-length mirror and stand in front of it. Make sure that the room is well-lit.
Do you recognize the person staring back at you? That is the person who’ll be making all your decisions, telling you if you’re good enough and giving your advice when you need it most.
Ask yourself, if you held that much significance in someone’s life, would you be kind and compassionate with them, or harsh, overcritical and judgmental?
We hope you picked the former.
But here’s the sad reality for a lot of us; we are anything but kind and compassionate when we’re talking to our own selves. We say things we’d never say to a friend or someone we love. We hold ourselves back from the things we want to do because we feel like we aren’t good enough.
Here’s how to change that.
First and Foremost: Accept That You Are Imperfect—Everyone Is
Accepting imperfection is the first step in truly being okay and at peace with the person you are.
Realize that no one is perfect and everyone has strengths and weaknesses, good parts and bad parts, good days and bad days.
You are no exception.
Acceptance is the first step toward improvement. The moment you accept that there are things about you that may need work, you can start looking into ways to improve them.
Forgive Yourself and Others
We often forgive others, but we rarely forgive ourselves. But forgiveness is important if you want to go far in the journey of self-development and growth.
It is important to realize that you’re not going to do everything right. Making mistakes and learning from them is a part of life—it would limit our growth and development if we try to take it out of the equation.
So, the next time you break someone else’s coffee mug, apologize, replace the mug if you can, but don’t be too hard on yourself for it. Instead, take it as a growth lesson on how to make it up to someone.
Overcome Limiting Beliefs About Yourself
Limiting beliefs are often the result of one of our basic human needs going unfulfilled, according to Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ principle. This mostly happens in early childhood. Fortunately, there are ways to satisfy these needs even in adult life.
Techniques like ‘reframing of needs’ and ‘neuropsychological implants’ make it easy to give your unmet needs a new context, making them easier to fulfill in later stages of life, leading to accelerated personal development and progress.
If you want to explore the ‘reframing of needs’ principle and use it to your benefit, go ahead and download the NIKU application on your smartphone. You can download it from the Apple App Store and the Google PlayStore, depending on which phone you own.
The NIKU application works like an online psychological counselor that helps you cater to your issues on your own time and at your own pace.
