me time

School is back in session and it’s time to major in YOU-Ology. If you really want to be good at something you have to learn it, study it, practice it, become invested in it. The same is true of yourself. If you want to master your life, you must first master you. When you study yourself, you can understand yourself and then reconnect with yourself. Why is this necessary? Well, if you aren’t clear about YOU then how can you really be clear about anyone else or anything else you encounter in life? How do you know that you are moving in a direction that’s best for you and actually what you want? If I had to guess, I’d say that the majority of us are walking around as fractures of ourselves and don’t even know it. We have an idea of what we want, we may even know who we want to be, but we’re afraid to reveal our truth… not just to the world, but to ourselves. This lack of selfawareness is NOT serving us. So let’s get back to the basics.

Studying YOU

It’s’ time to become a student of yourself and rediscover (or recreate) who you are and want to be. I want you to think about and then answer the following questions. Don’t just read them, actually think about them and write down the answers.

• What do you like?
• What don’t you like?
• What do you want in life?
• What don’t you want in life?
• What will you tolerate?
• What won’t you tolerate?
• Do you find yourself tolerating things that you said you wouldn’t or that require you to compromise yourself or your beliefs?
• How do you want to be seen? Do people see you that way?
• How do you want to be treated? Do others treat you how you want to be treated?
• What are your goals in life?
• What motivates you?
• What demotivates you?
• What is standing in the way of where you are now and where you wish to be? How close are you to where you really want to be?
• If you could wake up tomorrow living your dream life, what would that look like? How close does that resemble your current life?

There will be much more self-reflection and personal surveying in the near future, this is just our starting point!

Understanding YOU

Once you finish, go back to review your answers and then answer them again. Dig a little deeper this time. Look beyond the initial answer and explore the reasoning and the why behind it. For example: You might have said: “I like to be treated with respect and not talked crazy to.” (That’s reasonable!) However, you find that others don’t treat you the way you want to be treated.

Now, is that because they are mean, not understanding or disconnected from your needs? Possibly, but the most important answer (and the only one that matters) is that you allow them to treat you that way. Everything starts and ends with you. Once you realize this and set the course to change you’ll find that new doors in life open up. To help get you started, I want to share some of the most common root issues I’ve identified about what we need to understand about ourselves and what is keeping us from getting what we want out of life:

• You don’t speak your truth.
• You fail to establish rules or requirements.
• You fail to enforce those rules and requirements.
• You are scared to set boundaries.
• You settle for what is offered/given instead of demanding what you want and are worth.
• You may not even realize your worth.
• You may be scared of being judged or not liked.
• You may be worried about people and things that honestly don’t matter as much as we think they do.
• You aren’t really sure or clear on what it is you want and the things we think we want are usually what society has convinced us we need (more on this topic later!).

The truth is, that we (especially women) most often just accept the treatment we are given. That is the root of the issue. And what is what needs to be understood in order to invoke change.

Reconnecting with YOU

So now that you’ve started to dig into the YOU of things, it’s time to really ponder what you’ve identified and start a course for your truly desired life destination. Take the answers and insight from the questions above and use them as a tool to help you understand yourself better. These are the positive and negative triggers and influences in your life. What changes can you start to make to create better situations and outcomes for yourself. What can you start doing or stop doing so that you can better connect with yourself? Use this insight to help you navigate relationships, friendships, environments and situations that you face each day so that you can live a better life thats focused on you, your goals and what’s best for you. Learn how to check in with yourself, listen to yourself and make decisions based on what’s best for YOU.

As always, write these exercises down in your journal, comment below or share with me directly.