Harmonized Resourced Manifesting

Another Love Language: Me-time

Taking in some me time. Shot of young woman relaxing at home.

Get in Touch Another Love Language: Me-Time, and Why It’s Necessary Self-first is NOT Selfish You’ve either heard about them, read about them, or put them to practice in your life: the five love languages by Gary Chapman. He coined these 5 different ways in which you receive and express love: quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, gifts and acts of service. I don’t think he meant for these to be finite, after all, love is a many-splendored thing. I found that me-time should be added to the 5. Funny thing is, as I was writing this post, this married friend of mine with kids tells me that she’s taking a solo trip to the sea. I’m like, urrr, yaasss!! Right on!! Absolutely. And then I remember how it’s been so long that I’ve taken myself out. Have had solo time, doing my own things, but have not dated myself in quite a while. Something needs to be done about that and soon! They say introverts recharge and energize themselves in me-time and solitude, and extroverts do so by the presence of others. I think this ideation somewhat disadvantages extroverts, such that many get bored and uncomfortable being by themselves. Thing is we don’t always need to be recharging or energizing, we also need to have moments of self-discharge. This helps us remove any charges that are harmful to us and replenish with useful ones. We all need space to be by ourselves. To examine ourselves and our lives. To find ourselves. To have self-awareness and get in touch with ourselves. To deal with things that are not pleasing about and to us. To have that slice of moist chocolate cake with 70% chocolate ganache frosting and a cuppa mocha java in peace.🕊️Just because. To connect with God inside of us and around us. To fill ourselves with God.  ME-TIME. We can then get out of there at peace, grounded and many times having found our truth. It can only be beneficial to those around us. After all, we are mandated to live at peace with one another. Love yourself enough to gift yourself that time. Love someone enough to gift them a peaceful and grounded you.  Love someone enough to gift them me-time. A big part of setting healthy boundaries with others and setting them up for success in your relationship, is letting them know that you need and when you need your me-time. Long gone are the times when we personalized and got upset at our partner’s need to go hiking alone, or running alone, or to the movies alone. We now should understand that it’s their time with themselves, to themselves, and not away from you. It’s their time to love on themselves and not hate on you. ‘You don’t love me, why would you leave me here and go to the restaurant alone’. Whaaaat?!🤯😵‍💫😆 They receive love that way, being given the space and the trust to just be. Oh and when they’re getting away from you, you’ll know! I should be free to do whatever I’d like to do in my me-time. Maybe I’ll just sit by myself, or maybe go out by myself. Just let me. Going to the movies is just something I like to do on my own. If you ever find yourself in a theatre with me, just keep it shut, please. I can’t stand it!😆Someone talking to me over a movie. Nuh uh! I don’t prefer shopping for clothes with others because, 1. I don’t like the ‘take off your clothes and fit’ routine so I rush through it or don’t do it at all. And 2. I don’t like sitting there and responding to ‘does this suit me?’🤷🏽‍♀️ I do better with shoes. You could get told you’re stand-offish, like I did, because you intentionally protect your me-time. Be ok with that. Time for people-pleasing is long gone. It’s just as important to set such boundaries with kids so they know it’s ok for them too. After all, our me-time is for their benefit. My child now absolutely gets my me-time, recognizes when I need it, and she respects it. In fact, she also respects her own me-time. One thing we need to watch out for though, and I’m guilty of this, is buffering my me-time. Buffering means I schedule me-time to just rest or meditate but end up watching a show, or reading about life coaching. These are still all beneficial to me, but resting and not doing anything is just as beneficial. I suppose I’m still low-key believing that not doing anything is wasting my time or procrastination. Definitely need to work on that. Buffering can be in harmful ways as well. e.g. overdrinking, smoking, ruminating, etc., because we’re afraid of facing ourselves. You of the school that says you’ll rest when you’re sleeping or dead?😁. Reconsider. In the middle of your mentally or physically intensive activities you need that pause. I know you’ll tell me that your spouse or kids are waiting for you at home after a long day.Well, tell them you need a pause before you can join them. Do yourself justice and actually take it. Even God rested on the 7th day after His marvelous works of creation. You’re made in His image, right? So it’s in your nature to need to take that pause. And He did in fact instruct us to take the rest, didn’t He? Selah… TAKE HOME Me-time is not selfish and it’s a language of love. It’s let me fill my cup first so that I have something to pour for others. It’s part of self-love, motivated by a desire to serve better. It’s imperative to your mental wellness, and it’s a God-given right. Allow and give yourself the permission to sit with yourself and be one with yourself. If you desire to develop self-trust and self-belief, learn to stick with what you plan for yourself as far as is possible, and do what you say

Clarify Your Identity, Unleash Your Authentic Life

Smelling their fragrance has the power to stop time

Get in Touch Clarify Your Self-Identity, Unleash Your Authentic Life If you don’t know who you are, you show up to the world with a blank piece of paper, and anyone can write anything on it – Dr Jay Barnett There used to be this advert of a guy who walks up to a counter in an airport, has a bit of disagreement with the lady behind the counter, and starts shouting: DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?😂😂 Silly right? Well, that’s what our minds scream in places and times of confusion when we haven’t sat down to clarify and define who we really are. YOUR TRUEST IDENTITY = YOUR POWER There came a time when I realized I wasn’t in control of my life. Not in control of where it was, and distressingly uncertain of where it was going. An existential crisis where I was questioning everything about me. Yes, there was much I had achieved but some of it felt like I was achieving for the sake of achieving, achieving to keep up with my society-given identity of a super-achiever. And then there were those areas I was good at failing at😀. I would never expect to be good at everything, but it all just felt so misaligned, so much so that I even felt like I was failing at the wrong things, that I should have been failing at something else instead. I’d been given so many labels throughout my life and, I’m certain, so have you. Some empowering (go-getter), some discouraging (stuck up), some pressurizing (high achiever). As you can see, some of these didn’t allow failure. I felt like I was conforming to whatever label was pasted on me, like my life was just happening to me and I was, for the most part, reacting and dealing with what it threw my way. And one tends to do a good job out of that eventually, ducking and jumping and tending to the bruises when a blow landed. Got to a point where I felt I could not soar, I got weary, I got faint. I get it, some people prefer to go through life not knowing where they’re going or working towards. They prefer to just be living it up like there’s no tomorrow, and that’s ok. Do you boo. Not for me though. I needed to take the reins back. I wanted to live a life true to who I was, my authentic self.  I wasn’t thinking as far out as life vision and future goals stuff at the time, but I knew I needed to take and feel in control of my life. The heralder of my identity definition & clarification was when I started reflecting on why someone labelled me ‘gullible’.😏 I’d been marinating in that for a while and wondering how on earth do I change that about me. And why God would make me that way if it was to my detriment. Until I came to the epiphany that I’m perfect the way God made me, and that there are no bad human traits. This made perfect sense to me since I believe/d what God created is good. There are just undesirable re-programmings and timings and contexts and labels for human traits. I no longer wanted to change the ‘gullible’ part of me. What I did instead was ask God for wisdom as to when I’d need to readily believe the best in someone, because that’s what gullible is, isn’t it? Told you, undesirable labels! I then got interested in reflecting about what else I thought or was told was a bad trait in me and disarm it. Uuh, I was always told I was hypersensitive. I realized it was necessary for me to be hypersensitive in certain contexts, e.g. to discern when somebody is silently suffering, but not in others. I also understood that some of the labels others gave me, came from a place of them witnessing consequences of previous hurts in me. These I resolved I could no longer accept as part of whatever was my identity anymore, they were hurtful to carry. Point in case, I’d subconsciously accepted the label of hot-tempered as part of my identity but it was something that was harmful and sabotaging to my success as a partner and as a mother. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I knew that I desired to think and be different. Clarifying my identity This excavation of labels cascaded into ‘you have all these labels given to you and they’re part of your identity, but who are you really?’ ‘You want to run away from this harmful labels and their attached behaviours, but where do you run to?’🤔 This is how I began taking control of my life. I reasoned, if my life seemed just reactive and unintentional, then I needed it to be intentional. I reverse-engineered it. If I needed it to be intentional, what would I need to be intentionally doing? If I needed to be doing something intentional, then where would I need to be intentionally going? If I needed to be going somewhere then how would I know where I needed to be going? In other words, the things that I would be desiring to get to, how would I know them if I didn’t know myself? That meant going back to the drawing board to clarify and define my identity. It all started with ‘whose are you?’ and went all the way down to ‘what do you do.’ Because identity is a multi-layered concept. I suppose that’s why one of the most difficult questions to answer is ‘tell us, who are you?’ Oftentimes when we’re asked who we are we start with, or even just mention, what we do. But if our identity rode on that, what happens when I’m no longer a mother, or a pathologist, or a member of the worshipping team at church? I believe, at the end of the day, physical

Self-Love: How to walk it the 1 Corinthians 13 way

Love yourself concept. Photo of lovely smiling woman embraces herself, has high self esteem, closes

Get in Touch Self-Love: How to walk it the 1 Corinthians way Self-Love is not selfish, but the foundation of loving others We are to love others as we love ourselves. Meaning we first love ourselves, and in the way that we love ourselves, we then love others. Schools are divided on this self-first construct, but I’m not confused. Because this is how Scripture, my compass, puts it. They say it’s selfish to be about yourself, to focus on your ‘self’. I ask, but who and what does one give of themself if they haven’t filled that first? From which cup do they pour love out? You can’t give what you don’t have.  It’s one thing to love yourself just for the sake of loving yourself. And that’s when we have a problem. But the Bible puts it clearly: you love yourself so that you can love others. When you commit to taking the time to love yourself, it shows that you’re ready to commit to loving on others by how you’re now positioned, mentally and physically, to serve them in your different roles. For me, this makes self-love a luxurious necessity, and not a frivolity. Nothing wrong with indulging in what needs to be done. There are different kinds of love, beyond the scope of this discussion, but where we’re commanded to love others as we love ourselves, scripture refers to agapē love. This is the one we’re to love everybody with in addition to the other ones appropriate for the relationship. So, what is self-agapē? What does loving myself mean? I was wondering this myself. Well, only the famous scripture on agapē love can do this question justice. 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8. The interesting thing is that the context of this passage is our gifts/callings and their use in the service of others, to say that if you use them excellently but do not have love, it’s all in vain. If the motivation behind your excellence is not love for others, it’s all for nothing. It’s not me, it’s the sweet Word. If the motivation behind your self-loving is ultimately not love for others, it’s in vain. You’ll be loving yourself but alienated from others. So, this is what I grab from 1 Cor 13, with the premise that self-love is ultimately self-less, loving yourself means: 💛Being patient and at peace with yourself 💛Being established in your own identity and purpose so that you won’t be jealous or envious of others 💛Building up a healthy sense of self-worth and self-esteem. When you have this, you won’t need to brag or be arrogant to others. 💛Managing your emotions (particularly anger because primitively, it’s meant to threaten away, and it still does) – unchecked emotions affect our actions, our actions affect our outcomes, our outcomes are our lives. 💛Recognizing that you’re not your mistakes; not counting your mistakes as disqualifiers; being forgiving of and compassionate to yourself. 💛Not accepting negative thoughts and beliefs about what you deserve or are worthy of, but recognizing what is truthfully and rightfully yours. Clarifying your identity greatly helps here. 💛You bear all things about yourself, accepting yourself, flaws and all. This amounts to radical self-acceptance! Now that’s something. 💛Believing in yourself and in the best of you; that God gave you what it takes to get the job done; that you matter and what you have to say matters; that nobody else can be you or do you – you have value. 💛Being hopeful of and about yourself, giving yourself the benefit of the doubt; always keeping yourself in the game even when it’s hard, and doing the work; not writing yourself off, because again, you have what it takes – God in you. 💛Never giving up on yourself; never letting ‘failure’ define you but taking it as necessary learning/feedback. TAKE HOME 1 Corinthians 13 also gently guides us in how we ought to love ourselves, so we can love and serve others. Love who and what you see when you look in the mirror, unconditionally. At its core, self-love is not self-seeking…It is the same love that you love yourself with, that you love others with. If you don’t want to love yourself it means you don’t want to love others. This is the circle of love: You love yourself to give love to others to receive love from others unto yourself. And those elements about you that you feel are not self-loving, compassionately and patiently work at turning them around to radically loving yourself. After all, love is a becoming and doing, and not just a feeling. For reflection guides on this and other self-discovery topics,  SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter and receive this weekly inbox coaching. Hi, I’m Dr Shibu, a Femininity Mindset Empowerment Coach to excellence & purpose minded queens. Welcome to my virtual home! Do stay a while. Other Blogs Imposter Syndrome – When There's a Stranger in Your House Another Love Language: Me-time Clarify Your Identity, Unleash Your Authentic Life Low Sense of Self-Worth Could be Keeping You Stuck Self-Love: How to walk it the 1 Corinthians 13 way How I turbo-charged my personal growth – A Superpower Series: #6 Apologizing to kids Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest WhatsApp Email

How I turbo-charged my personal growth: Superpower #4: Forgiveness

Young African male begging his girlfriend to forgive him. Husband asking his pretty wife for forgive

Get in Touch How I turbo-charged my personal growth: Superpower #4 – Forgiveness In the previous 3 superpower series post I spoke about self-awareness, vulnerability & empathy. We continue with #4, forgiveness. SUPERPOWER # 4: Forgiveness Psychology defines forgiveness as ‘willfully putting aside feelings of resentment toward someone who has committed a wrong, been unfair or hurtful, or otherwise harmed you in some way.’ And that is regardless of whether they apologize or not, or whether they submit an adequate apology or not. Yes, if some elements of information are absent from your apology, it may be hard for them to forgive. But we’re not talking about apologizing today. Another definition, more biblically inclined, is that it means not holding a sin against a person any more. I like the analogy that when you don’t forgive someone and hold a grudge against them, you keep yourself in a prison, and they guard your prison door. So you’re both at prison, but they’re free to come and go at certain times. Another one says it’s like you drink poison and expect your offender to die a slow painful death.🤷🏽‍♀️ I believe there are stages to forgiveness, especially in the absence of an apology. The stages I passed through were: Awareness & acknowledgement of the hurt Acknowledging it wasn’t my fault, but that I still needed to forgive myself Empathizing with the offender Making a conscious decision to verbalize to myself ‘I forgive them/you, and I release them/you’ Dissipation of anger with more and more processing Final difficult step: the psychological definition – releasing emotions of resentment or vengeance towards them Perhaps you’ve gone through different stages to mine. Please share those with me. I found you can’t hide feelings of resentment underneath respect and gratitude towards someone. I was angry for the longest time at people who hurt me. When the anger dissipated, I had to reflect on why I still had issues around those people. This resentment had remained despite my conscious decision to say ‘I forgive’ and to release the anger. And this is where confusion can set in, when you know but don’t feel like you have forgiven. I suppose because:   Anger roarrrs and you can easily identify it   Resentment be quiet and hidden like a mouse My objective was that I desired a healthy relationship with these people, so I was not going to allow myself to operate subconsciously in that resentment and hurt. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you can trust them now, their future behavior will tell. Forgiving someone doesn’t necessarily mean you should allow them back into your space again. You can give them the gift of space to work on their healing and repentance, and love them from afar. Forgiveness is not forgetting that the event happened. It’s letting your mind and your body forget the pain of the event. Forgive & forget? I often wondered if God so endowed me with a powerful memory storing mind, how do I forget? I can’t exactly selectively delete events from my memory. It’s that your mind and your body/entire neurology have to forget the pain and discomfort of fight, flight or freeze. But your conscious mind shouldn’t forget, lest you fail to recognize, 🎶here comes that same old pain again🎶   Sort of like a woman giving birth? They say she doesn’t forget the labour but the pain so that she goes again.  And, Bible scholars please correct me if I’m wrong, nowhere in the Bible are we instructed to forgive and forget. Only forgive. Maybe that you need to forgive 70×7 times means one develops some sort of amnesia, I don’t know. But let’s move on: When you decide to forgive someone whom you choose to still allow into your space, you can’t keep on hammering them with the sin they committed. That’s a superpower. You can’t forget it, but you can’t bring it up! You can bring up how you’re feeling and where you’re at, but not what they did. This is from a more advanced personal growth point of view. Take your time processing, but I highly suggest you communicate at each stage in your forgiveness process. Otherwise you’ll reach a stalemate in your relationship. And then, please buckle up for this one: I came to the epiphany that I needed to forgive God as my Father! Between me and Him, there were unmet expectations, the no’s and the not yet’s, the discipline, the losses and the grieving of loved ones. However you want to reason against it, and maybe rightfully so, these left me with resentment and anger towards Him. And at times I acted out. Many times we focus on God being just God, and not on Him being a Father whom, you as His child, have a relationship with. I realized, if I needed to forgive my earthly father for the times I felt hurt by him, and if God is my Father and I felt hurt (emphasis is on an emotion and not His intentions and will) ‘by Him’, then it stood to reason that I needed to forgive Him. That was the most liberating thought and feeling ever. In coaching, I’ve spoken to people holding resentment towards God because of grief and other losses. Well, something’s gotta give. If this doesn’t scare you, or speak against your spirit, I dare you try it. Say Lord, I know You only have my best interest at heart, but those things right there, those hurt, and I developed resentment towards You. I forgive You, thanks for forgiving me. On the flipside of the forgiveness coin is when you need to be forgiven. I find one of the most challenging aspects is forgiving yourself. I wasn’t even aware I was walking in unforgiveness towards myself. It’s easier to forgive others, but you? Another story. Because: We generally tend to be so hard on ourselves and, We generally don’t look inwards to see that we are telling ourselves horrible stories

How I turbo-charged my personal growth – A Superpower Series: #1 Self-Awareness

Happy black female in hijab looking in mirror and smiling

Get in Touch How I turbo-charged my personal growth – A Superpower Series: #1 Self-Awareness Wish to boost your progress on your personal growth journey? These superpowers changed my life! You may love and/or hate me for these! Much love to you regardless!😁 Sure, there are more, after all, we are powerful beings, but for me, these interconnected 6 take top place: Self-awareness Vulnerability Empathy Forgiveness Flexibility Apologizing to Kids. I wanted to share all of them in one post but it proved impossible, I wasn’t gonna be doing them and you justice. So we’ll tackle one at a time, starting with Self-Awareness. Superpower #1: Self Awareness Self-awareness is the ability to understand your own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Where do they come from? What fuels them? Are they serving me? Are they serving others? By introspecting and reflecting, you gain clear and objective knowledge of yourself. It means sitting, most times uncomfortably, with yourself and having a 2-, even a 3-, way conversation with yourself. It involves being in tune with your identity, beliefs, values, dreams, strengths (abilities, gifts, talents, skills) and weaknesses. These elements become the calibration standards for your thoughts, emotions and actions when you are introspecting, enabling self-control. You’ll be able to answer: Am I on the right track for myself? Hey, just because I love singing in my shower doesn’t necessarily mean I can serve through song. My music minister friend Nqo will find it in her heart to say that to my face. And now I get hurt because I wasn’t aware of my lack of musical talent!🤨 I finally started becoming self-aware 7 years ago, at age 35. Commonly the age to do so. Nothing musical though. I got tired of repeating the same mistakes. Like biblical Paul, the things that I desired to do I didn’t do, and the things that I didn’t want to do, I did. I got burnt out at life! You realize you’re just on autopilot, with whatever is the issue at the wheel. The breaking point was that I had habits that were (mentally) hurtful to my kid. I remember not being able to face myself in the mirror. That was it. Then the uncomfortable questions… I had to sit down with myself and all versions of myself and face myself. Who/what was at the wheel? Why was I the way I was? Why did I say the things I said? Why did I say things how I said them? Initially the answers you get are superficial. I got no relief from them. That’s our minds telling us to dig even deeper. One superficial reason why I had difficulty receiving my friend Ro’s generous house gift was that I felt this would mean I owed something to someone. How absurd, it was a GIFT! See, no relief! The (real) deepest reason was that I did not feel worthy. Period. And on it went: What was the thought behind this action? What was the belief behind this thought? What was the thought behind this belief? What generated this belief? What entrenched this belief? What was I feeling before I did that? Why was I feeling the way I did? What generated the feeling in the first place? Ya, that was rock bottom, but I found the Rock at the bottom to catch my fall! A lot of tearful prayers, but times of empowerment. Deep introspection allowed me to come to myself, and get onto this beautiful journey of unconditionally accepting and marrying myself. Remember the prodigal son who came to himself and suddenly remembered who he was and whose he was? If your friends keep on saying something about your actions, stop and reflect. Is there truth there? If so, go deeper my friend. If you recall your exes telling you the same thing, stop and reflect. Is there a shred of truth there? Don’t let bitterness or hurt blind you to your blind spots. The beautiful thing about it is when you are ready to look at yourself, the time and the circumstances, painful most times, will present themselves. When the student is ready, the teacher/s appear/s. It may be in the form of eating with pigs, or your kids, or your coach. When it happens, take the bull by the horns. You got this! Why is it a superpower? What self-awareness does is that it lays the foundation for self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-forgiveness and self-love. We need to be overflowing with these before we can present ourselves to others. The minute they do, even by a drop, you can accept, forgive and love others as you love yourself. You’d have first gotten to a place where you de-weaponize your actions against yourself. Doesn’t mean you were not wrong where you were, it just means, even if you are not met with mercy, you are still forgiven. It is just as important to understand how you make your wins so you not only can reproduce them, but you can also help others along as well. When we are aware of our strengths, we get to experience pride in ourselves and boost our self-confidence and self-esteem. THE TAKE HOME Self-awareness builds a bridge between self-condemnation and self-love.🌉 It builds a bridge between self-doubt and self-confidence. It brings you to a place of healing for your wounds. It brings you to a place of efficiency in your successes. It is not a once off thing, but a way of life. Also, share of yourself with those you need to as you get clearer and continuously evolve as a human being. It can only strengthen your relationships. When you understand who you are, why you are, what you are, where you are, where you were and where you are going, not even you can stand in your way. Fam, let’s please start the hard work to get healing for ourselves, our families and our communities. Let’s first gain an M.Me (Masters in the subject of Me), and then we can