Why being full of yourself is a good thing

[00:00:46] Hi and welcome! Today, I’m coming to you from a day 12, and I feel connected, tender hearted and hopeful. And I had this thought pop into my head the other day when I was listening to a podcast, where somebody talked about the good kind of being selfish and full of yourself. And I thought “Yeah, because if you want to live a life true to yourself, you have to be full of yourself. Because if you’re not full of yourself, there’s room for other people and their opinions to creep in.” And I found that thought so genius that I wanted to share it with you and dissect this expression a little bit, because obviously I know that the expression “to be full of yourself” is usually used in a derogatory sense.

[00:01:54] But the way I think about it is so true: when we are full of ourselves, there is no room for others, in the sense that we stay connected to our truth. Not in the sense that we don’t care for others, I do not mean that. I reflected on what it even means to me to be full of myself and found that I can relate it to all the different levels of my being, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

[00:02:35] So when I’m full of myself in a physical sense, I feel really embodied. I feel in my body, I can feel every part of my body down into the toes and into the fingertips, and I’m really present here with my essence. I fully inhabit my body. Then I’m naturally present with what’s happening in the moment, and there is not so much room for thoughts and worries, which is what usually gets me out of my body.

[00:03:16] And in our society, quite frankly, we live from the neck up most of the time, due to many factors. I mean, we have been told that our bodies are these strange things that don’t behave as we want them to. That they are something we need to tame and form into a certain shape for them to be “right”. No wonder we don’t dare inhabit these beautiful bodies that are so foreign to us because we have unlearned how to be with them.

[00:03:58] And I say it’s time to get back into our body and inhabit our body fully so that we can be indeed full of ourselves. Our body is the seat of our soul, if you will. We can be really here, we experience the world through our body and if we are fully in our body and inhabit our body, then we can have all these sensations and experiences.

[00:04:30] On an emotional level, when I feel full of myself, I feel very present with my own emotions and also able to observe which emotions are not mine. If you are an empath or a highly sensitive person, you know exactly what I mean. Sometimes we just have this habit of taking on other people’s emotions.

[00:05:03] And when we are present with ourselves and our body, then we are also present with what is our emotion and what is not, and we can more easily release that which is not ours and ride the waves of our emotions. We feel capable of riding the waves of our emotions and also able to take in their cues, because that’s what they are. They give us cues on which direction to move into. If something feels joyful and expansive that’s definitely something we would like more, a direction we would like to move into. And if your body starts to contract and to shut down, to close off, this is maybe a direction you don’t want to go into.

[00:06:02] And so when we are present and inhabit our body and are full of ourselves on our emotional level, then we can understand these cues more easily and just not be so afraid of our emotions, but as I said, feeling capable of riding their waves.

[00:06:27] Then on a mental level, I believe that when I am full of myself, I do think loving and kind thoughts towards myself. It also very much goes together with being in our body. As I said, we tend to go into our heads a lot, and then we start regretting our past or worrying about the future. But when we are fully in our body and we are full of ourselves, I believe we can also discern which of the thoughts that are running through our head are truly ours, and which of these thoughts might be instilled by other people.

[00:07:18] I don’t even want to say they have done it to us because it’s always us taking it on, but we have received messages or judged a situation in a certain way, and now we have this thought that what we did was wrong and made other people unhappy. And now every time we do something remotely similar, our brain tells us “This is wrong! You shouldn’t do that.” And the way we can easily recognise that they’re not our thoughts, not coming from our truth, is when there is a “should”, because the shoulding and the shaming are usually a societal thing coming from the outside.

[00:08:10] I believe that when I am full of myself, I do speak lovingly and kindly with myself and with others, in my thoughts. And it’s not about making excuses for behaviour that was unethical, but it’s rather a soothing voice of “Yeah, okay, it happened. It’s not nice that it happened, you didn’t want to react that way, or this really brought harm on somebody else. This doesn’t mean you are a bad person, but we need to look at how we can make amends now and how we can correct that situation, if we can apologise or something like that.” That’s what I mean with soothing, loving and kind words. It doesn’t serve as an excuse for harmful behaviour, but it’s also not a making myself wrong for it, but rather looking for the solution, how we can resolve the situation.

[00:09:24] And lastly, on a spiritual level, I believe when I am full of myself, I am connected to something greater than I. I am plugged into the energy of the universe, the energy that’s running through all of life. I am connected to, for me, the Universe, for you, it can be anything, any way you define the Divine. It can be God, it can be Goddess, it can be Allah, it can be Source, it can be Great Spirit. Whatever is in your belief system is absolutely right for you. But being connected, plugged into this greater sense, into this greater wisdom that is beyond our little tiny human brain.

[00:10:29] And so when I am full of myself in that sense, full of myself in my body, inhabiting my body, being with my emotions, thinking more compassionate and loving and kind thoughts, and being connected to this greater wisdom of life, then there is definitely no room for other people and other people’s opinions to creep in, to sway me, to convince me that I’m not okay. Because in that moment, when I’m full of myself, I know that the way I am is okay. Even with all my quirks and all my complexities, and with all my strengths and with all my gifts, I am okay.

[00:11:25] And why this matters to me, is because the number one regret of the dying is that they haven’t lived a life true to themselves. They have instead lived a life true to what other people expected of them, what other people said they should do or be or have. Very often doing the people-pleasing and losing touch with themselves, and that’s what they regret. That’s what most people regret at the end of their life, that they didn’t say what needed to be said or what they would like to have said. That they didn’t express what they wanted to express, that they didn’t follow their passions, that they didn’t spend enough time with the people they actually cared about – all to please other people and being led by THEIR choices and opinions and expectations.

[00:12:38] And I don’t want that for you. And I don’t want that for myself either. That’s why it is so good to remember that we need to choose ourselves first. Always! I mean, obviously I don’t do that always either, but I’m doing my very best to choose myself first, and I want to encourage you to choose yourself first, too. And sometimes this choosing yourself means being in this space of “Okay, this is what I need or want from a situation, and that is what you need or want from that situation. And how can we navigate this through a compromise or where can we find the middle ground?”

[00:13:31] And sometimes, it simply means choosing yourself no matter what. Another person might not be happy with it, but that’s their stuff to deal with. Because if you don’t choose yourself, you choose someone else over yourself, and that is usually not going to make you happy, at least not in the long run. And that’s what I want for you, I want you to be fulfilled and happy.

[00:14:03] And yes, life has its ups and downs, that’s not what I mean. It’s not like always being bright and smiley, et cetera, but this genuine feeling of “Yeah, life is okay, life is good. This is who I am, this is how I want to live.” This underlying feeling, that’s what I want for you.

[00:14:27] And with all of that, over to you. I would love to know what you make of what I’ve shared now. What did resonate? What maybe didn’t resonate? What was helpful? What new things did you learn about yourself, about the world? Let me know. Please get in touch, I would love to hear.

[00:14:53] And as a few closing words, I want to say that I hope you can be as full of yourself as you can, because you are an amazing human being and I treasure you and that you are here and listening to this. And if you are not able to accept that, if you’re finding it difficult to accept that I am here telling you that you are an amazing human being, then I invite you to get in touch. Book an exploration call, it’s completely free and let’s meet, because I want to show you yourself through my eyes. I want you to see yourself through my eyes, so you see what I see, which is an amazing and unique human being and I sincerely hope that you can see that, too.

I wish you a beautiful day and speak to you next time.