What Defines You?

 What defines you?

Is it the car that you drive, the clothes that you wear, the location that you stay? Let's strip that back…Is it your marital status? How many children you have, or who your parents are? Let’s strip that back too.

At times these labels and identities can take us away from the core of who we are, stripping back, without our environmental factors can help us identify how we see ourselves – not as how others see us.

Through this process we may become critical with mistakes that we’ve made, our visual flaws and limitations that we have, our negative self-talk kicks in also known as limiting beliefs.  Messages that we say to ourselves ‘I’ve struggled all my life', or ‘I can’t get anything right’ or ‘I’m worthless’ sabotage our growth, these mental scars last far longer than physical scars. We continue to kick ourselves until we're down.  These limiting beliefs become our identity and the story we repeat to ourselves time after time.

A lack of self-acceptance limits our capacity for happiness. It also affects our psychological and emotional well-being. It keeps us focused on the negative aspects of the identity we given ourselves, and these negative thoughts create negative emotions.  Some evidence also indicates a connection between low levels of self-acceptance and mental illness. By disregarding ourselves and hating our weaknesses, causes our growth to curb and malnourishes our souls, it staggers us and holds us back from achieving our ambitions.

Self-acceptance is fully accepting ourselves, all our attributes mentally and physically knowing our worth as Allah’s Creation, we are the best of creation and not needing outside validation.  Being honest with ourselves about our flaws, being open to vulnerability, improving and growing towards becoming our better selves, whilst developing better habits.   Self-acceptance can boost our mood and shield us from the effects of stress and depression, we become overall resilient, which is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. By making a shift from mind space to heart space- connection with yourself at a deeper level, knowing that we are flawed but we can be forgiven, we are trying hard to do things right but can make mistakes, we are human at the end of the day! If we were meant to be perfect the why would Allah have so many attributes such as Al Ghaffar (The Great Forgiver), Al Ghafoor (The All Forgiving), Ar Rahim (The Merciful), our humanity in nature is to be flawed, knowing this, our self-acceptance can become less resistant.  

As soon as we accept ourselves and our unique journey, those trials we went through no matter how difficult, there's an immediate release of the baggage…acceptance of our journeys is key for healing.  Remember Allah doesn’t make mistakes, it was all meant to be! Accept ourselves with compassion, love and as a part of growth through the lessons learnt within the difficulties.

Owning our journey and using those difficult times as the game changer in our lives.  The difficulty becomes the catalyst for change.  Can you imagine the power behind a story which originally pulled you down but now lifts you, energises you and drives you? Rather than 'My father died when I was very young and we struggled a lot’, it becomes ‘I showed up for my mother, I became her support, her advisor.’ This reframed situation can channel our beliefs as ‘I am reliable, I show up for people’ – now this becomes the story! The emotions that follow through for these words can empower us and set us up to succeed in life’s journey. Change your story, change your identity, change your life!

Next time you hear those self-limiting beliefs, write down what they are, connect with your heart, look back to where those beliefs came from, was it in your childhood or later on in life? Are you able to reframe the story those beliefs came from? What’s the new story you can tell yourself?

I’m excited for you to have your new story to move forward with, it can change your whole outlook on life. If you are struggling to navigate your way to your new story, drop me or one of the practitioners a line and we can help you along the way. Bismillah❣️