LIFE HACKS: 3 Layer Kindness

In this series of posts we’ll call ‘Life Hacks’,  I’ll share with you all some of the best -and by best I mean most useful- advice I’ve ever gotten!

1) Sed advice has stood the test of time.

OR

2) It came to me at what I can now look back and mark as a pivotal point or season in my life. The type of season where, when I applied this advice as a tool for decision making, it directed the course of events in my life that lead me down a productive and thus fruitful path. (That was a mouthful 🥴 ) 

In short, nuggets such as this turn into wisdom over time so I thought I’d share. 

Hopefully we can begin an exchange of strategies to help one another navigate this thing called life!

Be Kind To Yourself

I have an aunt, and I think we all have this relative (if not, you might BE this relative 😂) that gets you on the phone and will wear your ears out! Don’t get me wrong, I love her to absolute pieces and boy can she talk! Not only can she talk but she has the nerve to want you to respond every three seconds with a “sure”, “you don’t say?”, “I know what you mean” to make sure you are attentively listening.  If you even try to tune out what you may think is just rambling, she will actually check in with, “hey, are you still there?”😳 … Girl bye. Yet I figure, we all have something we enjoy and she definitely enjoys talking about any and everything exhaustively! It is what it is. The very least I can do is call and lend my ear from time to time; it makes her day. However, at the end of every conversation she would tell me, “be kind to yourself” kind of like we stick Amen at the end of a prayer. She would not let me off the phone without telling me that one simple phrase.

At first, I simply dismissed it because she’d say it EVERY time. But it wasn’t until I began to go through some very difficult times in my life, times where both life and the people in my life were beating me down that I realized the sagacity of her advice.

Much like a cake, there are 3 layers of kindness we should extend to us:

1. Self Talk: We can be our worst enemies! 🙄 !! The Lord showed me one day that I was putting impossible expectations on myself and beating myself up when I fell short. The worst part is, I consistently gave other people grace where I left none for me. In other words, I had to be kind enough to me to give me grace in the face of my humanity. Joyce Meyers said it this way, “Give yourself permission to be a human being.” 
2. Self Awareness: 🤓 I often chose other people’s well being over my own by putting myself in situations that inevitably caused me harm emotionally, physically or mentally all for someone else’s convenience. In an effort to be kind to me, I began to give pushback at work, tell people ‘No’,  and make better decisions about the situations I knowingly placed myself in. I had to choose me instead of blaming others for being cruel to me when I wasn’t being kind to myself. I’ve come to realize that God is not only okay with that but He encourages it because He loves me enough to have died for me. 
3. Self Care: 🤗 while it’s trendy right now, I pray it never ends! We have to take time to eat dessert first without guilt. Go get a massage. Take a long walk or hike. Go be pampered -hair done, nails done, anything waxed or threaded WHATEVER helps and heals us without harming another individual DO IT REGULARLY and UNAPOLOGETICALLY!

I definitely had to call and thank her for telling me that one day when I internalized the words and began applying that simple phrase to my life. 😘

🤔 How might you practice being kind to yourself this week or how have you started being kind to you and noticed a difference in your life?