Below is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Ultimate Self-Esteem Toolkit: 25 Tools to Boost Confidence, Achieve Goals, and Find Happiness by Risa Williams
Start with Feeling Cozy
To use this tool, all you have to do is imagine a blanket. That’s it—just
picture a big fluffy blanket, whatever looks extra comfy and cozy to you.
Take a second to imagine this.
I call this The Kindness Blanket. It’s warm, cozy, and fluffy; it’s a color
you find calming or perhaps it’s a color that you really like. When you wrap
this blanket around yourself, you feel instantly soothed. You feel comforted.
You feel relaxed. You feel safe. You feel like it’s okay to relax right into it.
Wrap this imaginary fluffy Kindness Blanket around you and start to
form some comforting, soothing little thoughts for yourself to think. I call
these micro-thoughts as they help walk you over to a more positive place
without causing too much mental resistance.
Sometimes, when you try to leap over to a thought like “I am such an
amazing person!” from a place where you’ve been thinking “I’m such a
mess and everything I do is wrong,” it just doesn’t stick because you just
can’t connect with it emotionally. It’s not to say you won’t get there in
time, it’s just way too uncomfortable a jump for your brain to make in the
beginning, when you have been used to thinking more negatively about
yourself. Your brain may want to argue, “I am clearly not amazing at all!”
back at you, and now you’re just fighting with your own brain.
Instead, practice walking yourself over with tinier, easier, positive
thoughts that you don’t feel a negative reaction to. You’ll know when you
find one because it will be easy for you to repeat it to yourself and the
wording will feel easy to you. You can try some of the ones out below for
size. Feel free to re-write them in a way that best suits your own brain or
come up with a few new ones that work for you.
Here are some micro-thoughts to try out while you’re wearing The
Kindness Blanket:
“I’m figuring things out one step at a time.”
“I don’t need to push through things right now. I can take a break
and rest for a while.”
“If I let myself calm down a little, everything will feel much easier
for me to do.”
“I’m learning to let myself breathe into calmer feelings a little
more each day.”
“I’m learning to see calming down as a way I can be kinder to
myself.”
“I am changing my self-talk a little bit at a time.”
“Every new step I take in a positive direction will lead me to a
different outcome.”
When you wrap The Kindness Blanket around you, it helps you connect
to the beautiful and loving parts of yourself more. When you learn to go
gentle in your thoughts toward yourself, it helps you see the world around
as more beautiful, too.
So the next time you start to feel bad, cover yourself with a little kindness
first.
Worksheet: Write it out!
Imagine a big comfy blanket. When you wrap it around yourself, you
can remember to be gentle and kind to yourself in the way you speak
to yourself. Write out five to ten kind and gentle thoughts you can
soothe yourself with:
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To learn more and keep reading, head to our site to grab a copy of The Ultimate Self-Esteem Toolkit by Risa Williams.