There is power in the ability to honor yourself and your abilities. Honor is defined as ‘high respect; great esteem’ and ‘something regarded as a rare opportunity and bringing pride and pleasure; a privilege’. When was the last time you treated yourself with honor and respect? It can be as simple as honoring your morning rituals because it makes you feel good and alive each day. It can be as complex as moving away from people who have harmed you and not respected your boundaries. I consider honoring yourself a series of moments where you say yes or no – no matter how loud or silent your response is to live. It’s a series of steps in self-seduction and dedication to finding oneself.
I bring up this topic on spiritual and physical boundaries after a conversation with a friend. We discussed how difficult it can be to set certain standards when you are not used to them and how people can fall back if they are not firm in what they desire. This is where honoring your emotional landscape comes in. We are not unemotional robots, where nothing hurts us, and we can move on. Honoring yourself can look like communicating those hurts and those boundaries. It also can look like communicating what will happen if / when the boundaries are broken and following through on those standards. That is honor, not humbleness.
There is this idea that you have to remain humble to the point of dissatisfaction. Shall we look at the definition of humble? Humble means ‘lower (someone) in dignity or importance’ as a verb. To remain humble to dissatisfaction is not allowing you the opportunity to build a life on how good it can be for you and build resentment. In the following questions, I want you to think about where the portions of life are where you are honoring yourself and where you are not.
Break your life down into themes:
- Personal Life – personal growth, commitments, knowledge, goals, wants & needs
- Professional Life – career, business, schooling
- Social Life – hobbies, family, friends, networking, third places
- Love Life – self love, dating, romantic relationships
Following up with these questions for each theme category:
- Am I honoring myself and my commitments in this portion of my life?
- What will make me satisfied with this?
- Do I have anything that I love the most of this theme? Can I do this more vs the thing I do not like?
- What do I want to focus on this week for that theme?
- Is there any critiques from this theme? Where is the critique coming from? Is it perfectionism, is there missing content/context, tone, is it authentic to me?
- What is mine to do this week?
- If you are pushing on this theme, why are you?
- What/who am I doing for this exactly and why?
- How can I experience it as difference of happiness and energy?
- Have you decided yet?
- Does this choice support the life I want?
- Are you being productive with your awareness?
- Does this support the life I am trying to create?
- Have you decided to trust yourself and your decisions?
- If you don’t like this, have you decided to do even if there are consequences?
