I want to know what to do when life just doesn’t go as it should! I want to connect to myself and be confident with my life choices. I want to know who I am and discover happiness through self-connection.
Did you recognize yourself in the statement above? How to feel connected to yourself so that you draw happiness, positivity, certainty, and self-love through that connection?
Learning to be happy with yourself in a world that prioritizes following instead of standing out is challenging but not impossible.
Finding your true self, your inner voice, understanding how You operate on a deeper level, accepting and selecting the important when needed… all that is connecting or re-connecting with yourself. And while too many of us are scared of approaching our deepest levels of Self, we also know that too many questions will get their answers this way.
What does it mean to feel connected with yourself?
The one myth that most people believe when it comes to connecting with yourself is that you will get all of your questions answered and live in a blissful, happy forgetfulness of everything horrible that happened to you.
In fact, connecting to your inner self has nothing to do with forgetting, ignoring, and getting over negative experiences. Connecting with yourself is more about creating a deep friendship with the only person who always stays by your side – Yourself. That higher Self is stronger, braver, and more tending than anyone else you had or have in your life right now. And that Self wants you to be by your side.
It also means that you will have even more questions than you have right now, but they will merge from a place of self-acceptance, self-love, and understanding.
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Why is it important to connect with yourself?
In moments of doubt and those of grief or unfortunate, we often get to the realization that we are alone and all we have is ourselves. To most people, that is another reason to be depressed and feel miserable. In my eyes, this is actually awesome!
You see, we are all designed to interact with each other, to love and search for a deeper connection with other human beings. We feel joy and excitement when surrounded by good energy coming from those who love us.
That’s what human nature is.
However, at the same time, we all realize that there is something deeper inside us – a piece of us that could never connect to anyone or anything else around us. And this piece of us often gets lonely, depressed, and seeks love and acceptance.
That is what soul nature is.
So we start searching for this love and acceptance. We reveal a little bit of that piece to different people around us, to the world, and wait for the reaction. In most cases, we get rejected, and it takes a while to cool down and become brave enough to try our luck again.
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You see, there are different levels of connection we all have in our lives. But there is the thirst for one type of connection we never fully satisfy – the one with ourselves.
Searching for external ways to satisfy this internal thirst creates loneliness and anxiousness.
Because the main benefit of truly connecting with yourself is that you accept and understand your true purpose, feelings, and happiness.
And who knows… maybe it isn’t just a cliche to say that what you feel like you miss in life is actually waiting for you inside you. And soon after you create that connection, you will realize that you were searching for … yourself all along.
Learning to be happy with yourself
When you read the subheading: Learning to be happy with yourself, what picture does your mind paint?
Are you alone in a tall victorian style house painting, writing, drawing, gardening, dancing your way through the long days?
I know, most of us imagine it this way.
And while I will never refuse the victorian style house, I must say being happy with yourself has nothing to do with being alone.
We are used to hearing “I am happy with myself” coming mostly from people who are alone. And that’s fine. But just because you have three sisters and four dogs, your family never says No to an opportunity to get together, and you are always busy with your work, it doesn’t mean you cannot find that connection you crave for.
Yes, there is some level of “being alone” involved, but none of it requires you to forget you actually live in a noisy house.
Here are 10 simple ways to create a connection with yourself, nurture it, and appreciate it.
1. Ask Yourself “Why?”
No, that has nothing to do with the “Why me?” mentality I mentioned above. It is a simple technique that allows you to get under the top layers of your thoughts and find answers you didn’t know you have.
When trying to search for an answer to a question, a solution to a problem, or would like to overcome a limiting belief you have, try doing this: Ask yourself Why? as many times as you can.
Here is an example: Let’s say you want to start your own business. You have the idea and keep thinking about it for the last half-year (or even more).
However, you never make the first steps, and you don’t even know what stops you. Now would be the time to ask yourself Why. Get a piece of paper (or your cute journal) and write: Why am I hesitating to start this business? Maybe your answer will be: I don’t think it will be successful. Ask again: Why do I believe it won’t be successful? The answer could be: I don’t think I am good or knowledgeable enough. Again: Why do I think I am not good/knowledgeable enough?… You get the idea.
This technique allows you to dig deeper into your real reasons for doing or not doing something. Your goal is to uncover the top layers of yourself – the ones you build because it’s easy to show them to other people.
However, learning to connect with yourself means understanding where your decisions, actions, and feelings are coming from – what created them initially and why.
2. Learn Gratitude
Gratitude has been my number one source of inspiration, self-discovery, and personal growth. I’ve written enough about it here, here, and here. I’ve created a journal dedicated to finding happiness through daily gratitude (get your 20% discount by joining my Facebook group here), and I give you 100 things to be grateful about here.
And I can talk and write about Gratitude even more!
Connecting with yourself is intertwined with Gratitude on so many levels. But it takes a while to get to that layer of the inner self through practicing daily appreciation.
Once you start journaling about (or just saying out loud) all the beautiful things that enter your life daily, you will go for the normal things: a sunny day, hug, kiss, success, kind gesture, peaceful morning, relaxed evening, and more.
However, at one point, you will catch yourself expressing gratitude for things you didn’t know you do, such as:
- staying strong in a stressful situation;
- saying no to someone who always gets on your nerves;
- being okay with having/not having a specific person in your life;
- finding your way on the other side of sadness/anxiety.
You will also discover patterns of behavior. Sometimes you will be grateful for things that you didn’t even notice happening until you grabbed the pen to write. Often Gratitude will merge from the corner of your room in moments you didn’t expect it.
All that is a path you took toward inner connection and relationship with yourself – with the positive, happy self you actually wish to be with you all the time.
3. Journal about feelings…
Maybe journaling wasn’t obvious enough from the previous two points, so let’s give it some dedicated space here. And more specifically, journaling about feelings and not events.
If you think journaling is all about writing down whatever happens every day, you want to re-discover your perception of journaling.
Write about your feelings, not the events. In fact, don’t mention the event at all, just your feelings about it. Are you upset? Why? What about the situation upsets you? Are you surprised you feel that way? Did you expect to feel that way? What would you change? Why didn’t you change it while it was happening? Why do you believe you had no control over it? What contributed the most to the situation?
Journaling about feelings and not events takes your focus away from the actual event and puts it on the non-physical part of it. Digging deep from that point of view is way easier than searching for a physical representation of whatever happened.
4. Have some alone time
Listening to your Self, discovering your inner voice, and connecting to everything and whoever You Are requires some alone time.
Be it meditation, deep journaling, using workbooks, or breathing techniques… all of those ways help you connect to yourself, but you have to give them time and, most of all – dedication.
Find that alone time, I am positive you can, even if it’s 15 minutes a day in the car in the supermarket’s car park or during your morning walk in the park.
5. Listen to your intuition
Listen to that inner voice, but not the chatty one you hear all the time. Rather silence that one and pay attention to the quiet one that whispers to you occasionally.
The more you listen to your intuition, the louder and more clear instructions and answers it will give you.
Some of the ways to learn how to listen to your intuition are by doing some things that require no additional thinking, such as showing, doodling, doing the dishes, walking in the park, and so on.
6. Breathing the right way
Breathwork is crucial when trying to reconnect with yourself. And it’s not about getting air in and out of your lungs.
Try to see breathing as getting energy in and out of your body. Letting bad energy leave your body and life and welcoming good bright energy to enter instead is crucial to maintaining a clear mind that easily lets you connect with yourself.
Here’s a great course that will help you work with your breath.
7. Find your triggers
We all get triggered by different things – be it events, words, smells, attitudes, or just the sight of something.
Find and understand your triggers. Where did it all start? Why something triggers you, and are the roots hiding somewhere back in your past, or are they creating themselves while observing them?
8. Find what makes you happy
I know it sounds so trivial, but do you have a clear vision of what makes you happy that is unique to you? Having more money, a job you love, and a family that loves you sounds great, but it is so generic – we all want that.
What are the unique aspects of your happiness? What makes your happiness different than the happiness of the next person?
Here is a useful post I recently wrote on the ways to find what makes you happy.
How to Change The Way You Think About Yourself
9. Accept yourself
It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?
Accepting yourself isn’t about saying, “Oh, well, that’s me!” but rather going for the “Oh, I guess that what I always do/say/am. Can I change it? Should I? Does it suit me?”
Accepting yourself is admitting your flaws but also deciding if having them is a long-term thing, or you truly wish to do something about them.
10. Be aware of your real needs
Do you have the need to log on to your phone the moment you open your eyes in the morning? Do you need to know if someone liked/shared/approved your post from last night? That’s the need for social validation and approval.
Do you feel like shutting off all the devices, cuddling under the blanket with popcorn and Netflix? That’s the need to not just distance yourself but to switch off the reality as you feel mentally tired of it.
Do you crave going out with friends, visiting places, traveling, and piling up memories? That’s not just the need for adventure but also finding meaningfulness in your life and thirst for new emotions.
Everything we do, want, crave and dream of has a deeper need. Learn to discover and uncover those needs. And then honor them. Allow them to shine and evaluate them.
What connecting to myself has thought me?
Connecting with myself didn’t solve my problems but made me assure that they happen for a reason. Long gone is the “Why me?” mentality I used to have.
Instead, I look at things as challenges, ideas, ways to overcome myself and discover yet another layer of Self. Because, no matter how much you connect with yourself, for most of us, that would be a life-long process of going away and coming back to who we are.
And that’s the beauty of it all. Learning, progressing, creating Ourselves is the point of it all. And there is also being kind to ourselves if we ever wish to give kindness to others too.
Connecting with myself taught me that I am just a human meant to learn, give and learn again. Because living our lives in full happiness with no problems creates an even bigger problem – Ego and Selfishness.
I can not say I’ve fully discovered myself, but I am proud of how far I’ve come, and those were my ways of achieving it.
Conclusion on how to connect with yourself
Be it through learning more about breathwork, journaling through your feelings, accepting and refusing to accept your flaws, diving deep in meditation, or discovering your true needs, connecting with yourself is a beautiful journey that will change you.
Or does it change you at all, or it’s just that you become Yourself?
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How To Feel Connected To Yourself
Blogger, dreamer, procrastinator, and lover of everything soul-touching. My mission is to make you laugh, provoke your thoughts, light up your day and inspire you to fall in love with life and yourself.
