Are You Your Best Friend
February 12, 2008 by Anna Farmery
Filed under Affirmations of Life
As we journey through the grief process, I have come to the conclusion that part of the process is about the friendship with yourself. You need to work at the relationship with your inner self, here are my quick tips 
- Are you honest with yourself? Honest about your feelings, honest about the lost relationship (sometimes we can look through rose tinted glasses), honest about what you want from the future – it is OK to want to be happy.
- Are you honest about the way you feel - do you let the anger and resentment out?
- Do you listen to your own advice and try and live by it – or do you ignore what you know is good advice. For instanc, I know I must keep myself cooped away, yet sometimes I ignore that and feel worse for it!
- Do you love yourself for being you ?…you existed before you met your spouse…you will exist after their death.
- Do you look for your strengths or concentrate on your failings?
- Do you invest time for yourself, do you treat yourself and pamper yourself like you would a friend?
- Do you make your progress a priority in your life…if you were your friend then you would invest time in getting you through the bereavement?
We are constantly talking to ourselves whether we know that or not…we need to ensure that this talking is positive…we will cope, we deserve to be happy, we love that we are emotional and will use that to grow, we love our strength in adversity….
Are you your best friend or are you draining the energy from your own friendship through negative talk and not bothering to look after yourself?
Excellent article, and so true. Sometimes we miss the loved one so much we make out the past to be much much better than it may have been, thus, looking at it through rose colored glasses. We need to be honest with ourselves in order to help ourselves move through our grief.
Elaine – I love remembering the good times but we do need to balance our emotions. If we turn them into a superhero with no faults then we stop ourselves from moving on and indeed I know in my case, not honour his memory. He didn’t see himself like that, and wouldn’t want to be remembered as anything but a human – good and bad!