Heiter Blog Post
Self-love is something which you should have in your daily routine, here are three ways to build it in.
3 Self Love Practices For Your Daily Routine
Self-love is more than just bubble baths, it’s more than a cute slogan on a t-shirt or a snazzy present to yourself. It’s a slow journey filled with understanding who you are, who you were and who you will be - and like all relationships it’s a constant work in progress.
Unfortunately that isn’t the story we’ve been sold. Self-love in the digital age looks like marriage with kids, doctored selfies, jet-setter holidays, luxury apartments and a full bank account. What if I told you that where you are right now is enough, what you’re starting with right now is enough? You probably wouldn’t believe me, and that’s okay. However, by the end of this article, I hope to have changed your mind. Self-love is free to incorporate into your life, but it does take determination and perseverance to not go back to that old relationship with yourself.
It is not vain to love yourself and see all the pieces. It is not narcissistic either. It’s a necessary part to building a healthy life, and all the elements that go hand in hand with that.
What I want you to do with these practices is to see and make peace with all the parts of yourself, and then slowly - over time - fall in love with yourself. Because you’re worth it, and if anyone should end up feeling lucky enough to spend the rest of their life with you - it should be yourself x
CHANGE YOUR PRIMARY VOICE
What does the conversation in your head sound like? Often, your default primary voice is the voice of a critical figure in your childhood. You probably go about your day being told a string of sentences that featured heavily in your life when you were growing up, none of them were true then and none of them are true now.
Your primary voice should be a comforting support system, the one voice in your life that cheers you on when you succeed and helps you continue when things are tough. It doesn’t ask anything in return, but it does require you to constantly push that critical voice into silence and pull that kinder one forward. If you struggle thinking of someone who supported you as a child, imagine your older self talking to your younger self and think of the words you’d have liked to have heard. Then talk to yourself with those words, all day every day.
Have your primary tell you it’s going to be okay, even when it feels like it’s not. Have it tell you how amazing you look even when your nose is all bunged up with hayfever. Have it tell you you’re doing great, even when you just got the answer wrong. Have it tell you it loves you, even on the days you feel unlovable.
Change your primary voice, it will change your life.
DATE YOURSELF
We spend a lot of our lives focusing on getting into, cultivating and continuing romantic relationships. They’re all over the media we consume, from the films we grew up on as children to the stories we now read, the adverts that sell us cars/perfume/sofas, and it’s usually the first question we get asked when we meet up with our closest friends.
Dating is the first step in the game of love, and you’re considered lucky if you can still say that you feel like you’re dating your partner a year on, let alone twenty years on. I’m going to argue that other people aren’t the only individuals we need to date, cultivate and continue the romance with. We need to do that with ourselves too.
So much of the time we spend in a relationship is wasted expecting someone else to be able to know how to love us. In fact most of us will often use other relationships as a crutch for the one we have with ourselves; dating yourself is the first step away from that crutch.
Walk out into the world and treat yourself to your favourite thing once a week that you would want a partner to treat you to. Watch a show, take a trip somewhere new, dress up and dance in your kitchen, eat in your favourite cafe. Whatever you look for someone else to do for you in a relationship, do it for yourself first so that you know how to love yourself and you know what to ask for when someone else asks how love you too.
SMILE
Every day you see yourself in the mirror. When you clean your teeth, when you stand in the changing room, when you go to the toilet at work, when you pass the bakery at lunch, when you fix your hair in your phone camera.
You’re everywhere you go, and unfortunately most people, (especially women) feel uncomfortable with their reflection. So every day I want you to wake up and the first thing I want you to do when you see yourself in a mirror, is to smile at yourself. Every day when you wake up, that’s the first thing you do. Smile even if you don’t want to, even if it feels silly.
We always smile when we see people we love; be they friends, family, pets, partners. And we think they’re beautiful when they smile back; we feel happy to see them, and we know that they are also happy to see us. So smile at yourself, because somewhere inside of you is a kid who’s a little bit hurt, a little bit unsure and all they want is to see you smile - so they know that you’re happy to see them too.
You can find Alexandra on Instagram @solemniko and every other week on her podcast Notes From A Small Room - having the self-love conversations they won’t put on a t-shirt. Alexandra believes in self-love, long walks by the sea, dog cuddles and bouquets of carnations.
Life Lovers Magazine Article
Why is storytelling so important when we travel? And why is it so necessary we listen to the stories of others?
The Coach: Storytelling and the importance of communicating life experiences
This month is National Storytelling Week in the UK. So what better excuse is there to sit down and think about not only the stories I’ve heard, the stories I’ve lived and the stories that formed the world I grew up in…but also the importance of storytelling as a form of communication. As a method of Wanderlust.
My experience with storytelling and communicating life experiences has led me to understand it as an integral part of being a human. It’s how we communicate, it’s how we connect, it’s how we understand the world and how we build it too. To share your experiences with someone is to show them how you came to be who you are today, it is an act of trust. To have someone tell you their life experiences is to have a window into their world, to understand them past the perception they offer at the surface. Storytelling and communicating life experiences leads to understanding, it breaks down those barriers so often put in place which lead us to have prejudices and inaccurate perceptions. Storytelling and travelling; the two best educators. So, here’s everything I know about storytelling, and why I feel that it’s so important to embrace communicating life experiences when you travel.
We are all a collection of short stories, set under the title of Life Experience and read by many, but understood by few. Travel allows us to find new stories, both in people and places; to travel is to attempt to understand the world from different perspectives by placing our own to the side and being open to an alternative. It gives us an amazing opportunity to sit outside of ourselves and the world we know, to connect to others who often have little in common with us. Or so we may think at first.
Communicating life experiences is not just important in close relationships, when you speak to someone you’ve never met before - even if it’s just for a few minutes - you have the amazing opportunity to learn about a different way of living. A different way of seeing the world. And sometimes, it just might change your life. The most amazing stories I’ve heard have more often than not been told by complete strangers who I have never seen again; and the stories have always surprised me in relation to what I expected them to be. And every single time it makes me re-evaluate the way I see the world; it makes me flag any prejudices I often didn’t know I had and to re-evaluate the way I live my own life in relation to the many options out there.
Storytelling is the ability to make our experiences into tales which are engaging and teach others something about themselves. The ‘ah-hah’ moment. Yes you know it, that moment when someone said something and it wasn’t even all that serious or deep but something switched in your head and...click. Breakthrough. People will surprise you, places will invite you to rethink life and how you view yourself. That is the gift and sometimes the curse of storytelling.
To listen to other people’s experiences is to realise that no one is better, no one is worse…we’re just all very different, and that realisation is the true beauty of connection and communication.
When you travel, as well as listening to other people’s stories and learning about the stories of places; it’s important to align with your own story. Other people’s stories and life experiences are there to teach us about what is out there. If we didn’t listen to stories we’d never know about everything there is to be experienced, because we will never strive for anything more than what we already know to exist. Through sharing our stories and communicating our life experiences we can find out what’s actually meant for us - we can try new ways of life, and find people along that road who will offer us new paths to explore. Stories are opportunities to learn, opportunities to figure out what authentically resonates and what doesn’t, opportunities to discover new places both inside and outside of ourselves.
3 Tips For Communicating Life Experiences
Set boundaries: Before you get into a conversation with someone decide how much you feel comfortable sharing, how much is safe to share, how much would you feel safe with someone else sharing with you if the situation was reversed?
Listen, don’t just talk: You’ll find out more about yourself and have a more enjoyable experience if you listen rather than just talking or thinking about your turn to talk.
Be present: Stay in touch with yourself while you’re telling your story or listening to someone else’s. How you feel says a lot about the person and the story, and your connection to them. You should never feel anxious or afraid or exhausted, you should feel curious and engaged and peaceful.
About Alexandra
Alexandra is the founder of SOLEMNIKO, a space which prioritises authenticity and enables healing through creativity. In 2020 she set up the How We Came To Be Project; a platform that has worked with individuals, NGO’s and charities from across the globe focusing on highlighting stigmas and offering a safe space for people to tell their story free of abuse or fear of identification. You can find her on Instagram @solemniko and www.solemniko.com She believes that storytelling, incurable Wanderlust and sharing life experiences without prejudice are the way to understand ourselves and others.
Ekō Magazine Article
What gives me hope in a world so full of darkness? An article written for my work with the How We Came To Be Project.
Article by Alexandra Sebire
It’s strange getting used to the labels that society defines you by. I’ve gone from being ‘student’ and ‘writer’ to: ‘student, ‘scriptwirter’, ‘entrepreneur’, ‘acivist’ and ‘project manager/founder’. It’s a lot of labels for a twenty-year-old girl to hold in her hands, and that’s without all of the more personal ones. But wow am I proud of that twenty-year-old girl.
And how did I get here? How did I get these labels? How did I find hope having lost it? I think it all has something to do with feeling I had nothing left to lose, taking a series of calculated risks, believing in my abilities and wanting to change things. Oh and also realising that I could do whatever I put my mind to.
Of course, nothing’s really as clear cut as: I fancied setting up a global project, so I just did it and am raising awreness of humanitiarian issues, combatting stigmas, taboos an prejudices, mamking international collaborations and telling oridnary people’s stories. Nothing is that simple. It’s true, but like every story we tell, or every picture we post; there’s a deeper story underneath.
I’ve been battling ivisible illnesses since I was 15. After a good two years of blood tests, scans and appointments with GP’s and specialists, being tested for ‘nasties’ then everything else under the sun they decided on glandular fever. This led to a lymphatic disorder, adrenal exhaustion, lucid dreams, water retention and anxiety. None of this has been cured but I’ve got better at dealing with it. Last year I contracted a vira disease that is both stigmatised and uncurable. So, another thing I learned how to deal with. Both of these changed my life.
At first,I thought they were the worst things that could haveh appened, maybe they were…but they were the worst things that could have happened to a life I didn’t enjoy and needed to change. And wow did I change. I had to re-evaluatte what I wanted, reinvent myself, change my goals; improve my lifestyle, my work ethic, my determination to succeed. Not all of the re-evalueation was healthy, there were many, many stages I had to go thorough to get here and most were less than fun. But that too was part of the processs of building what I have today. And I wouldn’t change it. When you’ve gone through hell by yourself you have a new appreciation for the power you have over your lifie and a ne appreciation for yourself too.
I’m lucky, I’ve had emotional, physical support with all of it. But it’s like everyhting, people see one perspective and you’re experiencing 10,000 other ones. That was part of the reason for the Project. I had a better awareness and appreciation of the experiences of others; and ther realisation that while what I had been through was difficult, billions of others are surrering in ther own personal hell. I never wanted to know that someone felt alone when I was able to do something about it and give them what I hadn’t had. I wasnted to create somewhere safe and secure, a place where I could smash taboos, address humanitarian issues, somewher epeople could tell their sotry in their own words. No filters, judgement orr fear of identification. Where better to do it on Instagram? Where our masks are glorified, our realities filtered beyond recognition. I’ve now found that’s only one way to use social media.
With every story sent in, every collaboration achieved I get more hope in myself, more conviction that this is right; and stronger knowledge that behind the posts, the words, the actions and silences everyone has a reason why they are, and how they came to be where they are.
Both the Project and I have a long way to go until we reach our full potential, but I don’t feel alone anymore and the Project is more successful, healing and hopeful than I dreamed possible.
If you would like to contribute or collaborate with the How We Came To Be Project I am contactable on:
Howwecametobeproject@gmail.com