During that meet up, I was reminded of how I originally adopted this mantra about ten years ago and dedicated 12 months to the practice as an alternative to setting a new year’s resolution. The practice stayed with me, and I have continued to reflect on this mantra throughout the years whenever I catch myself feeling vulnerable to judgement.

Adopting this mantra was a few years on from meeting my inner “Should Woman”, which I have also shared recently on this blog. It was a continuation of my keen interest in de-conditioning and uncoupling from societal programming and beliefs that felt out of alignment with the true essence of me.

One of the key takeaways from that year was homing in on my awareness and exposing the inner thoughts, chatter, completely fictional and often negative stories I had been telling myself. Not only that, but I also discovered how these thoughts could influence both my emotional state and my nervous system regulation. In the middle of a story, I could literally feel my emotions shift and I realised that my body did not know the difference between a story or conversation in my head, versus a real-life 3D version!

Research shows that a stressful situation, whether environmental or psychological, can activate our sympathetic nervous system, triggering a cascade of stress hormones and the engagement of our “fight, flight, freeze” response. So, you can imagine, if we are regularly caught up in negative self-talk or stories, and worry and concern about what people think of us, how this may be playing out in our mental, emotional and physical health!

When I initially engaged with the practice of this mantra, I found I was reflecting after the fact, on those inner thoughts and conversations. However, I discovered that over time, this practice strengthened my self-awareness and I was starting to catch myself before launching into the big inner dialogue and would cut it off by saying “Stop, that is not serving me”. I was calling it out, and this served as a line in the sand which felt super empowering and WAY more peaceful! I no longer needed to throw my nervous system into a spin and could call out any negative thoughts for the unnecessary and energy sucking fiction that they were.

Committing to this practice really ramped up my self-awareness journey and helped to expose where I was limiting myself, my health and my wellbeing. It was foundational in building a positive relationship with myself and freed up valuable headspace and heart space to allow in the experience of greater love, connection, creativity, joy and inner trust.

Imagine what life might look like for you, if you stopped making decisions around what other people think. If you stopped limiting yourself to your ideas of what others might do or say and allowed yourself to be REAL. Imagine the bandwidth you could free up to build a deeper, positive connection to yourself and unravel those layers, supporting you to show up in your fullest expression.